Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

At the height of the Cold War, words are weapons and secrecy reigns. These are challenging times to be a writer and a wife, as Nell Benjamin knows only too well. One bright November day in 1963, the dazzling young president arrives in Texas and Nell receives a phonecall that overturns the world as she knows it. In the shocking aftermath, whilst America mourns, Nell must come to terms with both a tragedy and a betrayal that shatters every illusion of the man she thought she knew better than anyone else.

For 200 years she's been hiding. He gave her immortality. She tried to destroy him. Now he is searching for her. They must not meet. Or there will be a Reckoning.

Amid the chaos and political upheaval of 1970s America, three very different women must accept the world as it is, or act to change it. Phyllis Patterson is a housewife in White Plains, Illinois. Her son Jimmy returns to the family home from Vietnam with a Korean wife and two children. Blindsided by these new additions, Phyllis's small-town world is turned upside down in more ways than she could have ever imagined. Andrea Dworkin is an activist in Amsterdam. Having fled her abusive husband and their life together, she finds herself desperate for answers, for herself and the world around her.

What are the secrets to a healthy, happy, and wealthy retirement? To answer that question, longtime Morningstar columnist and podcaster Christine Benz asked 20 retirement thought leaders to go deep on a single lesson that they believe contributes to success in retirement. These lessons range...

We find ourselves at a crossroads. We all know that true wealth is about far more than money. Wealth is friends, family, health, a vocation, command of your time, leisure, and whatever else is important to you. And yet, we are all guilty of acting as if money alone is wealth and an end in itself...

Louisa May Alcott was born on 29th November 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She is most definitely a writer of her own experiences. Her father was a transcendentalist, philosopher and educational experimenter who founded, Fruitlands, a utopian community. Well-loved for her classic ‘Little Women’ she was a superb writer in difficult times for any woman, a strong advocate of women’s issues, the anti-slavery movement, temperance and social reform.

When a young woman makes a distressing middle-of-the-night call to 911, apparently running for her life in a quiet, exclusive beachside neighbourhood, miles from her home, everything suggests a domestic incident. Except no one has seen her since, and something doesn’t sit right with the officers at Hampstead County PD.

In 1955 New York City is full of post-war euphoria and glamour, and the Barbizon Hotel - the place where Grace Kelly lived when she first came to the big city - is where young women from good families stay while they launch their careers and wait for Mr Right to come calling with a dozen roses and a date night at El Morocco.

My Very First Story Time: Audio Collection: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!* Introduce young children to the magic and wonder of fairy tales with this spellbinding audio collection. Classic characters are brought to life in these fun...

In Judea, under the brutal rule of King Herod, a woman yearns for a child but is outcast when she does not fall pregnant. Against all convention, she masters the art of glassblowing. In Renaissance Florence, a young wife is left penniless by her hopelessly unfaithful husband and struggles to find a way to support herself and her young son. In contemporary Australia, a talented textile conservator, devastated by loss, is desperate to regain control of her life. Each woman wants something that seems unattainable, and it will take all their courage, creativity and determination to achieve it.

Enter the corrupt world of Veradell, where warring monarchs vie for a kingdom full of forbidden magic, illicit romance and cut-throat horse racing. Steeped in Jewish folklore, This Dark Descent is an explosive YA fantasy by Kalyn Josephson, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows...

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

In one of America's Happiest Cities, Elen is trapped under the shadow of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains. Elen is alone, and unmoored. Her husband has left her. Her belongings are in the boot of her car. Her days are filled mostly with silence and drinking. When she meets four English teenagers in a decaying bar, she is enamoured. The teenagers are wealthy squatters, drifting between ski resorts and breaking into empty AirBnBs. When they bring Elen into their fold, she initially remains on the outskirts, invisibly separated by their privilege.

Sam Preston appears to be living the glamorous life of a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle. If only that was the case... In reality, she's frustratingly single, stuck living in her parents' house, and, oh yeah, in love with her boss, Dave, who barely knows that she exists. Life seems like it will never change - until the day Sam is put on an assignment with Dave, reporting on the San Francisco Fashion Week. She hopes this might be a turning point in their relationship. But things never go to plan.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

When White House correspondent Sofie Morse gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine asking her to come in for a private meeting, her curiosity is piqued. Sofie, like the rest of the world, knows only that Lara was born in Soviet Russia, raised in Paris, and worked as a model before moving to America and marrying the notoriously brash future president. Now Lara wants Sofie to write her official biography. After decades of silence, she is finally ready to speak candidly about her past: about her father's work for the KGB, and about her ill-fated relationship with Sasha.

Don't miss North to Home, the Hallmark movie based on The Chistmas Sisters! ""The perfect gift for readers who relish heartwarming tales of sisters and love.""-Booklist on The Christmas Sisters In the snowy Highlands of Scotland, Suzanne McBride is dreaming of the perfect cozy Christmas. Her...

Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt's first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, "Hick", as she's known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have.

Mrs Olga Stych, daughter of an immigrant Ukrainian pig farmer, has finally made it to the top of the social pyramid of Tollemarche, a small town in Canada’s Bible Belt. But to get there, she has not only had to see off her most determined rival, she has also had to neglect her son Hank. With enemies outside her home, and a latchkey kid inside—Hank was left to fend for himself—Olga little realises that the moment of her decline is to arrive just when she appears to be at her most triumphant.

In 2006, Julia Lerner is recruited by Russia's largest intelligence agency. By 2018, she's in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America's most famous technology companies. She funnels intelligence back to the motherland, but now Russia's asking for more, and Julia's getting nervous. Alice Lu is a first-generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she's working at Tangerine. One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she's burdened with two suspicions.