Showing results by narrator "Katina Kalin" in All Categories

It is Christmastime in New York and insurance investigator Dora Conti is sent from Connecticut to investigate the mugging and death of retired jeweler Lewis Starret. He was insured for three million dollars but the muggers didn't take his wallet. Very quickly, each family member becomes a suspect and Dora begins to feel the pull of the Starrets' world of greed and temptation.

Dr. Georgia Thackery is back at home with her parents after finding a new adjunct position at Bostock College. Everyone is excited for their first family Christmas with nothing to hide. Why? Because Georgia’s daughter, Madison, is now in the know about Sid, their walking, talking family skeleton. But their Christmas cheer is interrupted when the Thackerys' dog, Byron, goes missing on a cold December night. When he’s finally found, he has a femur clutched between his jaws, and Georgia and Madison race to apologize to Sid for letting the dog gnaw on him yet again

Sid and Georgia make plans for a cozy semester together, and it might have worked out that way if Sid hadn't snuck out in the middle of the night to play in the snow and spotted a crashed car. When he drags Georgia out to investigate, they find the driver behind the wheel, apparently dead from the collision. Initially, police think it's an accident, so Georgia and Sid think that's the end of it - until Georgia finds out the body hits closer to home than she'd realized....

Moving back into her parents’ house with her teenage daughter had not been Georgia Thackery’s “Plan A”. But when she got a job at the local college, it seemed the sensible thing to do. So she settled in and began reconnecting with old friends. Including Sid. Sid is the Thackery family’s skeleton. He’s lived in the house as long as Georgia can remember, although no one, including Sid, knows exactly where he came from and how he came to be a skeleton.

Georgia Thackery is feeling pretty good about her summer job teaching at prestigious Overfeld College, and she’s renting a rustic cabin right by a lake for herself, her daughter, Madison, and her best friend, Sid the Skeleton. Together again, the trio are enjoying the quiet when a teenager named Jen shows up looking for her friend. Georgia doesn’t recognize the name, but she learns that the person Jen was looking for is actually Sid. Sid reveals that he and Jen are part of a regular Online gaming group that formed locally, and one of their members has gone missing.

After years of hiding in the Thackery family house, Sid the skeleton is delighted to finally have his moment in the spotlight. He’s starring in a high school production of Hamlet. Well, not so much starring in as being a prop. At least part of him has a part - he’s using his head to play Yorick of “Alas, poor Yorick” fame. Every day, Georgia Thackery’s daughter, Madison, who’s also in the play, brings in his skull, and every night, she takes him home. Until one night when he’s accidentally left at school - and hears the sounds of someone being murdered.

What holiday could bring more warmth to a skeleton’s chest cavity than Halloween? And when you’re a living skeleton who’s not supposed to be seen outside the house, it’s a welcome chance to get some fresh air and rub bony elbows with people. That’s why Sid doesn’t mind wearing a full-body dog suit and going as Scooby-Doo along with Georgia Thackery’s Velma to the Halloween Howl. Sid can’t wait to go through the haunted house - but he gets rattled for real when a genuine dead body is discovered.

The Great Game in Cuba uses the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution to examine the CIA's inner workings during the '50s and '60s. Detailing the agency's lies and deceits, Mellen paints a vivid behind-the-scenes picture of the CIA in Cuba after the Castro revolution: what it wanted and the lengths it was willing to go to in order to paralyze the opposition to Fidel Castro.

The Williams family gave into an odd, overwhelming desire to purchase and move into a Victorian home they had come upon by chance...but shortly after moving in, strange things began to happen. It became abundantly clear that the Williams' new home was haunted.

Sparks fly when special forces meets psychic forces Brilliant psychic Nadine Malcolm is held prisoner in an asylum by her stepfather, a power-mad general. As the Librarian, she secretly hijacks computers to prevent his plans to turn paranormal children into weapons. When her younger sister ominously disappears, Nadine reaches through cyberspace for help. Ex-Special Forces warrior Magnus Oswin has focused his formidable talents on stopping the rogue general who once held him prisoner.

In this long-awaited and much-requested book based on her "Horseblog" at Book View Caf, author and horse breeder Judith Tarr answers these questions and many more. She looks at horses from the perspective of the writer whose book or story needs them as anything from basic transport to major plot device, and provides definitions, explanations, and links and references for further research - leavened with insight into the world of the horse and the humans who both use and serve him. Here is a guide to the fine art of getting it right.

John Cray has a secret. For 12 years he has stalked and kidnapped women, setting them loose in the mountains of eastern Arizona, hunting them like animals, and taking their lives. He has left no clues. He is suspected by no one. Or so he thinks. But now he has a problem. Somebody - a woman whose name he doesn't know - is stalking him. She follows him when he makes his nightly rounds in Tucson. She watches him on busy street corners and in shadowy restaurants. She seems to know his secret. But if so, why hasn't she gone to the police?

Dorothea Franklin’s life is sliding toward disaster just as surely as her house is crumbling into the Pacific. Her unusual talent for feng shui can’t bring harmony to her invalid father or prevent her brother from dying in an experimental helicopter crash. Or has he? She turns to computer genius Conan Oswin, whose brother also reportedly died that day. When Dorothea informs Conan that she didn’t feel the vibrations of her brother’s death, he wants to dismiss her illogic

When Dylan "Oz" Oswin's son is kidnapped, the high-powered producer will do anything to get him back. Desperately following an anonymous tip, he seeks help from a former child singing sensation called Syrene, only to find she's vowed never to sing again. Immune to her voice but not her charm, Oz is convinced she holds the key to his son's disappearance - and he'll stop at nothing to make her break her vow.

Call her a petite princess or a paranoid neurotic, either way, Ana Devlin has the instincts of a chameleon. She can disappear into the woodwork, share tea with a queen, or flatten a thug with one swift kick, but what she really wants is to provide her dysfunctional younger siblings with the security of the home she’s been denied. When her sister's VIP father is accused of murdering his aide, she decides it's time to go home.

New York antiquities appraiser Annalisse Drury recently lost her best friend to murder. The killer's identity may be linked to her friend's expensive missing bracelet, a 500-year-old artifact that carries an ancient curse, one that unleashes evil upon any who dare wear the jewelry created for the Persian royal family. Weeks later, Annalisse sees a matching necklace at a Manhattan gallery opening. She begs the owner to destroy the cursed piece, but her pleas fall on deaf ears, despite the unnatural death that occurs during the opening.

Paisley Vandermeir was born on a hippie commune, transplanted to high society Manhattan at the vulnerable age of seven, and finally rescued and nurtured by her wild Aunt Izzy, whose Roaring 20s exploits still tarnish the family name. Paisley is the very definition of a "Vandermeir scandal" waiting to happen. It's simply a matter of what and when. Now, it's Christmas in Manhattan and Paisley Vandermeir has a scandalous scheme to set herself free from society’s expectations once and for all.

A story set in the world of The Hound and the Falcon: In the midst of the Black Death, in a nation constantly at war, the women of Sency have found ways to survive and even to thrive. They live well enough in their men’s absence, with their faces to the world and their backs to the ancient and perilous Wood. Then one day a traveler appears, a beautiful and mysterious lady who brings with her both danger and enchantment.

A poignant tale of humans and robots and the meaning of life.

Are you ready for some football? Then you're ready for Some Enchanted Season. Kevyn Llewellyn needs a god. She must have exactly the right model for Darius: Warrior-God of the Gray Planet, or she'll lose the contract to illustrate the rest of the series. When she sees him - none other than NFL football player Rusty Rivers - she does the absolutely logical thing: she kidnaps him. Or rescues him…it depends on whom you're asking.