Showing results by author "Donna Mabry" in All Categories

In 1906 I was barely over 14 years old, and it was my wedding day. My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She said, "You've always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I told you. Now you're going to be a married woman, and he will be the head of the house. When you go home tonight after your party, no matter what he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it. Do you understand?"

On Nancy's 18th birthday, her father tells her she must marry her cousin, Abner, the town's blacksmith. He's already married to three other women, one of them her younger sister. Nancy runs away and gets lost in the woods. Hungry and cold, she finds a seemingly deserted cabin and takes shelter.

Wealthy heiress Jessica McCarthy desperately wants to be married and have a family. A rogue and a scoundrel, Zachary Belk is the only one who has proposed. Even though her father warns her that Zachary won't make a good husband, she marries him. She soon discovers that her father was right. When the stock market crashes and both families are left penniless, Zachary seeks a new fortune on a property he owns in another Manhattan, in Kansas. They are only there a short time before he deserts her.

La storia che ha commosso gli Stati Uniti. La storia vera di Maude, sposa a quattordici anni. "Era il 1906, avevo appena quattordici anni, ed era il giorno del mio matrimonio. Mia sorella maggiore, Helen, venne in camera mia, mi prese per mano e mi fece sedere sul letto. Aprì la bocca per dire qualcosa, poi arrossì e si voltò a guardare fuori dalla finestra. Dopo qualche istante, mi strinse la mano e tornò a guardarmi negli occhi.

When newly divorced Ellen has trouble sleeping, her friend, Alexandra, tells her, "Get a dog." A visit to the local shelter brings Skip into her life. The injured Golden Retriever is soon running things, arranging her romances, and teaching her to laugh again. When she begins to date, he disapproves the dentist and the salesman, and even threatens to bite the bartender. Will the handsome Vegas firefighter make Skip wag his tail? Anyone who ever loved a dog will laugh along with Skip, a most unusual canine.

Emma is nine on the day they meet. Akecheta is 12 and already the man of his house. He saves her life and tells her she belongs to him. As they grow up together on the frontier surrounding Manhattan, Kansas, he teaches her how to fish, hunt, and survive. She teaches him how to trust and how to share the burdens of his shameful past. When he graduates from high school, an aunt sends him to university in the other Manhattan, in New York. Emma continues her schooling at home.

In this collection, Donna Foley Mabry brings us a novella, a selection of seven short stories, and reminiscences of growing up in Detroit. In "Killer Coffee", four retired women gather daily on their patios in the 55-plus community where nothing exciting ever happens. They pass the time plotting imaginary murders. An unforeseen tragedy turns their murders into the real thing and reveals the one woman among them who might be capable of actually committing the crime. In “The Trade”, an aging actress will do anything to look younger.