Showing results by narrator "Libby McKnight" in All Categories

Alyson Tinsdale is giving her son the childhood she never had: a stable family, loving home, and a great school in a safe neighborhood. When they move into the home of her dreams in one of Denver's most sought-after developments, Alyson works hard to fit in and impress the other mothers. Bonnie Sloan is the neighborhood matriarch. With her oldest son headed to Yale, and her youngest starting kindergarten, Bonnie is now pursuing her own long-held political aspirations. But it's her middle child, Elijah, and their private family struggles, that cast a shadow over her plans.

Thirteen-year-old Emily Poe has been given the opportunity of a lifetime: A chance to attend the exclusive Audyn School in Manhattan. But to win the scholarship, she has to pass a test like nothing she’s ever experienced before: A nearly bare room, a set of strange clues, a locked door. And a mysterious organization - the Leopold Foundation - that’s watching her every move.

When the ever-cautious Val Locklier moves cross-country with her son for a secure job, everything she’d planned unravels within the first week. After Val reluctantly agrees to rent an apartment from her best friend’s brother, an unexpected chance at an elite filmmakers’ mentorship ignites fresh hope for a dream career. But as Val’s community begins to expand, so do her insecurities, especially those heightened by her growing attraction to a certain friendly landlord.

Calabasas is a quiet, well-to-do California town often referred to as “The Bubble”. But on September 25th, 2007, that bubble burst with the murder of one of its longtime residents - high school math teacher Hadas Winnick. The upscale community was rocked by her gruesome death, but as shocking as the tragedy seemed, the years of abuse she faced that preceded it were more so. Even more devastating still, was the effort and time it took to sentence her murderer to prison, and the power that our systems-in-place allowed him while on his way there.

A brilliant engineer, Jilly Stiles has been educated since childhood to help run her father's dynasty. Now with the company safe after the marriages of her two sisters, Jilly can focus on her dream of building a mountaintop railroad—and never marry. Nick Ryder came into Jilly's life when he saved her mother from her no-good stepfather, and he's prepared to protect Jilly from anything that threatens to harm her. Haunted by the pain of his own past, Nick is determined not to get his heart involved while protecting Jilly from losing her hard-won independence.

With their sharp engineering minds, Laura Stiles and her two sisters have been able to deal with their mother’s unfortunate choice in husband until they discovered his plans to marry each of them off to his lecherous friends. Now they must run away—far and fast—to find better matches to legally claim their portion of their father's lumber dynasty and seize control from their stepfather. During their escape, Laura befriends a mission group heading to serve the poor in California. She quickly volunteers herself and her sisters to join their efforts.

For generations, Ellie Hostetler's family has tended their Lancaster County orchard, a tradition her twin brother, Evan, will someday continue. Yet when Evan's draft number is called up in the lottery for the Vietnam War, the family is shocked to learn he has not sought conscientious objector status, despite their Old Order Amish belief in nonresistance. The faraway war that has caused so much turmoil and grief among their Englisher neighbors threatens to touch much too close to home. Can she and her family find the courage to face a future unlike any they could have imagined?

After her widowed father remarries, nineteen-year-old Clara Bender is no longer needed to help run his household. Marriage seems like her best hope of moving out, but there are few young men in her tiny Indiana Amish community. When she comes across letters from her mother's aunt Ella Mae Zook, she sets off to visit Lancaster County's Hickory Hollow to decide where her future lies. Ella Mae is not quite ready to move from the farmhouse where she and her recently deceased husband many years, but her children are eager to resettle her, making Clara's visit seem like an answer to prayer.

Seven years ago, a hidden betrayal scattered three young friends living in the shadow of the great Vanderbilt mansion. Now, when Biltmore Industries master weaver Lorna Blankenship is commissioned to create an original design for Cornelia Vanderbilt’s 1924 wedding, she panics knowing she doesn’t have the creativity needed. But there’s an elusive artisan in the Blue Ridge Mountains who could save her—if only she knew where to begin.

When her husband’s car is found abandoned and on fire—in the middle of a rainstorm—Eve Roth becomes the police's number one suspect. After all, her husband was suspended from the University of Iowa for inappropriate conduct with a student, and who else but an atmospheric physicist could incinerate a car in a downpour? But Eve has no idea why her husband disappeared. She's desperate to find him, both for herself and her beloved disabled father-in-law.

Barlowe Theater stole the life of Greta Mercy’s eldest brother during its construction. Now in 1915, the completed theater appears every bit as deadly. When Greta’s younger brother goes missing after breaking into the building, Greta engages the assistance of a local police officer to help her unveil the already ghostly secrets of the theater. But when help comes from an unlikely source, Greta decides that to save her family she must uncover the evil that haunts the theater and put its threat to rest.

When widowed Washington, D.C., socialite Edith Bolling meets President Woodrow Wilson, the attraction is immediate. A whirlwind romance results in a proposal of marriage, which Edith happily accepts—along with the important role of First Lady. By the end of the Great War, Edith is accompanying her husband to Europe for peace talks, meeting heads of state and dealing with foreign affairs. But something is wrong with Woodrow. During several meetings, he seems to lose concentration and looks confused, leaving her to manage on her own.

To finally escape the clutches of her controlling husband and the threat of being recommitted to an asylum, Ginny Rutledge enlists the help of her friends, Maeve O’Toole and Dakota Harlan. Fleeing their own tumultuous pasts, the group embarks on a journey to prove Ginny’s sanity. However, as they confront the shadows they wish they could forget, danger looms from unexpected places.

Mia Strauss is trying to be a good mother. She’s worked hard to build a stable life since losing her memory at 18 when an assailant pushed her from the third-story landing of her parents’ gold coast mansion. But lately, Mia is losing control and feels she’s being watched wherever she goes. She is taking more and more of her prescription drugs to quiet the rising panic and anxiety. But when her husband, Alexander, comes home to find her face down on their living room floor, she’s at risk of losing her girls.

What happens when the world’s greatest literary icon dies before she finishes the final book in her best-selling series? And what happens when she leaves that book in the hands of her unstable, neurotic daughter, who swears she’s not a real writer? Sara Grayson is a 32-year-old greeting card writer about to land the toughest assignment of her life. Three weeks after the death of her mother - a world-famous suspense novelist - Sara learns that her mother’s dying wish is for her to write the final book in her best-selling series.

Eden Miller’s world is crumbling. Her husband blindsided her with divorce, and her daughter barely speaks to her. In an impulsive decision to escape her present and revisit the past, she sends a friend request to her college crush, Justin Ward. One night twenty-three years ago changed the course of her life. It closed the door on Justin and opened the door to her husband, Dave. But what if Eden could have a do-over?

After her sister’s marriage, Michelle Stiles is left hiding at Two Harts Ranch with the handsome but stubborn Zane Hart. She’s managed to stay one step ahead of her stepfather and his devious plans, but if he finds her, she will no longer be safe. Zane has problems of his own. Having discovered a gold mine on his property, he must figure out how to harvest it without kicking off a gold rush. Michelle, educated and trained to run her father’s business, wants to manage all aspects of the mine, but Zane thinks for a person so smart she can have some misguided ideas.

As a senior acquisitions editor for Fog Harbor Books in San Francisco, Ingrid Erikson has rejected many a manuscript for lack of defined conflict and dramatic irony—two elements her current life possesses in spades. In the months following the death of her childhood best friend and international bestselling author Cece Campbell, Ingrid has not only lost her ability to escape into fiction due to a rare trauma response, but she's also desperate to find the closure she is convinced will come with Cece's missing final manuscript.

What do we see when we watch reality television? Sociologist and TV lover Danielle J. Lindemann takes a long, hard look in the “funhouse mirror” of this genre, from countless rose ceremonies on The Bachelor to the White House and more (so much more!). Beginning with the first episodes of The Real World, reality TV has not only remade our entertainment and cultural landscape—it also uniquely refracts our everyday experiences and social topography.

Upon uncovering her tyrannical father’s malevolent plot to commit her to an asylum, Beth Rutledge fabricates a plan of her own. She will rescue her mother, who had already been sent to the asylum, and escape together on a wagon train heading west. Posing as sisters, Beth and her mother travel with the pioneers in hopes of making it to Idaho before the others start asking too many questions.