Showing results by narrator "Cassandra Campbell" in All Categories

When you're the bishop's daughter, there are certain standards that have to be met. Anna Weaver felt the weight of that burden. Believing people were always waiting for her to put a foot wrong, she retreated into her shell and had few friends. There was only one man she did not feel awkward around, and that was her close friend, Levi Glick. Even though he had been in and out of the Amish community over the past year, Anna was certain he would soon commit to the Amish faith by baptism....

After Emma's parents died, her disagreeable grandmother often sent her to stay with the Eshes, a nearby family. When her grandmother died, Emma was sent to live with distant relatives. While Emma was comfortable at their home, she never felt she truly belonged. On her 20th birthday, things took a turn for the worse when her uncle announced he was finding her a suitable husband. Emma was shocked to learn the man was Thomas Esh, who was said to be a secret drunkard and a gambler.

Standing at six feet tall, Lydia was the tallest woman in her community, even towering over most of the men. She knew that was the reason she was 25 and unmarried, destined for a lonely life of watching her more correctly proportioned younger sisters falling in love and starting families. When her parents suggested she stay at Aunt Stella's and look further afield for love, Lydia quickly agreed. When she arrived at Aunt Stella's, she was surprised that Stella already had a plan in place.

Aspiring entrepreneurs are told that to launch a business, you must go all in, devoting every resource and moment to making it work. But following this advice comes at an enormous personal cost: divorce, addiction, even suicide. It means sacrificing the intangibles that make life worth living. Sheryl O'Loughlin knows there is a better way. In Killing It, she shares the wisdom she's gained from her successful experiences.

From the time she was a little girl with a chocolate stand instead of lemonade, Alice Bailey dreamt of opening a chocolate shop. After all, chocolate heals everything, from heartache to woes. If Alice has learned anything recently, it's that life is precious. It’s now or never - carpe diem time. She's ready to put down roots and live her dreams.

When 39-year-old Maria Forssmann wakes up in her 17-year-old body, she doesn’t know how she got there. All she does know is she has to get back: to her home in Bienville, Mississippi, to her job as a successful psychiatrist and, most importantly, to her husband, daughters, and unborn son.

This breathtaking saga, set in the 1990s, tells the story of the landlords and tenants of a derelict canning factory in Southern Portugal. The wealthy, always-scheming Leandros have owned the building since before the Carnation Revolution, a peaceful coup that toppled a four-decade-long dictatorship and led to Portugal's withdrawal from its African colonies. It was Leandro matriarch Dona Regina who handed the keys to the Matas, the bustling family from Cape Verde who saw past the dusty machinery and converted the space into a warm - and welcoming - home.

After the publication of Little Women, Jo March is shocked to discover her book of scribbles has become a best seller, and her publisher demands a sequel. While pressured into coming up with a story, she goes to New York with her dear friend Laurie. But despite her growing feelings, her desire to remain independent leads her to turn down his heartfelt marriage proposal and sends the boy off to college heartbroken. But when Laurie returns to Concord with a sophisticated new girlfriend, will Jo finally communicate her true heart's desire or lose the love of her life forever?

This collection represents the best of Alcott's adult oeuvre. The stories in this volume display dramatic intensity and thrilling, suspenseful plots that show Alcott to be a complex and passionate writer. Listeners will discover within this maelstrom of murder, deceit, obsessive desire, treachery, duplicity, and betrayal that love and honor can still conquer all.

Though Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on the idea of home, from the earliest imprint of four walls to the startling discoveries of feeling the strange ease of homes abroad, friends’ homes and even momentary homes that spark desires for other lives. Her musings are all the more poignant after so many have spent their long pandemic months at home.

Raven Bonetalker, the Daughter of Bones, has her plate full. Not only is her neighbor still driving her nuts, but she's in a new relationship with Kipa, the Lord of the Wolves, and neither one is ready for everything that entails. But life takes a sinister turn when a spirit begins siphoning off the life force of one of Kipa's wolf shifters.

With the publication of her first book of poems in her sixty-third year, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years, until her death in 1994. Years later, as renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman wades into her papers and poems, he discovers a woman of dazzling intellect, staunch progressive politics, and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words we’ve invented to describe it.

A life in the wild! Jane Goodall, born in London, England, always loved animals and wanted to study them in their natural habitats. So at age 26, off she went to Africa! Goodall's up-close observations of chimpanzees changed what we know about them and paved the way for many female scientists who came after her. Now her story comes to life in this biography.

In 2004, 27-year-old Stephanie Saldaña traveled to Damascus, Syria, on a Fulbright fellowship to study the role of the prophet Jesus in Islam. She was also fleeing a broken heart. It was not an ideal time to be an American in the Middle East—the United States had recently invaded Iraq, refugees were flooding into Damascus, and dark rumors swirled that Syria might be next to come under American attack. Miserable and lonely, Stephanie left Damascus to visit an ancient Christian monastery carved into the desert cliffs.

Spain, 1959. Slim Hawks Hayward likes to think she doesn’t get jealous. But when her dear friend Lauren “Betty” Bacall learns that Papa Hemingway has come to watch the bullfights and insists that Slim make introductions, she can’t help feeling protective. Slim has known Papa for years. He always makes her feel like the most beautiful woman in the room—even when his wife is standing right beside him. Truth be told, Slim could have learned to love him all those years ago, in the streets of Havana or the mountains of the American West.

Beware the man of the year. You may praise him, resent him, even want to be him: but beneath the elegant trappings that define him, danger looms.

Divorce lawyer Leigh Huyett knows all too well that most second marriages are doomed to fail. But five years in, she and Pete Conley have a perfectly blended family of her children and his. To celebrate their anniversary, they grab some precious moments of alone time and leave Pete’s son, Kip, a high school senior, in charge of Leigh’s 14-year-old daughter, Chrissy, at their home. Driving back on a rainy Friday night, their cell phones start ringing. After a raucous party celebrating his college acceptance to Duke and his upcoming birthday, Kip was arrested for drunk driving.

Venice, 1736. When fate brings Violetta and Mino together on the roof of the Hospital of the Incurables, they form a connection that will change their lives forever. Both are orphans at the Incurables, dreaming of escape. But when the resident Maestro notices Violetta's voice, she is selected for the Incurables' world famous coro, and must sign an oath never to sing beyond its church doors. After a declaration of love ends in heartbreak, Mino flees the Incurables in search of his family. Venice is full of secrets, and Mino is certain one will lead to his long-lost mother.

A happily married woman's perfect life shatters when her husband turns up dead hundreds of miles away from where he should have been, and she suddenly discovers there was a part of him about which she knew nothing.

Twin sisters, Mercy and Hunter are witches, direct descendants of the Goode family, the founders of their town. After the murder of their mother at the hands of a foul demon, they have become the protectors of the Gates to different underworlds–ancient portals between their world and realms where mythology rules and the darkest of creatures exist.