Showing results by narrator "Bernadette" in All Categories

Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn are an unlikely pair of detectives. He is a former arson detective; she is a psychologist. Together, the husband-and-wife team has a knack for unraveling a mystery. "Seven Kinds of Death" is a famous sculpture, but the name takes on new meaning when bodies start turning up at the creator's art colony.

With the critically acclaimed Sin in the Second City, best-selling author Karen Abbott “pioneered sizzle history” (USA Today). Now she returns with the gripping and expansive story of America’s coming-of-age - told through the extraordinary life of Gypsy Rose Lee and the world she survived and conquered. America in the Roaring Twenties. Vaudeville was king. Talking pictures were only a distant flicker. Speakeasies beckoned beyond dimly lit doorways; money flowed fast and free.

Charlie didn’t want to take this case - he hated cases involving crazy wills - but when one of the new clients mentioned that the Bainbridge men are cursed, he knew resistance was hopeless: Constance could not resist confronting a curse. In a quiet college town in New Jersey, five million dollars in cashier’s checks lies hidden in a dead man’s house, and whoever finds the checks gets to keep it all. Four family members have four weeks before the house and its contents become the property of a small college. Soon two deaths by drowning from the past and another clear case of murder in the present complicate matters.

In the heart of a verdant valley, nestled between rolling hills and a meandering river, lay the village of Saguna. This village, untouched by the turmoil of the outside world, thrived on the wisdom and traditions passed down through generations. At its centre stood an ancient shrine, a place of reverence and mystery, where the spiritual and the earthly intertwined. For as long as anyone could remember, Agodo had been the guardian of this sacred place. Known for his profound wisdom and spiritual prowess, he was both a leader and a protector, revered by all who knew him.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto.

A whimsical, moving novel about a retirement home for literary legends who spar, conjure up new stories, and almost magically change the lives of the people around them. Alfonse Carducci was a literary giant who lived his life to excess - lovers, alcohol, parties, and literary rivalries. But now he's come to the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly to spend the remainder of his days among kindred spirits: the publishing industry's nearly gone but never forgotten greats. Only now, at the end of his life, does he comprehend the price of appeasing every desire.

Deciding on her 39th birthday that a baby is the best present she could give herself, single Manhattan public relations executive Nina Kitchener makes an appointment to undergo artificial insemination at the Human Fertility Institute. Nine months later the nightmare begins. Just hours after she gives birth, someone kidnaps her infant son from the nursery. The police aren't helping, the fertility institute has shut down, and Nina believes that the only way to find her baby is to learn the identity of the sperm donor.

Elizabeth, a member of the "sandwich generation", people caught in the middle of simultaneously caring for their children and for their aging parents, is the mother of Ava and the daughter of Daddy, and responsible for both. Hers is the story of a woman's struggle to keep her family whole, to raise her child in a house of laughter and love, and to keep her father from hiding the house keys in his slippers.

For more than four decades, biblical experts have tried to place the story of Exodus into historical context - without success. What could explain the Nile turning into blood, insects swarming the land, and the sky falling to darkness? Integrating biblical accounts with substantive archaeological evidence, The Parting of the Sea looks at how natural phenomena shaped the stories of Exodus, the Sojourn in the Wilderness and the Israelite conquest of Canaan.

What does it mean to be male and female? Do women and men have different intellectual, spiritual, moral, or emotional capacities? Are women especially suited for serving and men for leading? Are women and men equal? While these may seem like relatively recent questions, they have been a topic of conversation throughout Christian history. At the center of this conversation is the biblical character Eve, the archetypal woman of Genesis 1-3. Not simply one woman among many, Eve comes to represent all women, defining the very essence of what it is to be female.

Identical twin sisters Alex and Hannah are the owners of Murder and Mayhem, a mystery bookshop that sells their famous poison-themed Killer Chocolates. But now, there’s a real killer in their midst. Shortly before Christmas, their septuagenarian neighbor, Jane, confides to Alex that a murderer from a true-crime show has taken up residence in the village. Unfortunately, she’s also shared her suspicions with town gossip Netta. The next morning, Alex shows up at Jane’s house to watch the show, but instead she discovers Jane's body, with a box of Killer Chocolates nearby.

Crazy Horse was the legendary military leader of the Oglala Sioux whose personal power and social nonconformity contributed to his reputation as being “strange.” Crazy Horse fought in many battles, including the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn, and held out tirelessly against the US government’s efforts to confine the Native Americans to reservations. Eventually, in the spring of 1877, he surrendered to military forces and ended up meeting a violent death. Now, nearly a century and a half later, Crazy Horse continues to hold a special place in the hearts and minds of people.

Alecia is determined to protect her people from her tyrannical father. Her only worth is to have a son, who will be heir to the kingdom. Vard is tasked with guarding a princess who refuses to be shielded from danger. His dark secret could spell the end of the woman he’s sworn to protect. And yet, when thrown together, neither of them can deny the forbidden attraction. As their lives spin out of control, will love be enough to pull them from the vortex and perhaps save the kingdom?

All too often, introverts get passed over for job offers and promotions while their more extroverted colleagues get all of the recognition. But it doesn't have to be this way. In Self-Promotion for Introverts®, business communication coach and intrepid introvert Nancy Ancowitz helps introverts tap into their quiet strengths, articulate their accomplishments, and launch an action plan for gaining career advancement.

A welcome surprise: more than 50 prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America's most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary - appearing in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere - have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.

A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner's name - and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. Their conflicted response is only a preamble to the country's.

In a city where image is everything, Gabriella turns heads for all the wrong reasons. The marks that slash across her neck and face turn people away. But I see the beauty that lies beneath, feel a kinship to her pain. I regret the way she found me—mugged and left for dead. I should walk away, follow the rules, but I can't. I want to see her again. There's only one problem. My brother convinced her I'm gay. I use that lie to my advantage, persuade her to be my pretend girlfriend, to help protect my fake-sexual identity from my judgmental family.

Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis' memoir, A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to your ears in the fullness and depth she deserves. A poet and radical, Davidman was a frequent contributor to the communist vehicle New Masses and an active member of New York literary circles in the 1930s and '40s.

The Money Mirror shows how women's attitudes towards money reflect their feelings about themselves. Through better understanding the ways they relate to money, women can develop positive emotional attitudes and gain control of economic and personal issues. "Lieberman and Lindner document how intelligent women are still very often prey to . . . a vicious cycle of fear and confusion that prevents us from effectively earning, negotiating, investing, and managing our incomes. This lively, anecdotal book explores women's historical relationship to money, the common symptoms,…. and the antidotes." —(Ms. Magazine) . . .[offers] a wealth of down-to-earth tips on how to develop money awareness on the road to leading healthier, happier financial lives." (The Bookwatch)

Stinging deaths aren't uncommon in the summertime, but when Henry Wiest turns up stung to death at an Indian reservation, Detective Hazel Micallef senses not all is as it seems. And when it turns out the "bee" was a diabolical teenaged girl on a murder spree with a strange weapon, a dark and twisted crime begins to slowly emerge. The questions, contradictions, and bodies begin to mount, as two separate police forces struggle to work together to save the soul of Westmuir County.