Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Family Life

On the one-year anniversary of her divorce, Alex Martinez is getting closure—and margaritas with her two best friends. But just before the celebratory meetup, Alex is clobbered by life once again. Damping the cheer is the diagnosis of a brain tumor she can’t pronounce, a procedure she’d rather postpone, and the prospect of what to say to an already heartbroken mother. Not that Alex plans to tell her anything anytime soon.

The prim librarian is finally getting her chance to direct Avalon's annual holiday pageant, and she's determined to make it truly spectacular. But it might just require one of those Christmas miracles she's always read about. The problem is her codirector is recovering former child star Eddie Haven, a long-haired, tattooed lump of coal in Maureen's pageant stocking. Eddie can't stand Christmas, but a court order from a judge has landed him right in the middle of the merrymaking.

A decade ago in upstate New York, art student Emma McCullough walked into the woods and was never seen again. It’s a mystery that still haunts her bucolic university town and her broken family, especially her sister Haley, whose need for closure has become an obsession. But now, finally, the first piece of evidence in the vanishing has been found: Emma’s bracelet, lodged in a frozen piece of earth at the bottom of a gorge.

Last week, high-powered coffee buyer Amy O'Hara was trekking through the Ethiopian cloud forest on the verge of a discovery that could save the coffee bean from extinction. This week, she's unexpectedly fired. Suddenly Amy's days are no longer filled with meetings and upscale tastings, but with put-together PTA moms, puke-ridden playdates, and dirty dishes.

Cover girl Cat St. James's picture-perfect life is anything but flawless. Luckily, she's a master of hiding the truth from the camera. Relying on that skill, she conceals her latest secret from her family while attending her brother's wedding. Her only trouble now is Hank Mitchell - the soft-spoken carpenter she'd once brushed aside. Seeing him at the reception underscores her private heartache and ignites unwelcome longing, which she promptly drowns in champagne.

Fanny Thornton, the proud matriarch of the Thornton dynasty, will do anything for her family. Her four children, now grown, mean everything to her, as does Babylon, the most dazzling casino in Las Vegas and the Thorntons' crowning achievement. But her children have dispersed across the globe, and so she chooses Jeff, the illegitimate son of her deceased husband, to run the casino.

Jan needs this. She’s flying to Crete to reunite with friends she met there five years ago and relive an idyllic vacation. Basking in the warmth of the sun, the azure sea, and the aura of antiquity, she can once again pretend - for a little while - that she belongs. Her ex-boyfriend Marcus will be among them, but even he doesn’t know the secrets she keeps hidden behind a veil of lies. None of them really know her. Then again, how well does she know them? When Jan awakens in utter darkness, chained to a wall, she desperately tries to reconstruct what happened....

Struggling with working-mother guilt, Marlene Greene hopes a camping trip in the forest will provide quality time with her three young children - until they see fires in the distance, columns of smoke distorting the sweeping view. Overnight, all communication with the outside world is lost. Knowing something terrible has happened, Marlene suspects that the isolation of the remote campsite is all that's protecting her family. But the arrival of a lost boy reveals they are not alone in the woods, and as the unfolding disaster ravages the land, more youngsters seek refuge under her wing.

Sixty-four years ago, Susannah Morgan managed to flee the horrors of the Holocaust. But the memories of that childhood ordeal have proven impossible to sweep away. For most of her new life spent settled in sleepy North Carolina, the flashbacks have been a lonely obsession - one she has hidden from her family, and about which her heart is torn. Because for all the pain and the cruelty of those terrible years, she harbours sweet memories too, of unexpected friends who risked their own lives in order to save hers.

It seems lately that Poppy Lively is invisible to everyone but the IRS. After her accountant absconded with her life savings, newly bankrupt Poppy is on the verge of losing her home when an old flame, now a hotshot producer, gives her a surprising way out: a job in costumes on a Hollywood film set. It’s a bold move to pack her bags, keep secrets from her daughter, and head to Los Angeles, but Poppy's a capable person—how hard can a job in wardrobe be?

Llankaray’s grandmother left a rich inheritance: her medicine, an undefeatable spirit, and the stories of her Mapuche ancestors. These tales are forever etched in Llankaray’s memory—and the soil of their beloved Patagonia. She begins with Fresia, a gifted Mapuche medicine woman who communicates with plants. She raises her granddaughter, Pirenrayen, to be a strong healer and leader for her people. And then there’s Chekeken, a Tehuelche woman who was once kidnapped and sold but escaped.

After three marriages and a lot of living, resilient Billie Slate knows exactly what trouble love can bring. Now she’s reinvented herself as the Heartbreak Bunny, an on-call performance artist who can heal anyone who’s been burned by that four-letter word, LOVE, by hopping about and whisking away sad mementos from their past relationships. Call it magic. Call it peculiar. But her bunny costume is as perfect as her breakup mantra: SNAP OUT OF IT.

All three women who live at 1054 Mockingbird Lane have secrets...and with a body at the bottom of their apartment building’s staircase, those secrets need to stay buried. Sylvia Webb has a plan. And a potential Mr. Right. He’s sweet, simple, and dependably clueless. The only thing unpredictable about him is his needy ex-girlfriend, who is this close to shattering Sylvia’s dreams. Riki McFarlan has a good career and an amazing boyfriend who wants to settle down. If only she didn’t have feelings for her neighbor - who happens to be her close friend’s husband.

Sisters Amanda Foster and Erin Turner have little in common except the childhood bedroom they once shared and the certainty each feels that her way of life is best. Amanda follows the rules - at the school where she works; in her community; and as a picture-perfect daughter, wife, and mother-to-be. Erin follows her heart - in love and otherwise - living a bohemian lifestyle on a shoestring budget and honoring her late father’s memory with a passion for music and her fledgling bath-products business.

When the Chatsworth library closes indefinitely, Dodie Fairisle loses her sanctuary. How is a small-town art teacher supposed to cope without the never-ending life advice and enjoyment that books give her? Well, when she’s as resourceful and generous as Dodie, she turns her sunroom into her very own little lending library.

It is a time of reckoning for José-Maria Alvarez, an aristocratic Spanish banker living in a Swiss village with his American wife. Nearing the end of a long and tumultuous life, he’s overcome by hallucinatory memories of the past. Among his most cherished memories are those of his boyhood in 1950s Franco-era Spain and the bucolic afternoons he spent salmon fishing on the Sella River with his father, uncle, and much-loved younger brother. But these fond reveries are soon eclipsed by something greater.

In old Bari, everyone knows Maria De Santis as “Malacarne,” the bad seed. Nicknamed for her dark features, volcanic temperament, and resistance to rules, the headstrong girl can only imagine the possibilities that lie outside her poverty-stricken neighborhood. Growing up with her mother, two brothers, and a tyrannical father, Maria must abide. She does - amid the squalid life to which she was born, the cruelties of her small-minded neighbors, and violence in a constant threat of eruption.

Howard Fast, author of The Immigrants, has proven himself to be one of this country's most popular authors. This second volume about the fortunes of Dan Lavette, the young Italian who lost his parents but launched a stormy and brilliant career as a result of the great San Francisco earthquake, encompasses an even more dramatic sweep of history from the depression years to the close of World War II.

The year is 1994, and South Africa is in political turmoil as its first democratic election looms. Against a backdrop of apartheid and racial violence, traumatized artist Yolanda Petersen returns from the Appalachian foothills to the land of her youth at the behest of her mother. While there Yolanda longs to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Ingrid, the product of an illegal mixed-race affair with a white man. But Ingrid is missing, and as Yolanda quickly discovers, she isn’t the only woman in Cape Town desperate to protect her own.

Attorney Jayne Larsen loves her stay-at-home husband. Eric is attentive and a great father to their daughter. He’s also unfailingly committed to their Wednesday date nights - but things have gotten too predictable. Enter Theo and Mia Winters, the effortlessly cool, attractive couple who are the center of everyone’s attention. They are blissfully happy and ready to share their secret for keeping things spicy. But there are rules. And breaking them has consequences.