Showing results by narrator "Emily Durante" in All Categories

A holiday costume party in the sleepy coastal town of Santa Sofia could be just the boost Ivy needs for her fledgling photography business. At the party, Ivy enters a Victorian fantasy come to life, all courtesy of the fabulous Ms. Eliza Fox. Ivy gets to play shutterbug while hanging with Scrooge, Marley, the Cratchits, and other classic Dickens characters. 

I had it all: A great job. Fame. Wealth. I didn't have her. She's the one I let slip away—from my bed on vacation. She didn't know who I was or what my batting average was. I got to be myself with her and now I wish I'd gotten her number. Until fate brought her back to me.

Blood, Powder, and Residue goes inside a metropolitan crime laboratory to shed light on the complex social forces that underlie the analysis of forensic evidence. Blood, Powder, and Residue offers a vivid and sometimes harrowing picture of the lives of highly trained experts tasked with translating their knowledge for others who depend on it to deliver justice. 

The Collected Stories of Diane Williams brings together over 300 new and previously published short fictions - distilled works of "unsettling brilliance" (Vanity Fair) that have rewritten the rules of the American short story. 

Thirty-year-old Zoe wants to go back to college. That’s why she cleans cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals. If she can keep her head down, do her job, and avoid naming the mice, she’ll be fine. Her life is calm, maybe even boring - until the end of the world arrives and the president of the United States announces that humans are no longer a viable species.

My dreams of making it to the big league had finally come true, but one wild night in a strip club which was clearly a mistake landed me squarely on the team's bad boy list. The PR manager is supposed to smooth it all over, too bad all I wanted was to get in trouble with her. I wasn't really the playboy they thought I was, I just needed to find the right woman to set me straight. Now I just have to prove I'm not what she thought.

Apprentice baker Ivy Culpepper sees art cars everywhere she turns. Besides helping prepare the bread and pastry for Santa Sofia’s annual spring event, she’s the official photographer, documenting the elaborate cars, outspoken artists, and riotous celebrations. Her brother Billy has been runner-up in the competition several times. Then Billy’s rival, Max Litman, is found dead, positioned as a prop in his own art car. The whole town knows there’s no love lost between the two men, and Billy is the prime suspect.

When professional home stager Laura Bishop enters a competition to become the next TV home staging star, she figures it will be murder - but she doesn't expect it to include a body. As tensions rise and rivalries rage, a coded notebook flips the script, and Laura's on the case.

Jane thinks nothing can make her lose her cool. But the princess of propriety blows a gasket the night she meets the contractor restoring the Wolcott mansion. Devlin Kavanagh's rugged sex appeal may buckle her knees, but the man is out of control. Jane had to deal with theatrics growing up - she won't tolerate them in someone hired to work on the house she and her two best friends have inherited.

Griffins lounged all around them, inscrutable as cats, brazen as summer. They turned their heads to look at Kes out of fierce, inhuman eyes.... Little ever happens in the quiet villages of peaceful Feierabiand. The course of Kes' life seems set: she'll grow up to be an herb-woman and healer for the village of Minas Ford, never quite fitting in but always more or less accepted. And she's content with that path - or she thinks she is. Until the day the griffins come down from the mountains....

After the battle with the Sorcerer Guard, Gala and Blaise take shelter in the mountains, a place of unique beauty and danger. Augusta, however, is determined to exact revenge - even as Barson, her ambitious lover, implements his own plan. But amidst politics, battles, and intrigue, something far bigger is brewing...something that could disturb the balance of the Spell Realm itself.

Eve Monroe is a stock-car PR pro who puts her career first - until an on-track wardrobe malfunction reveals more than the sexy smile of jackman Nolan Ford. The video's become an internet sensation, and it's Eve's job to calm the sponsors and put a spin on the unexpected exposure.

It may be a public relations job, but now that Eve's seen what's under Nolan's crew suit, it's gotten personal. After a few dates she has Nolan pretty revved up. If only she'd learn to relax and enjoy it.

Mist lives a normal life. She has a normal job, a normal boyfriend, and a normal apartment in San Francisco. She never thinks about her past if she can help it. She survived. That's the end of it. But then a snowy winter descends upon San Francisco. In June. And in quick succession, Mist is attacked by a frost giant in a public park and runs into an elf disguised as a homeless person on the streets...and then the man Mist believed was her mortal boyfriend reveals himself to be the trickster god Loki, alive and well after all these years.

In Feierabiand, in the wide green Delta, far from the burning heat of the griffin's desert, Mienthe's peaceful life has been shaken. Tan - clever, cynical, and an experienced spy - has brought a deadly secret out of the neighboring country of Linularinum. Now, as three countries and two species rush toward destruction, Mienthe fears that even her powerful cousin, Bertaud, may be neither able nor even willing to find a safe path between the secret Linularinum would kill to preserve and the desperate ferocity of the griffins.

Molly has arrived home from Vassar to reveal that she has an important announcement to make. Her mother, Suzanne, is convinced that Molly’s news is history repeating herself and that she’s about to become a 36-year-old grandmother. Suzanne’s mother, Ava, develops a case of impending great-grandmother fever - that is, when she’s not spying on the new next-door neighbor, Buddy McKinley, who turns out to be a blast from her past.

Claire Nixon is a college student with a past full of secrets and heartbreak. She was saved once by her first love, rock star Chris Knight. But when she encouraged Chris to leave town to pursue his dreams, both Claire and Chris didn't realize it would be the biggest mistake of their lives. After a devastating year apart and thousands of miles of distance between them, Claire met sexy surfer Adam Parker. With his awful jokes and profound patience, he helped Claire pick up the shattered pieces of her broken heart for the second time. But now Chris has returned...

Civil war reenactors have set up camp on the grounds of Marshfield Manor. The group is very believable, especially when the unrest spills out of the barracks and inside the sumptuous mansion. Grace Wheaton, the curator and manager of the manor, manages to settle a minor squabble but loses the war when actor Zachary Kincade is found stabbed to death.

Meet Andee Shaw. A decade ago, her heart was broken by a devastatingly beautiful woman - the woman she thought she'd spend the rest of her life with. Now, 10 years later, two of her oldest friends, Elizabeth and Heather, are getting married in Vermont. And they have a request: They want the old gang to take that infamous road trip they always talked about in college but never set into motion.

The Fairy mercenaries may be back in their own realm, but the Witches still want Xandra dead. Fearing an ancient prophecy, the Witches are determined to keep Xandra from destroying the world. Still new to her magical powers, she must learn to use her Witch magic in order to protect herself and those she loves. Now, if only she can get her magic to cooperate. Once again, Xandra is tasked with determining who is friend and who is foe as she faces this new threat.

Eveline Helmink's life changed forever when her mother showed signs of dementia. With her father living in denial and her mother slowly becoming unable to recognize her, Eveline was left emotionally stranded with no help on the way. Over 16 million people in the US, like Eveline, are not receiving the support they need as someone they're close to battles dementia—but this book can provide a much-needed source of emotional sustenance.