Showing results by narrator "Emily Sutton-Smith" in All Categories

High school principal Tom Gardner feels a sense of shock when he sees Kent Arens, a new transfer student. With one glance, Tom can see that this teenager is the son he never knew he had - the result of a one-night stand on the eve of his wedding years before, now grown into an intelligent, athletic, and polite young man. But the boy's presence has a devastating effect on Tom's family.

Harper must deal with a dark part of her past when she defends her rapist, Michael Reynolds, who is charged with murdering a judge. Harper wants revenge, so she takes the case with the explicit desire to throw it. But as she digs deeper into the case, she understands that if she throws Michael's case, it means that the real culprit will go free. Struggling with her conscience, which is fighting for her desire for vengeance, Harper must access some of the darkest recesses of her brain.

Lee Reston has a fulfilling life imbued with the love of her three wonderful children. Then a shattering event - the loss of her oldest son, Greg - tears her world apart. In her anguish, she turns to police officer Christopher Lallek, Greg's best friend. Their shared mourning develops into friendship, and then something deeper. But life is never simple. The family that was once the core of her existence becomes a mixed blessing, as Lee explores where family ties end - and her needs as a woman begin.

On an icy winter's day in southwest Michigan, Grace Abbot wakes up as the survivor of a car crash. But she's left with a traumatic brain injury and a terrifying reality: she can't remember anything. Left in the care of her sister, Grace returns to the family's secluded old farmhouse to recover - but within an hour of her return, the police arrive. Grace's boyfriend has been murdered. Without any memory, Grace has no alibi.

At forty-five, Hannah Smith is at a crossroads. That's her spin on it. The reality is she's divorced, jobless, and moving back to her family home in Iowa to keep an eye on her mother, who's slipping into dementia. Her return stirs up the same unnerving sense of disconnect Hannah has felt since childhood - always the odd girl out, the loner outshone by her two older sisters. Hannah knew the feelings of hurt would come back. But she never expected fear....

Can a stack of long-hidden love letters from a WWII war hero inspire a heartbroken woman to love again?Reeling from a bitter divorce, Adrienne Carter abandons Chicago and retreats to the sun, sand, and beauty of Southern Florida, throwing herself into the restoration of a dilapidated old Victorian beach house. Early into the renovations, she discovers a tin box hidden away in the attic that reveals the emotional letters from a WWII paratrooper to a young woman who lived in the house more than a half-century earlier.

He is a killer, a rapist, a monster and knows only pain and survival. That is until the capo's sister walks into his life and changes everything. She's a light who makes his darkness darker; her smile makes his heart turn to ice, and he can't escape the fear her seductive looks instill - knowing it's only a matter of time before he fails again and takes her for himself.

Six Award-Winning Authors have contributed new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Autumn Collection. In Heather Horrocks' charming story, A Hound Dog Named Elvis, interior designer, Kaitlin Hartley returns to her hometown of Aspen Grove, California, to the job of her dreams after a year of specialized training in New York. During the town's Autumn Festival, she enters her dachshund, Elvis, into the Running of the Hallowieners race.

Three spectacular stories all set on New Year's Eve. First, Stephanie Laurens enthralls us with a New Year's scandal, when a rake awakens in the bed of the temptress who seduced him years before. Then, Victoria Alexander enchants with her tale of a love promised, then foiled and then rekindled on another midnight. And Rachel Gibson delights with the reunion of two estranged friends and the passionate sparks that fly when the clock strikes 12.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Called in to consult after a young woman disappears, Tracy Crosswhite has the uneasy feeling that this is no ordinary missing-persons case. When the body turns up in an abandoned well, Tracy’s suspicions are confirmed. Estranged from her family, the victim had balked at an arranged marriage and had planned to attend graduate school. But someone cut her dreams short. Solving the mystery behind the murder isn’t Tracy’s only challenge. The detective is keeping a secret of her own: she’s pregnant.

Quitting her job as a high school science teacher to join the Seattle Police Department was an easy decision for Tracy Crosswhite. Years earlier, what should have been one of the happiest days of her life instead became her worst nightmare when her younger sister, Sarah, disappeared. After the murder trial, while her family disintegrated, Tracy turned her heartbreak and her lingering questions into a passion for justice.

Vampire bounty hunter Morgan Bailey wants three things for her birthday: cupcakes, a little action from her sexy new boyfriend, and a good night’s sleep. After the year she’s had, is a quiet celebration really so much to ask? Apparently…yes. It turns out a psychotic sidhe - a subspecies of fae - is running amok in Portland, and it’s up to Morgan to take him down. There’s just one problem: this fairy is as powerful as he is psychotic. And considering the supernatural nut jobs Morgan has dealt with, that’s saying something.

Amanda: A century ago, a gentle blind girl walked the cliffs of Paradise Point. Then the children came - taunting, teasing - until she lost her footing and fell, shrieking her rage to the drowning sea... . Michelle: Now Michelle has come from Boston to live in the big house on Paradise Point. She is excited about her new life, ready to make new friends...until a hand reaches out of the swirling mists - the hand of a blind child. She is asking for friendship...seeking revenge...whispering her name....

Lush and deceptively tranquil, with its pristine beaches and blossoming vegetation, the island basks in splendid isolation off the South Carolina coast. Here, where sudden storms unleash the murderous rage of wind and sea, stands the Devereaux mansion, a once-great plantation house now crumbling amid ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Here, Marguerite Devereaux, 50 and childless, has cast off her dreams to care for her aged, demanding mother.

Maggie Thomas is still stumbling her way through running her uncle’s Miami Beach P.I. agency. When a dead woman washes up on the shore, Maggie has reason to believe the woman’s death wasn’t an accident. Maggie may have recently solved her first case as a private eye, but handsome detective Jake Jackson warns her that this one is too complex.

Margot and Myron Spielman move to a new town, looking for an escape from the long shadow of their past. But soon after they buy Rawlingswood, a foreclosed mansion rumored to be haunted, they realize they’re in for more of the same…or worse. After a renovation fraught with injuries and setbacks, the Spielmans move in to the century-old house, and their problems quickly escalate. The home’s beautiful facade begins to crumble around them when their teenage son uncovers disturbing details of Rawlingswood’s history - a history of murder, betrayal, and financial ruin.

1902: Upon arriving in Kenworthy, California, mail-order bride Juniper Cohen is met by the pounding of the gold mine, an untamable landscape, and her greatest surprise of all: the kind and charming man who awaits her. But when the mine proves empty of profit, and when Juniper’s husband, John, vanishes, Juniper is left to fend for herself and her young daughter in the dying town that is now her home.

When cold-case Detective Lauren Riley returns to work months after being stabbed by a fellow police officer, it’s clear that her troubles are far from over. The body of a young woman has been found in the same woods as a murder victim from one of Lauren’s most horrifying cases. It doesn’t take long for Lauren to be back at square one confronting David Spencer, the quietly deranged man she could never prove was a killer.

In Amanda Skenandore's provocative and profoundly moving debut, set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture, a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging. Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma's childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.