Showing results by narrator "Jenny Hoops" in All Categories

English hairdresser, Ethel, is alone after the deaths of her family and her wartime fiancé. Widow and single mother, Alice, bringing up two daughters, receives an unexpected inheritance that will transform her life. War bride, Joan, is mother to three small children with a fourth on the way and money in short supply. All are brought together in a rural Canadian town where they each try to build a future - often in spite of the men in their lives.

Grace MacKinnon’s widowhood promises little but a life of drudgery under her father-in-law’s oppressive rule. When quiet rebellion turns to opportunity, she books passage on an Atlantic steamer only to face near disaster in Halifax harbor. Her future looks doomed from the start until, with the help of a sympathetic stranger and a chance meeting with Lucy Maud Montgomery, she changes destination and arrives on Prince Edward Island. Her newfound independence drives her to undertake a brave new adventure in a male-dominated world.

When Lillian Stone lapses into a coma and is admitted to a San Francisco hospital in the spring of 1969, her only child, twelve-year-old Maggie, is temporarily taken in by her best friend's family. More than a month later, the neighbors can no longer afford to provide for Maggie's room and board. Uprooted again, she is sent to a local orphanage. Just as she's beginning to adapt to life at the orphanage, Ira Stone, a grandfather she never met, shows up unexpectedly and shuttles her 1200 miles away to live at his ranch on the isolated plains of eastern Montana.

The Call of the Wild is Jack London's most popular and enduring work. Set in the frozen wilderness of the Yukon, it tells the story of the magnificent dog Buck, who is a loyal family pet until cruel men steal him and make him a pawn in their feverish search for the gold of the Klondike. Brutally beaten into serving as a sled dog, Buck finds the blood of his wolf ancestors rising within him.

It’s 1942. Louise Pearlie, a young widow, has come to Washington, DC, to work as a clerk for the legendary OSS, the precursor to the CIA. When, while filing, she discovers a document concerning the husband of a college friend, Rachel Bloch—a young French Jewish woman she is desperately worried about—Louise realizes she may be able to help get Rachel out of Vichy France. But then a colleague whose help Louise has enlisted is murdered, and she realizes she is on her own, unable to trust anyone.

Edna Coffman, School Board Chairperson and community icon, hires thirty-something coaches Luke Carter and Madison Danielsen with the specific directive of returning the town sports fortunes to its former championship status. The unique-to-small-town interactions are at the forefront in this tale, and clearly demonstrate the close interconnections between school, sport and community in rural small-town America.

Eager to move on from a master’s thesis that left her questioning her passion for history, Josie dives headlong into her new job and life in a small town. Faced with the prospect of remaining long-term, she must decide if she will fight to carve a place for herself in Wells’s idiosyncratic community. What follows is the story of a young woman trying to find connection and purpose in the twenty-first century while living in a village seemingly frozen in the past.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by all the good advice in a self-help book? Too many to-do’s, and not enough time to-do them? Jenny Hoops has your back! The Dance of Success is a practical, easy-to-do system for taking solid steps towards a life of purpose and joy.

Haunted by her student's disappearance for more than a decade, Elaine finally stumbles onto a vital clue, only to discover someone will do anything to keep the truth buried. When her life is threatened, she allows the one person she trusts to whisk her away to Texas for safety. But assuming a false identity and hiding among the quirky residents of a nursing home is not what she had in mind.

In a world expected to reach a staggering population of 10 billion by 2050, and with global temperatures rising fast, humanity must fundamentally change the way it grows and consumes food. Uncertain Harvest brings together scientists, chefs, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, philosophers, and engineers working on the global future of food to answer questions on how to make a more equitable, safe, sustainable, and plentiful food future.

French journalist Marc Taragon is trying. A tenacious idealist, Taragon has spent the last thirty years attempting to bring to readers the truths about the wars and political intrigues of the region. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremists and has earned many enemies. He agrees to be interviewed in Cyprus, by a young Canadian journalist, Marie Boivin, not knowing that Marie has a hidden agenda: to discover through Taragon the truth about her childhood.

Until she saw the horror on Ben’s face, it hadn’t occurred to Samantha that a menacing murder of crows had congregated in this Attic Windows quilt. It gave her pause to examine it more closely, and what she discovered gave her chills. Who was this woman, L. Bennett, so tormented by suspicion she hid clues to her own murder in a quilt for her son, Nicky? Or was it a daughter? Was she murdered, or is she alive, steeped in paranoia?

Walking is a form of exercise that’s available to most people. You don’t need any special equipment other than some supportive walking shoes. And there’s no need for an expensive membership at a fitness center. I wrote this book to break down the myths about physical, mental, and spiritual walking, to share the successes and challenges of my lifelong walking journey, to provide strategies and tools to embrace different types of walking at every age and stage of life, and to help teach others about building physical, mental, and emotional resilience and inner strength.

For many Loyalists during the American War for Independence, the perilous journey to Canada is just the beginning of a long and arduous struggle to find a new home and a new life amid the upheavals of war and separation, death and privation. For Elisabeth Van Alen, it also means finding new strength and the will to survive in a new country. Married to Gerrit, an educated Mohawk warrior, she is filled with fears when he must go away shortly before the American rebels force her and her family out of their ancestral home.

It’s a decade following WWI, in a small village of Nova Scotia. Maggie Conrad, a young war widow, lives with her father and younger brother, helping them manage a small store. After the sudden death of her father, Maggie finds their finances in shambles. Instead of moping around or choosing to "settle down", she decides to sell the store and relocate to the city in the hope of finding a job. Thus starts her adventure.

In 1784, Englishwoman Amelia Latimer sails to the new colony of New Brunswick in faraway Canada. She’s to marry a man chosen by her soldier father. Amelia is repulsed by her betrothed, refuses to marry, then meets the handsome Acadian trader, Gilbert, a man beneath her in status. Gilbert must protect his mother, who was attacked by an English soldier. He fights to hold on to their property, to keep it from the Loyalists who have flooded the colony, desperate men chased from the South after the American Revolution.

Elsie Neufeld loves to sit on her porch and watch the children grow in the Mennonite community near Landmark, Manitoba, Canada. Returning to the area after moving to Paraguay for a time, Elsie is happy to be living on the wild rose dotted prairie of south-eastern Manitoba.

French-Canadian soldier Napoleon proposes to lovely and charming Lea in Belgium during WWI, promising golden fields of wheat as far as the eye can see. After the armistice, he sends money for her passage, and she journeys far from her family and the conveniences of a modern country to join him on a homestead in Saskatchewan. There, she works hard to build their dream of a prospering farm, clearing fields alongside her husband through several pregnancies and even after suffering a terrible loss.

It is 1896, and 19-year-old Pearl Owens wants adventure. To fulfill her dream, Pearl is on her way to the Yukon with her cousin, Emma, to write articles and do illustrations about the woman and men who are looking for gold in the north. Sam Owens, Pearl’s cousin and Emma’s brother, is in the Yukon searching for gold with two friends, Gordon and Donald. After five years of barely making a living at gold panning, Gordon and Donald have decided their quest is futile, and it is time to return home. But Sam wants to stay a while longer.

The youngest child of the local doctor and evangelical preacher, Annie Baldwin was expected to work hard and not protest. George Richardson, the underage Doctor Bernardo boy, orphaned and shipped to Canada a few years earlier, is loaned to the Baldwins to help bring in the hay. The Great War brought a lot of changes to life, even in the back woods of Ontario. In spite of the differences in their social standing, George and Annie fell in love. When George departed for France, he promised to return to her when the war was over. Like so many others, Annie waited and hoped.