Showing results by narrator "Laurence Bouvard" in All Categories

An utterly charming and tender story of the disparate tenants of a Brooklyn brownstone and the community they form around their ageing landlord when their home is suddenly threatened. Within a charming if dilapidated Brooklyn brownstone live a family of sorts: beautiful agoraphobe Adeleine, who surrounds herself with the past....

Winner of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize. Auntie Mei is a live-in nanny for newborns and their mothers. She has worked for 126 families and looked after 131 babies, one set of clients easily replaced by the next. But the 132nd baby and his mother, Chanel, prompts a crisis in Auntie Mei's life - a tremor that threatens to destroy her resolute detachment.

Francine would prefer to be thinner but is happy enough to suffer her boss' manhandling of her ample hips if it helps her survive the next cull in quality assurance. She just wishes she could get the dead biker's crushed face out of her mind's eye. Robin is having a baby with the wrong woman, wishes he were with the perfect Polish waitress instead, leans hard on Deleuze for understanding, and wonders if his work in film will continue to be valued by the university management.

David Moloney’s Barker House follows the story of nine unforgettable New Hampshire Correctional Officers over the course of one year on the job. While veteran guards get by on what they consider survival strategies - including sadistic power-mongering and obsessive voyeurism - two rookies, including the only female Officer on her shift, develop their own tactics for facing “the system”.

The hardscrabble Chase women - Mary, Hannah, and their mother Diane - have been eking out a living running a tiny seaside motel that has been in the family for generations, inviting trouble into their lives for just as long. Eighteen-year-old Mary Chase is a force of nature: passionate, beautiful, and free-spirited. Her much younger sister, Hannah, whom Mary affectionately calls 'Bunny', is imaginative, her head full of the stories of princesses and adventures that Mary tells to give her a safe emotional place in the middle of their troubled world.

What is it that makes you "you"? What produces your likes and dislikes, fear and fantasies? What makes you different from other people, and what makes you the same as them? For thousands of years, people have tried to identify the spirit, soul, or mind that makes us human. And they have tried to work out how and why it makes our identity. Answers have ranged from the physiological to the psychological - the influence of early experiences and upbringing.

Sarah Keller is a young single mother living in Oklahoma with her five year old daughter, Zoe. But when a school bus accident sends Zoe to the ER, tests reveal Sarah can't be Zoe's mother. Sarah has been living a lie for years and finally the truth is coming out. Who is she? Who were Zoe's parents? And why does Zoe's identity bring the FBI down on Sarah's tail in mere minutes?

The inferno struck without warning, but Draco Dante had no complaints. For his family's legacy drew him to Shayla Charleston, a mysterious beauty who ignited his blood. Soon he had her in his bed... and just as quickly she was gone. After months of searching, Draco Dante finally found the woman who was his destiny. But secrets began to rise, and Draco was torn between past strife, and a future with his wife and son. Could Draco trust she shared their bond?

From the critically acclaimed author of Absolution comes a nail-biting story of the utter failure of the American dream, and the greatest fears that lurk in every one of us. Poplar Farm is being carved up; a mini-massacre replicating the destruction of lives and societies taking place all over America. When the developer is driven insane by the failure of his artistic vision, Julia and Nathaniel arrive from Chicago and buy up the home in a foreclosure sale. They move into the half-finished house, yet violence lies just beneath the surface of this land, and simmers deep within Nathaniel.

Margo hasn’t been back to Lake Moss since her friend went missing. But as she returns, the news breaks. Her hometown’s swimming hole has been Jessie’s grave for 15 years. Digging out her old diary, and steeling herself to face unfriendly ghosts from her past, Margo sets out to help a documentary crew as they return to investigate the infamous case the police bungled.

Norah Campbell was an addict. The loss of her fiancé drove her to despair; she lost custody of her daughter, Gemma, and control of her life. Now Norah is in recovery and she wants Gemma back. But to do so, she must move in with her eccentric aunt and uncle, and they refuse to give up control without a fight. When strange occurrences keep happening at the farm and Norah makes a gruesome discovery, she soon realises she’s living with a monster. As her mental health spirals out of control and she is tempted to relapse, she begins to wonder if she is also a monster.

Alva, a widow, states a preference for plain ordinary pleasures—only to get drunk and flirtatious and pass out in a strange bed when she is asked out for the evening. Sadie, a spinster, goes to a holiday resort complete with pine groves, marshmallows and respectable clientele—to bring her nervous sister home, but she instead comes to an eerie end herself.

On a cold day in 1997, student Sara Morgan was killed in the woods surrounding her liberal-arts college in Upstate New York. Her boyfriend, Blake Campbell, confessed, his plea of temporary insanity raising more questions than it answered. In the wake of his acquittal, the case comes to haunt a strange and surprising network of community members, from the young woman who discovers Sara’s body to the junior reporter who senses its connection to convicted local serial killer John Logan.

In the year 2737, Earth is mostly depopulated in the wake of a massive supervolcano, but civilization and culture are preserved in vast orbiting ringstations. Tem, the nine-year-old son of a ringstation anthropologist and a Happdal bow-hunter, wants nothing more than to become a blacksmith like his uncle Trond. But after a rough patch as the only brown-skinned child in the village, his mother Car-En decides that the family should spend some time on the Stanford ringstation.

The Washington Post said, "Nobody does smart, gutsy, funny, sexy women better than Susan Isaacs". Add to that praise the adjective "strong", and you've got Susan's latest protagonist, Marianne Kent. Her life may not seem thrilling - living with her widowed mother, majoring in economics, working in an elegant dress store after classes to put away money for graduate school - but she's determined to make a better life for herself and her mom.

From best-selling author Kristin von Kreisler comes a poignant, uplifting novel of one woman's journey to healing, and the surprising soul mate that helps guide her there. Lila Elliot knows she's lucky. A shooting rampage at her office left several colleagues dead and others seriously wounded. Lila's injuries will heal in time. Yet though she gratefully retreats to her best friend's house to recuperate, Lila can't quite move past her fear and anger.

Spontaneity may be in her blood, but walking down the aisle to wed a stranger is the riskiest thing Sara Darling’s ever done. But to adopt her infant niece, she’ll first need to say an "I do" of convenience to war-traumatised soldier Jake Martin. She thought she could resist his rugged charm, but before long Sara needs their ready-made family as much as he does....

Julianna Doran caught her first soul searing glimpse of sea captain Brom Vanderzee when she was a girl of fifteen playing with a Quija board. He was a vision who would haunt her dreams for years. Julianna knew the days of pirate ships were over, but where else would she find a man so enticingly handsome, so boldly dangerous, so... forbidden?

No problem's too big for CEO Alexander Bajoran - until a baby is left in his boardroom with a note stating he's the daddy. The mother must be Jessica Taylor, an unforgettable though regrettable one-night stand. Why would she do such a thing? When Jessica returns, desperate and remorseful, there's no way Alex will let her walk away with his son. And after discovering that she's connected to his jewelry empire's biggest rival, the mogul wonders if the pregnancy really was an accident. What will he gamble to keep his heir - and the woman who still has a stranglehold on his heart.

Alexander Bajoran is the man who ruined Jessica Taylor’s family and drove their company out of business. So when she spots him at the resort where she’s working as a chambermaid, she and her cousin plot revenge. But the plan soon backfires when Jessica is seduced by the wealthy businessman…and becomes mother to his child!