Showing results by narrator "Jane Oppenheimer" in All Categories

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice.

High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does.

They never considered how his wife might react, or that by the end of the summer a man would be dead. But Blakely always got her way, and the others followed her lead—even when they knew it was dead wrong. The girls had been friends from day one at Camp Pendleton, a haven for gifted children. But their senior summer was different. When Mr. Crosby, the handsome tennis coach, wound up murdered after a reckless lie, Blakely, Grace, Meg, and Thera swore themselves to secrecy. And never spoke to each other again.

Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood’s latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous Golden Age movie star, Sienna sees her big break. She wants to direct a picture about Lena’s life—but the legendary actor’s murky past turns out to be even darker than Sienna dreamed. Before she was a Living Legend, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a Polish Jew whose life and family were destroyed by the Nazis.

Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She’s the “invisible girl,” compelled to poke into her wealthy clients’ closely guarded lives. It’s a harmless hobby until Kit sees something she can’t unsee in the home of her brand-new clients: a secret so dark it could destroy the privileged couple expecting their first child. This makes Kit dangerous to the couple. In turn, it makes the couple—who might kill to keep their secret—dangerous to Kit.

Merritt Coletto and her husband, Luca, have the life they dreamed of: a coastal home, a promising future, and a growing family. That dream ends with a late-night knock on the door. Weak, broken, and emaciated, it’s Luca’s first wife, Lydia. Missing for ten years, presumed dead, and very much alive, she has quite a story. Racked with guilt over the beautiful life they’ve built, Merritt and Luca agree to help get Lydia back on her feet - it’s the least they can do. But the more enmeshed Lydia becomes in Merritt’s family, the more questions Merritt has.

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for 40 years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

"Healing After the Loss of Your Parents: Finding Comfort & Purpose Through This New Life Stage as an Adult Orphan" is a compassionate, insightful, and empowering grief recovery guidebook that helps listeners navigate through grief, cope with the profound changes that follow the death of their parents, and learn new ways to rebuild their life after loss.

Healing After the Loss of Your Mother is a heartfelt and practical guidebook for those mourning the loss of their mother and for supporters hoping to help a loved one through the grief. Like a compassionate friend, author Elaine Mallon captures the raw, unique pain of losing your mother with empathy, honesty, and eloquence. She tenderly walks the listener through each step of the grieving process, offering straightforward answers to many common questions and addressing fears faced by those grieving, as well.

Rachel's request for a quick and clean divorce enraged her husband. She’d never seen Eric so angry, so consumed by pure and terrifying hatred. Then, in the heat of the moment, Eric was killed in a traffic accident. Shocked and relieved, Rachel had nothing left to fear. Until Eric's body disappeared from the morgue—and suddenly, Rachel is being stalked by someone who looks just like her dead husband.

Welcome to Sunset Academy, the most coveted elementary school in Miami Beach, where there are three categories of families: rich, wealthy, and ultra-wealthy. Perfectly tanned and smiling Charlotte Giordani is Sunset Academy’s alpha mom. With a sleek blowout and relentless charm, Charlotte’s brashness serves her well. She’s up for election as the PTA president and is riding high, having just secured a massive donation from billionaire Don Walker and his socialite wife Patricia.

In Like Life's eight exquisite stories, Lorrie Moore's characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can't quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall. Dennis, unhappily divorced, buries himself in self-help books about healthful food and healthy relationships.

Skyla lives alone in the shadow of the defunct drive-in movie theater that she and her husband ran for nearly fifty years. Ever since Hollis’s death in a freak accident the year before, Skyla spends her nights ruminating about the regrets and deceptions in her long marriage. That is, until she rents a cottage on the property to a charming British man, Teddy Cornwell….

Nina Fleet’s life ought to be as sweet as a Georgia peach. Awarded a tidy sum in her divorce, Nina retired at 41 to a historic Queen Anne house in quaint Cymbeline, Georgia. But Nina’s barely settled into her new B&B-to-be when a penguin shows up on her porch...or, at least, a man wearing a penguin suit. Harry Westcott is making ends meet as an ice-cream shop’s mascot and has a letter from his great-aunt, pledging to leave him the house...too bad that’s not what her will says. Meanwhile, the Sisters of Perpetual Poverty have lost their lease.

Ava grew up in a haunted mansion, envied by all her friends. But when her mother died mysteriously there, the thrills of Blackworth Mansion became nightmares. Ava never accepted that her mother perished from natural causes, but no one would believe her. Seventeen years later, Ava returns home to unravel the truth of her mother’s death—and her own demons quickly follow. Her estranged and vindictive father may be stalking her. Her secretive new sister-in-law lands on her doorstep with troubles of her own. And then there’s the strange girl who may or may not be haunting the grounds.

Lilian Morrison has one memento of her beloved sister, Emma: a battered silver music box. A family heirloom that was passed down through two world wars, the box was the key to Lilian’s recent, joyous reunion with the surviving members of her birth family, whom she lost many years earlier when she and her sister fled Hitler’s Germany on the Kindertransport. Now Lilian is compelled to investigate Emma’s final days after the girls were shipped to separate foster families in Britain and the time before Emma was killed in the London Blitz.

Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, "All at the very same time!" Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often. But no one knows what happened to him the night he went missing more than twenty years ago. When the jacket is unexpectedly uncovered, the cold case reopens, and Davy's family is thrust into yet another media storm. But at the heart of the story are four people forever changed by one single night.

1914. For Paul, with love. Jewish silversmith Johann Blumenthal engraved those words on his most exquisite creation, a singing filigree bird inside a tiny ornamented box. He crafted this treasure for his young son before leaving to fight in a terrible war to honor his beloved country - a country that would soon turn against his own family. A half century later, Londoner Lilian Morrison inherits the box after the death of her parents. Though the silver is tarnished and dented, this much-loved treasure is also a link to an astonishing past.

Lindbergh’s Pharmacy is an Athens, Georgia, institution—the type of beloved mom and pop shop that once dotted every American town but has mostly disappeared. But Lindbergh’s has recently become the object of attention of a local fourth grade teacher Tina Lamm (“Ms. Lamm to my students”). Tina is certain something very, very bad is happening behind its famous black door and she intends to do something about it. Her suspicions—and the drastic actions she plans—are the unlikely glue that will connect her to a group of six employees and customers inside the pharmacy one hot Georgia evening.

When 58-year-old Helen Spencer reviews her life, what she sees are the mistakes. Over the years, things seemed to go sideways incrementally, one little wrong decision at a time. She can even pinpoint where it all started to go awry: a wonderous, romantic night in the woods her senior year of high school with a boy named Cal Crosby. A night she would soon work hard to forget. Forty years, one marriage, three children, and one grandbaby later, suddenly there he is—Cal Crosby!—right in front of her with grandchildren of his own in tow.