Showing results by narrator "Julie McKay" in All Categories

In the newest mystery from the national best-selling author of Murder in Merino, the sleuthing skills of Izzy Chambers Perry and the Seaside Knitters are tested as death mars the beginning of the school year....

Amber Olivier awakens in a cold sweat, the bitter taste of blood in her mouth and her head throbbing. Not even a hint of light reaches her. She reaches left, right, and above, but within inches, her hands meet a solid structure covered with satin. She bangs on the top of the enclosure, but the cushioned fabric only creates a dull thud. Beyond panicked, she screams until her throat burns and she doesn’t have another breath of air in her.

Despite advances in health care, infectious microbes continue to be a formidable adversary to scientists and doctors. Vaccines and antibiotics, the mainstays of modern medicine, have not been able to conquer infectious microbes because of their amazing ability to adapt, evolve, and spread to new places. Terrorism aside, one of the greatest dangers from infectious disease we face today is from a massive outbreak of drug-resistant microbes.

When small-town police officers discover the grave of a young boy, they’re quick to pin the crime on a convicted criminal who lives nearby. But when it comes to murder, Officer Susan Marlan never trusts a simple explanation, so she’s just getting started. Meanwhile, college professor Eric Evans hallucinates a young boy in overalls: a symptom of his schizophrenia - or so he thinks. But when more bodies turn up, Eric has more visions, and they mirror details of the murder case.

In Sea Harbor, the holidays mean cozy fires, festive carols, and soft skeins of yarn waiting to become hats and sweaters and scarves. And this year, Izzy and the other Seaside Knitters are also knitting tiny ornaments to decorate a tree for the first annual tree-trimming contest. Their holiday cheer is multiplied when Izzy's younger brother, Charlie Chambers, unexpectedly arrives to volunteer at a local clinic. He brings with him outspoken hitchhiker Amber Hanson, who is returning to Sea Harbor to claim an inheritance.

Nicolas’s pulse shoots up, and he sucks in a breath. “Are you saying you willingly took the life of another person?” “Yes. God is the reason I killed her. Will you absolve me, Father?” As Nicolas fumbles for his phone to send an urgent text for help, he hears the chair in the other booth squeak, and a shadow passes in front of the screen. His pulse pounds in his temples and he starts to sway, dizziness washing over him. Help isn’t going to make it in time.

Two months have passed, and the horrors of Death Farm still torment police officer Susan Marlan and college professor Eric Evans. Susan struggles to regain her zeal for fighting crime, while Eric is slowly coming to terms with his newfound “gift” of seeing the dead. Seeking much-needed rest, Susan and Eric follow their musician friend Jake and his band to Washington State. But once they reach the cheerless town of Clancy, Eric’s murderous visions start again. Something seems wrong about its aloof citizens - and suspicions turn to dread when members of Jake’s band go missing.

It’s been a year since Special Agent Susan Marlan and Professor Eric Evans worked a taxing missing persons case together on the Olympic Peninsula. Though the couple have since separated, Eric must reluctantly turn to Susan for advice when a student accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend comes to Eric for help proving his innocence. Susan - busy tracking down two missing employees of San Francisco’s Gruben Dam - warns Eric to be cautious, as the young man has connections to Defenders of the Earth (DOTE), an ecoterror group operating out of San Francisco.

1924. Ginger Kelly wakes up in tranquil Cocoa Beach, Florida, having fled south to safety in the company of disgraced Prohibition agent Oliver Anson Marshall and her newly-orphaned young sister, Patsy. But paradise is short-lived. Marshall is reinstated to the agency with suspicious haste and put to work patrolling for rumrunners on the high seas, from which he promptly disappears. Gin hurries north to rescue him, only to be trapped in an agonizing moral quandary by Marshall’s desperate mother.

Madison Avery looks down from her penthouse as a light flicks on in the building across the street, and a man and woman enter the vacant apartment. As the woman steps onto a large blue rug, the man raises his hand to the back of her neck. The woman collapses, and Madison sucks in a breath. The man checks for a pulse then reaches into his pocket. He must be calling for help. But then Madison sees the glint of the knife. She grabs her cell phone and dials 911. If the police don’t catch him now, she can’t help them later.

With help from the Seaside Knitters, Mary Pisano converts her charming inherited home into a B&B, and the first week is booked by her very own family in town to discuss their grandfather's will. Mary is hoping the tranquility of the setting will smooth over ill feelings among them. But when her cousin Pam is found murdered, she realizes she was dead wrong. With the holiday cheer severely disrupted, Mary relies on the Seaside Knitters to set things right.

Izzy Perry’s Sea Harbor Yarn Studio is heating up, thanks to an upcoming fashion benefit. The show will feature hand-knit garments, and enthusiastic knitters flock to the shop for supplies to create runway-worthy pieces. Yet Seaside Knitter Birdie is enjoying flocks of a different kind, thanks to a rekindled interest in birdwatching. Along with a group of passionate birders, she often spends weekend mornings looking for warblers or keeping watch for gannets and grebes. It’s a lovely, special time—until Birdie makes her way through a tangle of vines and stumbles upon a fellow birder’s body.

How do we explain our newfound cultural investment in empathy and social justice? For decades, Joseph Campbell had defined our cultural aspirations in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, emphasizing the value of seeking glory and earning immortality. His work became the playbook for Hollywood, with its many male-centric quest narratives. Challenging the models in Campbell's canonical work, Maria Tatar explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on social missions.

Not long after Isabel "Izzy" Chambers opens up a knitting shop in the sleepy fishing town of Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, a diverse group of women begins congregating each week to form the Seaside Knitters. Izzy raises some eyebrows when she rents the apartment above her shop to Angie Archer, whose reputation for loose behavior and a quick temper has made her unpopular with many locals. But could any of them have wanted her dead? Angie's body is discovered drowned in the harbor, her long red hair tangled like seaweed in a lobster trap.

Street kids are disappearing, but how do you report it to the police when they don’t believe you exist to begin with? Jinx LeDoux bolts upright, gasping for air, her heart pounding. Something has happened. Something she can’t quite remember. Worse, she’s surrounded by darkness. She puts her hands on the ground, trying to grasp something familiar. The splintered wood of her abandoned apartment isn’t there. It’s something hard, cold, and round. She grabs the bars with both hands, but they don’t budge. She’s in a cage.

Sexual Intimacy for Women helps female couples examine the emotional, physical, and psychological aspects of their relationships, with the goal of creating more intimacy. Exercises and client-based anecdotes from Dr. Corwin’s years of experience with same-sex couples help women overcome common issues around orgasm, body image, identity, aging, and parenthood. Dr. Corwin dispels myths, examines the intricacies of female desire, and gives advice to help couples achieve long-lasting, healthy, and fulfilling relationships.

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda - a successful architect in a happy marriage - finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.

Izzy Chambers is head over heels. She’s about to marry the love of her life, but much remains to be done before their big day. So the Seaside Knitters have pitched in to help and are even knitting Izzy a beautiful lace wedding shawl. Meanwhile, Izzy’s aunt, Nell, has hired a gardener to spruce up the backyard where the wedding will be held. The gardener, Claire, is just returning to Cape Anne after a long absence, hoping to put a dark secret to rest and find peace for herself.

Detective Angie Pallorino took down a serial killer permanently and, according to her superiors, with excessive force. Benched on a desk assignment for twelve months, Angie struggles to maintain her sense of identity—if she's not a detective, who is she? Then a decades-old cold case washes ashore, pulling her into an investigation she recognizes as deeply personal. Angie's lover and partner, James Maddocks, sees it, too. But spearheading an ongoing probe into a sex-trafficking ring while keeping Angie's increasing obsession with her case in check is taking its toll.

After retrieving fresh lobster nets from a local laundromat, Cass Halloran rushes to attend a last-minute gathering with her knitting circle. But Cass can't stop worrying about the lonely boy she saw hanging around the dryers and the school uniform he left behind in a hurry. When she and her friends return the lost clothing the next day, they find the child and his younger sister alone, seemingly abandoned by their mother.