Showing results by narrator "Reneé Raudman" in All Categories

A fishing guide and part-time investigator, Hannah Smith is a tall, strong Florida woman descended from many generations of the same. But the problem before her now is much older even than that. Five hundred years ago, Spanish conquistadors planted the first orange seeds in Florida, but now the whole industry is in trouble. The trees are dying at the root, weakened by infestation and genetic manipulation, and the only solution might be somehow, somewhere, to find samples of the original root stock.

Reckoning and ruin. That's what Savannah is to private eye Tai Randolph, who has gladly rebooted her life in Atlanta and is celebrating several landmarks: A year running the Confederate-themed gun shop she inherited with its busy schedule of reenactments. A year with her sexy, ex-SWAT lover, Trey, now working a corporate security gig, who's having to reboot his own life and brain after a terrible auto accident. A year of confronting a checkered list of ruffians and outright villains, mostly now put behind bars.

The bones reveal a more recent murder, with her deceased uncle leading the suspect list. As Tai struggles to clear Dexter's name - and save the business he left her - she uncovers deadly secrets also buried in the red Georgia clay and realizes there's a live murderer on the loose, a clever killer who has tried to conceal the crimes of the present in the stories of the past.

The house is historic, some say haunted. It is also slated to be razed and replaced by condos, unless Hannah Smith can do something about it. She's been hired by a wealthy Palm Beach widow to prove that the house's seller didn't disclose everything he knew about the place when he unloaded it, including its role in a bloody Civil War skirmish (in which two of Hannah's own distant relations had had a part), and the suicides - or were they murders? - of two previous owners.

With everything happening on Helen Peppe's backwoods Maine farm - ferocious sibling rivalry, rock-bottom poverty, feral male chauvinism, sex in the hayloft - life was out of control, even for the animals. Despite the chaos, in telling her family's story, Peppe manages deadpan humor, an unerring eye for the absurd, and a touching compassion for her utterly overwhelmed parents. While her feisty resilience and candor will inevitably remind listeners of Jeannette Walls or Mary Karr, Peppe's wry insight and moments of tenderness with family and animals are entirely her own.

When Tai Randolph plans on some time out of Atlanta and a romantic rendezvous with her boyfriend Trey, her past shows up in the form of her ex-boyfriend, who spins a tale of a stolen Civil War artifact that Tai agrees to help recover. As it turns out, Trey’s on the case too, representing a wealthy client wanting the same prize. But where there’s money, there’s usually murder - this time involving the KKK and Tai’s kinfolk. As she unravels the clues to a 150-year-old mystery, she digs up secrets that force a confrontation....

Lyssa Harper should have warned divorced DILF du jour Harry Wilder before she invited him to meet the mommies of the Paradise Heights Women’s League Board. At least he brought cupcakes. Since taking the former Master-of-the-Universe turned stay-at-home-single-dad under her wing, Lyssa has been his domestic Sherpa, teaching him the ins and outs of life inside their gated community. She never dreamed her friends would bombard him with casseroles, leopard-print bikini briefs, and offers to rearrange his kitchen cabinets.

When Joy Montrose received her commission to paint a mural depicting the healing miracles of Jesus at Good Samaritan Hospital, she never anticipated forming a close friendship with Evan Marshall. But the bond between the talented young artist and the gifted surgeon has grown, even though their lives are worlds apart. Now, with the family estate falling suddenly and unexpectedly into Joy's hands, she finds herself sifting not only through the memorabilia of generations but through her own heart and aspirations. Is it truly love that she feels for Evan?

Bailey Weggins, the Manhattan-based true-crime journalist, is in a good place. She's enjoying her regular gig at Buzz, a leading celebrity magazine, and hoping her first book will garner attention. In the love department, she's finally back in the game with her recently-turned-exclusive boyfriend, Beau Regan. When Beau heads out of town one early December weekend, Bailey accepts an invitation from her office friend Jessie to a music mogul's house in the country, hoping for a fun, relaxing getaway. But a weird tension settles over the houseguests....

The dog days of summer have arrived, and Tai Randolph is feeling the heat. Running her uncle’s gun shop is more demanding than she had ever imagined. Her best friend, Rico, is competing for a national slam poetry title, and Atlanta is overrun with hundreds of fame-hungry performance poets clogging all the good bars.

Craig Cavanaugh opened his briefcase and drew out the folder containing the manuscript. It was getting dark when he finished reading. No question, he thought, Kitty Traherne can write. Her face came back into his mind. He saw the pain in her eyes, heard the urgency in her voice, as he recalled the passion with which she had told him her reason for writing this highly controversial book.

She had come to Virginia to work, not to fall in love - certainly not with someone like Kip Montrose. Both Kip and his ancestral mansion, Montclair, had captured her imagination. The history of the house intrigued her as much as its master. Even ten years after the end of WWI, the families of Mayfield, VA, still feel its destructive effects. With his days as a dare-devil flying ace behind him, Kip Montrose is having a hard time settling down in the small Southern town and finding a new direction for his life.

"Why, Cara, why did you do it?" "Maybe no one wants to see me as I really am. Maybe in this family it isn't all right to be different. And I am different, Kitty, whether anyone wants to admit it or not." "But, Cara,--it just seems like tonight you set out deliberately to cause trouble." "Even you don’t understand, do you, Kitty?" "I do, I mean I'm trying to. You're my twin, I want to understand!" "Yes, I know we're twins, but who am I?" demanded Cara hotly.

"You see I must go, don't you, Kitty?" Kip asked. Everything in her cried out, No, I don't understand. What about her dreams, her desires, the life they had planned together? Then she remembered the epitaph on the head-stone in the old hillside cemetery, the one that had made such a lasting impression on her: "What I gave, I have; what I spent, I saved, What I kept, I lost." It had been true a hundred years ago, and it was just as true now. If she did not let Kip go freely, he would go anyway, and she would lose him. You could not keep what did not want to be kept.

Even while Randall was speaking, it was Pietro I saw, the tenderness in his dark eyes looking at me, the caress in his soft voice. In Randall's voice there was not a shred of emotion; nor was there any in his expression. How should I respond? What should I say? I knew this was the hardest decision I would ever have to make. Either choice would demand a different price. Was I prepared to pay it? Was love enough in the one to bridge all the other differences of nationality, religion, and heritage?

It was to be a very special summer, the summer of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, the 60th year of the English monarch's reign. It was the summer Faith Devlin had looked forward to with great anticipation - the pressures of her debutante year were over, Jeff Montrose was back in London, and her American cousins were coming for a family reunion at the beautiful country estate of Birchfields. It was the summer of unexpected encounters and romantic enterprises....

In 1870, Blythe Dorman, the high-spirited daughter of a prosperous Western rancher, falls hopelessly in love with a mysterious stranger , where instead of the happiness she anticipated, Blythe finds only disillusionment and loneliness. The unselfish commitment and undiscouragable love that Blythe expends in her gallant struggles to heal a star-crossed marriage frame the poignant plot of Gallant Bride.

Thus begins the bittersweet story of beautiful Sara Leighton, the headstrong heroine of Folly's Bride, the fourth in the Brides of Montclair series. As with her predecessors, happiness does not come painlessly to this newest bride of Montclair. Her unusual beauty and her independent spirit places her on a collision course with romance, frustration, disappointment, and finally, true love.

For Rod it was a moment out of a thousand dreams. Yet the reality was more than he could have imagined. 'Blythe!' He said her name and in his voice was all the hope he'd thought was lost. The woman he saw was even lovelier than the girl he remembered. She was still as beautiful -- tall, slender, the glorious auburn hair, the soft, vulnerable mouth and peachbloom skin -- as when he had first met her at Montclair.

Kate Gilbert is a woman without a past — or even a passport — to tie her down. Raised by smugglers, she lives by her wits, relishing the sense of freedom that only the life of the open sea can provide. All she knows of love she has learned from classic literature. Nothing she’s read in Shakespeare, however, could have prepared her for Beau Lantry.