Showing results by narrator "Renée Raudman" in All Categories

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.

For some reason at just that moment, Garnet glanced up at the house and thought she saw a shadowy figure standing at the window of the downstairs master bedroom in the wing Malcolm shared with Rose. With a little clutching sensations, Garnet wondered if Rose had seen her talking with Malcolm and if she minded that Garnet's had been the last farewell. Garnet shrugged and walked back into the garden. What difference did it make one way or the other? Malcolm belonged to Rose in a way he could never belong to her. All she had of Malcolm were memories of by-gone days.

Slowly she turned to face the door just as Graham came through at full stride. At the sight of him a wild kind of joy seized her. Graham halted on the threshold. He drew in his breath sharply, and in spite of himself, his pulse thundered at the sight of the tall, willowy figure. The last time he had seen Avril she had been a child. Here in her place was a graceful young woman. "Avril, my dear," he said, finding his voice. "Welcome home!" Readers of Fortune's Bride will be smitten with the charm of the old South as they follow Avril's development into womanhood.

Tai Randolph thinks inheriting a Confederate-themed gun shop is her biggest headache—until she finds a murdered corpse in her brother’s driveway. Even worse, her supposedly respectable brother begins behaving in decidedly non-innocent ways, like fleeing to the Bahamas and leaving her with both a homicide in her lap and the pointed suspicions of the Atlanta Police Department directed her way. Suddenly, she has to worry about clearing her own name, not just that of her wayward sibling.