Showing results by narrator "Susie Berneis" in All Categories

Joseph Armagh was 13 when he first saw America through a dirty porthole on the steerage deck of The Irish Queen. It was the early 1850s, and he was a penniless orphan cast on a hostile shore to make a home for himself and his younger brother and infant sister. Some 70 years later, from his deathbed, Joseph Armagh last glimpsed his adopted land from the gleaming windows of a palatial estate. A multimillionaire, one of the most powerful and feared men, Joseph Armagh had indeed found a home.

Interior decorator Madison Night might look like a throwback to the 60s, but as business owner and landlord, she proves that independent women can have it all. When a killer targets women dressed in her signature style - estate sale vintage to play up her resemblance to fave actress Doris Day - what makes her unique might make her dead. The local detective connects the new crime to a 20-year-old cold case, and Madison's long-trusted contractor emerges as the leading suspect.

Now married, Jo Bhaer (nee March) couldn't be happier. Jo, along with her husband Professor Friedrich Bhaer, operates the Plumfield Estate School. Plumfield is a haven for poor orphans which is attended by 12 adopted boys as well as Jo's own two sons. Although Plumfield is a place of trust and warmth, the boys occasionally struggle to maintain good manners.

In the mid 1800s, Pyncheon is still a revered namesake in Salem, with the gloomy Pyncheon mansion serving as a stark reminder of the family's upper class history. However, the house - unique for its seven gables - has a dark and deadly past. Its current occupant, the older and unmarried Hepzibah Pyncheon, is all but destitute and unwilling to accept any assistance from her wealthy but unrelenting cousin, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon.

In Désirée’s Baby, the adopted daughter of a wealthy prewar French Creole couple is courted by the son of another wealthy, respected French Creole family. After they marry, their child is born with dark skin and believed to have African ancestry, a problem for a prewar white family. Accused of dishonesty by her husband, the mother, Désirée, and her child walk off into the bayou, never to be seen again. But when the father finds a letter from his mother to his father which reveals an explosive fact about his own ancestry, he learns a sobering truth.

In "The Quiet Little Woman" a lonely orphan girl named Patty desires only for a family to love her. When a family finally does come for Patty, she learns it is because they need a servant. But it happens that there is one person who cares about Patty, whose life will soon change forever.

In debt, Kentucky farmer Arthur Shelby reluctantly decides to trade two of his slaves. The two, middle-aged Uncle Tom and young Harry, are to be sold to Mr. Haley, a detestable slave trader. Eliza, Harry's mother and Mrs. Shelby's maid, overhears the details of the arraignment, warns Uncle Tom, and flees with Harry to the north. Eliza and Harry barely make it across the Ohio River before slave catchers can catch up with them. On the run, Eliza and her family seek shelter and safety.

In "A Country Christmas", Louisa May Alcott tells the story of Sophie, a debutante from the city who travels to rural Vermont to spend Christmas with her cousins Saul and Ruth. Though apprehensive at first, Sophie learns that the charms of celebrating Christmas in the country are many.

What's really going into commercial dog food? The answer is horrifying. Big Kibble is big business: $75 billion globally. A handful of multinational corporations dominate the industry and together own as many as 80 percent of all brands. This comes as a surprise to most people, but what’s even more shocking is how lax the regulations and guidelines are around these products. The guidelines - or lack thereof - for pet food allow producers to include ever-cheaper ingredients and create ever-larger earnings.

Will Rees is adjusting to life on his Maine farm in 1797, but he's already hungering for the freedom of the road, and his chance to travel comes sooner than he expects. Lydia has just received a letter from her old friend Mouse, who now lives in the Shaker community in Mount Unity, New York.

Hazel Rose never dreamed that the murder mystery book group she and her friend Carlene started would stage a real murder. Nevertheless, the normally composed Carlene is unusually angry and rattled one night during a book group discussion and dies after drinking cyanide-spiked tea.

When a rare $5,000 bill arrives in the mail, interior decorator Madison Night knows it's a message from her past. In happier times, she once joked that she could be bought for $5,000 - how could she deny a bill with her name on it? Suspecting the bill indicates trouble, she consults a numismatist. They set up a meet, but upon arrival she finds an abandoned office, a scared dog...and a dead body in the kitchen. The twist? The victim isn't the numismatist; it's a John Doe.

When interior decorator Madison Night's octogenarian friend dies and leaves her Sweet Dreams, the bounty is bittersweet. Once a thriving business, the pajama factory closed decades ago after a tragic accident took the life of a young model - or was that simply a cover up? Between her friend's death and her own stagnant life, Madison is tempted to hide under a blanket of willful ignorance. But when family members and special-interest groups lobby to expose the secrets of the factory, Madison gets caught in a tangle of secrets and lies and discovers that, sometimes, the bed you make is not your own....

Jo, the firstborn, The General to her 11 sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of their father's townhouse and into cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their controlling father. Meanwhile, they continue to dance, until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn't seen in almost 10 years.

Dolly Madison is one of the most intriguing women, indeed, one of the most intriguing people of either gender in American history. From the quiet rectitude of her Quaker upbringing, through the startlingly sudden romance of her marriage to James Madison, to her rise to a position of prominence and influence that created the role of the First Lady as we still know it today, through the tumult and chaos of the War of 1812, to the melancholy of her last years, marked by the bitterly disappointing career of her beloved son.

In the depths of winter, Hortense, a midwife, disappears after attending a birth in the woodlands. During the search, Will Rees finds her struggling through the snow and woods without shoes or a coat. After two young men begin stalking the community in search of her - including targeting Rees’ own family - she is questioned further and claims she was kidnapped...but Rees and his wife Lydia are suspicious.

Cade had pretended to be someone he wasn't. Worse, he'd used her in his elaborate attempt to catch a man he believed was a crook and a swindler. Though Cade's suspect had escaped, Cade was still around - raw, masculine, overwhelming. He had some unfinished business with the man who had conned his innocent sister, and he needed Jamie's help. But Jamie had some unfinished business, as well: to find out if the man she'd fallen in love with really existed.

A neighborhood cat observes the changes in German and Jewish families in Berlin during the period leading up to Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. This cat's-eye view introduces the Holocaust to children in a gentle way that can open discussion of this period.

Firmly rooted in the modern American West, this story collection follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A 74-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird-flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered sage grouse.

This tale follows the adventures of Anne, a young red-haired orphan who has spent her entire childhood being passed around from one foster home to the next. Until one day she is sent to Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert by mistake. While trying to adopt a boy to help work on their farm, the Cuthberts end up with Anne, who they cannot send away after learning that an evil woman in town was attempting to adopt her. Anne gains many friendships in her new town with her eager, quick-witted, and bright attitude.