Showing results by narrator "Paige McKinney" in All Categories

Olivia Martinez, forced to leave her high-power Manhattan job with no prospects, is at a crossroad. Not only is she a city girl down to the tips of her Jimmy Choos, she wants to stay close to her parents, who depend on her more than they’d like to. Generally not a risk taker, Olivia steps out of her comfort zone when her best friend, Elizabeth Sutton, asks her to temporarily lend a hand at the Red Sky Ranch. After all, what can a few months change, and New York City is just a plane ride—or three—away, right?

With the arrival of Courtney Carrington, Margaret's youth sparked into color. But first loves can scar. Margaret hasn't seen Courtney in years and that's for the best. But when Courtney loses her father and returns to Tanner Peak to take control of the family store, Margaret comes face-to-face with her past and the woman she's tried desperately to forget. The fact that Courtney has grown up more beautiful than ever certainly doesn't help matters.

Leslie Raymond spent the past two years wishing her life had taken a different turn. It’s time for a fresh start, a move across the country, and a new set of rules to help heal her heart—no straight women, no women with kids, and no commitment. But when she meets her new neighbors, the beautiful Erica and her special needs daughter, Siena, she struggles against the pull she immediately experiences. Erica Cooper has learned to rely only on herself. She knows most people don’t stick around when the going gets tough.

Between ruling the night shift in the ER at the Rivers and raising her teenage daughter, Blaise Richelieu has all the drama she needs in her life. When a dashing young attending appears on the scene and relentlessly pursues her, Blaise has plenty of reasons to say no - or at least she tells herself she does, despite Grady’s nearly irresistible charm. Even if Blaise had the slightest desire to play Grady’s game, the past she’s kept hidden from everyone is a secret she intends to keep buried.

Hit woman and thief Reed Gable works for the highest bidder, no matter where the job takes her. An orphan of circumstance, Reed knows the streets of Las Vegas better than anyone. Growing up rough has gotten her to the top of her profession, and she plans to stay there. Accountant Brinley Myers, a recent hire at the Moroccan Casino, discovers a money laundering operation orchestrated by the New York mob, and suddenly, her life and the people in it become collateral damage.

Kelsey Brunel knows exactly what the future holds: She’ll one day inherit the Arizona dude ranch that has been in her family for three generations. She tells herself that the business and her good friends are all she’ll ever want or need. Long-term relationships aren’t in the picture, which, after witnessing the devastation of her parents’ failed marriage, is just fine with her.

Meg Tallmadge is a veterinarian at a clinic in Laramie, Wyoming. She’s got a great job, great friends, deep ties to the family ranch, and big plans for her vet future. Sure, there are bumps in the road, like her mom’s continued denial about who Meg is and her painful and infuriating attempts to make Meg a “proper” woman. Then there’s Meg’s recent breakup with a girlfriend, which has her wondering why she can’t seem to open up to relationships.

Gina Antonelli had big dreams once, of riding her athletic achievements all the way to West Point and being the first in a long family line of soldiers to serve as an officer. When that dream died along with the girl she'd planned to marry one day, she'd vowed to forget about happily ever afters. When Gina agrees to renovate Carrie's soon-to-be new house as a favor to her brother's boss, she doesn't welcome Carrie's overtures at friendship or her own unexpected attraction.

Elite operative Domino is no stranger to peril and impossible situations. Trained all her life to be just as comfortable fighting terrorists as mixing with the gala crowd, she is proficient at playing any role necessary to accomplish her objective and believes the cause sanctifies the means. But her latest assignment to investigate journalist Hayley Ward will test more than her skills, ingenuity, and courage, because this time she faces the ultimate dilemma: a choice between loyalty and love.

Tally Dewilde forges her own path when she chooses to go into veterinary medicine and ignores her mother’s desire that she establish a boutique clinic for the pets of the wealthy in Manhattan. When she arrives in rural Upstate New York to join Sydney Valentine’s animal hospital, the break with her old life seems complete on every level. Until an unwelcome reminder of the painful past arrives at her door in the form of Roman Ashcroft.

Accountant and financial advisor Lacey Chamberlain doesn't consider herself a control freak. She's merely a planner-orderly, neat, and content in her tidy little life. When a marketing firm moves into the empty office next door, the loud-music-playing, stinky-food-ordering, kickball-in-the-hall staff make Lacey crazy. Marketing expert Alicia Wright is spontaneous, flies by the seat of her pants, and lives in the moment-all the things Lacey is not. She's also gorgeous, thoughtful, and seems determined to make Lacey like her. They say opposites attract, but for how long? And is that really a good idea?

Game of Thrones, book and show alike, is spun from classic myth, from the tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur to the Norse Ring Cycle and saga of Ragnarok. Above all these human adventures soar Daenerys' dragons adapted from the dragons, wyverns, and wyrms of Western bestiaries. But what about the merlings, seal folk, wargs, greenseers, grumpkins, and snarks: Which mythologies created them?

For Addison Fairchild, success is a guarantee. Groomed since childhood to run a division of Fairchild Enterprises, she takes her birthright seriously. Maybe a little too seriously, if you ask her friends. But work is so much easier than the rest of her life. For Katie Cooper, money has never been important. That is, until her father gets dementia and needs full-time care. As the bills start to pile up, Katie takes a second job as a temporary personal assistant. Two minutes and one spilled cup of coffee later, she's sure she's not ready for Addison Fairchild.

Commander Berkley Levine and Captain Aidan Sullivan might have a life together if they survive the next mission. They’re undercover hunting down a treasonous ex-vice president and the militia he’s assembled to topple the US government, and the twisting trail grows deadlier at every turn. After an assassination and numerous attacks that could only have happened with inside help, they don’t know whom they can trust, and the future looks darker than ever.

Emma Verde has left everything behind in Wisconsin to attend Tulane in New Orleans. She sees an opportunity to make enough money for the coming semester when she lands a job at an Irish pub in the French Quarter. That job soon spirals into something else. That’s the story we know, but this is the tale of how Cain and Emma fell in love, and their history proves that love was the only thing that saved the heart of the devil.

A fragile melody of love is played between these damaged souls, a song made sweeter and stronger by the day. But will their blossoming romance be destroyed by an outsider's greed or will it succumb to the discord of Graham's tormented heart? Can Graham find happiness with Anna, caught up in the fiery overtures and darkly gothic strains of Love's Melody Lost?

Cain Casey is close to getting everything she wants. Her partner Emma is pregnant with their third child, her children are safe and happy, and her business is still thriving despite the FBI's vendetta. Life is perfect on the surface, but it's the underbelly that worries her.

Some people work to pay the bills or send the kids to school or afford playtime. Ex-army medic physician assistant Glenn Archer works, as much as she possibly can, to atone for all the lost lives on her conscience. No matter how many patients she helps save at the Rivers Community Hospital, it will never be enough, but it helps her look at herself in the mirror in the morning.

Jay "Flash" Reynolds has a brilliant future as a trauma surgeon until a truck on a rainy night changes her life. Assistant chief medical examiner Olivia Price is more at ease with the dead than the living - at least the dead never lie. All she needs to do is listen to their stories. What she doesn't need is a surly new resident who would rather be somewhere else. Two women, one with a damaged body, the other a damaged spirit, challenge each other to dare to live again.

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human. Shannon Reed, a longtime teacher, lifelong reader, and New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind, she makes the case that we should read for pleasure above all else.