Showing results by narrator "Shannon McManus" in All Categories

Aspiring journalist Meghan Briggs has always been the responsible one in the family. So when her father passes away unexpectedly, leaving behind his at-risk business, she steps up to save his legacy - even if that means putting her own dreams on hold. Tracy couldn't be more different from her sister. She's always been the rebellious type, without much direction in life. But in the wake of her latest romantic disaster, she finds herself moving back home as a single mother. As Tracy experiences the difficulties of new motherhood, Meghan faces her own struggle: trying not to fall for the stray puppy she rescued.

Joanna Guthrie was free. She had been for 18 years - or so she needed everyone to believe. What really happened during the longest 14 days of her life, when she and two other women were held captive by the worst kind of killer, wasn't something she could talk about. Not after what she'd had to do to survive. But when more women go missing in an eerily similar manner, Jo knows her prolonged silence will only seal their fates. She's finally ready to talk; she just needs someone to listen.

Afraid or not, Detective Bobbie Gentry has a monster to confront. The pain of losing her family and nearly her life to a criminal's vile hunger is still fresh, but now the landscape is different. Now she's not alone. Now she has Nick Shade to trust. Nick treats the terror of his past with vengeance. He's dedicated his life to hunting serial killers, and he'd give his last breath to save Bobbie. When a string of killings bloodies Savannah's elite society and causes cold cases to resurface, Bobbie is captured in a city more haunted than Nick's inescapable nightmares.

In the midst of an internal investigation, the police department is thrown into chaos when Captain Frank Morelli is gunned down on his own front lawn. Detective Jane Harper suspects that someone is tying up loose ends - a conviction that only grows stronger when she witnesses the execution of another officer in broad daylight. With no one else to turn to, Jane seeks the help of psychic Ida Lane.

Every summer, four college friends hold a mini reunion. They laugh, reminisce, and commiserate about their soul-sucking jobs. Maybe they should have listened to everyone who warned them to study something "practical". Then an unexpected windfall arrives - $1 million, to be exact - with the stipulation that they use it to jump-start their new careers. Almost overnight, a professor, a bartender, a copywriter, and an administrative assistant reinvent themselves.

After weathering the first gut-wrenching year since her husband's death, Lily Declan is trying to move past her grief and find a place of healing for herself and her two young sons. But when a strange sympathy letter arrives, the quiet life Lily has rebuilt from her sorrow comes under stealthy, sinister attack. On her wedding anniversary, an intimate bridal gift is delivered to her door. Then, a bizarre home invasion shatters her sense of security, and a mysterious Facebook memorial appears.

Serial-killer hunter Nick Shade built his legendary career chasing monsters - sadistic criminals with a gruesome thirst for death. When he rescued Montgomery detective Bobbie Gentry from horrific captivity and helped her reclaim her life, he didn't intend to be a hero. Or a target. But now a copycat murderer haunts him, and reuniting with Bobbie is his best chance at neutralizing the threat.

Detective Bobbie Gentry has one objective: to stop the serial killer who robbed her of her husband, her child, and her life. Nick Shade understands Bobbie's pain - and her desire for vengeance. He's on a mission of his own, and the murderer known as the Storyteller is next on his list. Nick knows that the best way to find his target is to stick close to Bobbie. But as she becomes more and more reckless in her attempts to lure the Storyteller out of hiding, he has to make a choice.

Detective Jane Harper can't shake the image of the young woman discovered in a field - eyes closed, a crown of woven vines on her head. She expects macabre murders like this in her native San Francisco, not here. Jane and her partner, Stu, vow to catch the killer, but in this town, that's easier said than done. The police department is in the grips of a wide-reaching scandal that could topple the entire force, and Jane and Stu face a series of dead ends. Until they meet Ida Lane.

As America plunges into the Great Depression, Marthanne Hendrix finds herself in rural Vidalia, Georgia, with no memory of how she got there.

Bewildered when the neighbors call her Oma, Marthanne is haunted by memories of another life—and another self. With the help of Comfort, a domestic worker living with her own tremendous loss, Marthanne discovers that Oma is another distinct personality inhabiting her body. In a time when mental illness is taboo, Marthanne and Oma’s simple, small-town life is fraught with complexity and danger.

With gossip running rampant, Marthanne and Oma will do anything to avoid their greatest fear: commitment to an insane asylum. Only by relying on Comfort’s kindness can they navigate their uncertain future. Friendship becomes sanctuary, and the quest for an ordinary life leads to an extraordinary bond.

Deeply moving and exquisitely wrought, Show Me a Kindness is a haunting novel of love, survival, and hiding in plain sight.

Only God knew why Jillian Slater agreed to return to New Orleans on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death. It's not like they were close. She hadn't seen him - or her grandmother, the ice queen - in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, called and said her expenses would be paid if she'd fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist.

After so many summers together, Emma, Jess, Megan, Becca, and Cassidy are reunited for one final hurrah before they go their separate ways. The plan is to spend their summer as counselors at Camp Lovejoy in a scenic, remote corner of New Hampshire, but things get off to a rocky start when their young charges are stricken with a severe case of homesickness. Hopefully, a little bit of bibliotherapy will do the trick, as the girls bring their longstanding book club to camp.

At 15 Amanda Grace was abducted on her way home from school. Seven hundred and thirty-eight days later, she escaped. Her 20/20 interview is what everyone remembers - Amanda describing the room where she was kept, the torn poster of TV heartthrob Chase Henry on the wall. It reminded her of home and gave her the strength to keep fighting. Now, years later, Amanda is struggling to live normally. Her friends have gone on to college while she battles PTSD. She's not getting any better, and she fears that if something doesn't change soon she never will.

Naomi Bowes lost her innocence the night she followed her father into the woods. In freeing the girl trapped in the root cellar, Naomi revealed the horrible extent of her father's crimes and made him infamous. Now a successful photographer living under the name Naomi Carson, she has found a place that calls to her, thousands of miles away from everything she's ever known. Naomi wants to embrace the solitude, but the residents of Sunrise Cove keep forcing her to open up - especially the determined Xander Keaton.

Facing a personal crisis, ambitious and driven Gabriella Castle retreats to the welcoming arms of her family. Everything she's worked for has been yanked out from under her, and she seeks the serenity of her grandmother's home on the North Carolina coast. With difficult decisions to make about her future, the last thing she wants is an unexpected love. Wade Johnson fell for Gabi the first time he saw her. It's not the only time he's found himself in the role of knight in shining armor, but Gabi isn't looking for a rescuer. To get her to stay, Wade will need a whole lot of patience and gentle persuasion.

Libby St. Clair believes in fate - so much so, she's willing to pin everything on a curse a fortune-teller placed on her and her two best friends when they were kids. The curse, that each of them will marry before 30, have a disaster of a wedding, and end up with a man other than her original fiancé, has come to fruition for both of her friends, who are now deliriously happy. But Libby's attempt to quick-start the curse by proposing to her wrong-for-her boyfriend ends in a wild dash from the altar.

Your Beautiful Heart explores issues that teen girls face every day: body image, self-worth, peer pressure, and much more. Whether you listen to the book on your own or with a group of friends, Lauren's personal message of love, faith, and value will show you what it means to be a girl who radiates with true beauty.

What would you pay to cure your heartbreak? Banish your sadness? Transform your looks? The right spell can fix anything. When Ari's boyfriend, Win, dies, she gets a spell to erase all memory of him. But spells come at a cost, and this one sets off a chain of events that reveal the hidden - and sometimes dangerous - connections between Ari, her friends, and the boyfriend she can no longer remember.

Sixteen-year-old Baltimore teen Bethany Stern knows the only way out of spending her summer at Camp Utopia, a fat camp in Northern California, is weight-loss. Desperate, she tries The Forgiveness Diet, the latest fad whose infomercial promises that all she has to do is forgive her deadbeat dad, her scandalous sister, and the teenage magician next door and (unrequited) love of her life. But when the diet fails and her camp nemesis delivers the ultimate blow, Bee bids sayonara to Camp-not-Utopian-at-all to begin what she believes will be her "real" summer adventure.

Angela's Diner has the reputation of a safe haven where patrons find a moment of peace as they linger over coffee and tears. For one young runaway, Angela's is more than a place to tell your tale - it's a place where with the magic of chicken and waffles, and a little bit of trust, may just save your life.