Showing results by narrator "Caroline Shaffer" in All Categories

Real estate agent Violet "Spooky" Parker stumbles upon a body-part theft ring at the local funeral parlor and suspects her caustic coworker has a hand in it - or maybe a foot. Can Violet discover what's in the crates that the crooks are sneaking out of the mortuary in the dark of night? Or will she end up in one of them herself - in pieces?

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...especially a dead one holding a grudge. Back on Deadwood's list of usual suspects, Violet Parker is hip deep in wild frights and fired-up females. After juggling bitter threats, haunted buildings, and vengeful ghosts, the last thing she needs is a pair of bullheaded detectives trying to pin another murder on her tail. Can Violet find the real killer before she ends up behind bars? Or worse, on a slab at the morgue.

In this powerful, wide-ranging, and emotional story about the limits of medical knowledge, Abel discovers why she wasn't diagnosed with celiac as a child. She considers how environmental fears and Internet anecdotes lead people to avoid gluten. And she grapples with the question that confronts us all: how to live calmly, even joyfully, in the face of uncertainty.

Dr. Kate Turner is happy with her new life in Oak Falls in upstate New York. Working as a relief veterinarian at a small house-call practice, she truly enjoys helping her patients. All that changes when client Claire Birnham is found dead, an apparent suicide. A talented artist, Claire had everything to live for: a new job; a Manhattan apartment; her cairn terrier, Toto. As feisty as the Wizard of Oz's Toto, he and Claire were devoted to each other. Kate can't imagine Claire simply abandoning her pet. Was her death murder?

Everyone in the charming Hudson Valley town of Oak Falls expected Flynn Keegan, their handsome blond "Golden Boy", to make it big in Hollywood. So when veterinarian Kate Turner identifies a bone dug up by one of her dog patients as human, no one thinks back 10 years to remember Flynn. Until DNA and a smashed skull prove he was murdered. Kate soon discovers that chains of love can be as strong as those made of steel-and some deadly secrets have put her next on the kill list.

It's springtime in California! The flowers are in bloom, the fashion week runways are fierce, and fans of America's favorite pastime are filling the baseball stadiums to root for their favorite team. But when the girlfriend of the L.A. Stars rookie MVP winds up dead at a chic Beverly Hills salon, it's suddenly up to fashion designer Maddie Springer to track down the "Tanning Salon Killer."

Halliday resumes the story of Maddie Springer, shoe designer and amateur sleuth, a week before her marriage to hunky Los Angeles police detective Jack Ramirez. When she finds her wedding planner face down in frosting with a knife sticking out of her back, she knows that to leave on time for their honeymoon, she needs to help Jack solve the case. Her two best friends step in, not only to help find the killer, but also to serve as her new wedding planners.

Maddie Springer is all about fashion. So when her best friend Dana's movie star boyfriend, Ricky Montgomery, becomes a contestant on the ballroom dance reality hit, Dancing with Celebrities, she is over the moon at the thought of visiting the sparkly, spandexy costumes on the set. That is until Ricky's dance partner is found dead in his dressing room...in the nude!

Christine Morris has been sent to Edinburgh to attend a conference on the latest in police methodology. There she is tracked down by the Northern Constabulary, Stornoway, Outer Hebrides, who inform her that her estranged mother has been involved in a vehicular homicide and has gone missing. Reluctantly, Christine agrees to fly up to Stornoway, where her mother was last seen. Her arrival is followed by the suspicious death of one of the islanders.

Carter is an insurance adjuster whose longing for creative expression spills over sometimes into his accident reports. Abby works for her adoptive father, Uncle Mannie, in the family bookstore, the ReadMore Cafe. Carter barely tolerates Christmas; Abby loves it. She can't wait past October to build her favorite display, the annual Christmas book tree stack, which Carter despises. When an automobile accident throws Carter and Abby together, Uncle Mannie, who is harboring secrets of his own, sees a chance for lasting happiness for his little girl.

When fashion designer Maddie Springer is invited to help style contestants in the Hawaiian Paradise Beauty Pageant, she jumps at the chance! The fantastic publicity coupled with a weeklong vacation with her best friends, Marco and Dana, is a win-win. But trouble follows her to paradise when one of the beauty queens winds up dead. Is it a case of a personal grudge, a jealous contestant...or a jealous lover?

Morning sickness sucks. Which is why fashion designer turned amateur sleuth Maddie Springer has spent the last six weeks being a couch potato and Moonlight vampire movie devotee. But when Maddie's best friends finally convince her to venture out, Maddie stumbles on a dead body of a girl who has been bitten on the neck, and life suddenly imitates art in the most deadliest of ways. Now Maddie is smack in the middle of a murder investigation involving a deadly dance club and a coven of Hollywood "vampires".

Meeting handsome actor Byron Slater after winning a contest, Miranda Peterson enjoys the attention of the media and the glamour of Byron's world, until she stumbles on the private actor's deadly secrets.

Professor Emily Cavanaugh has left Windy Corner behind and is back at Bede College on her sabbatical, determined to finish writing her book on Dostoevsky. She is soon reunited with one of her promising students, Daniel Razumov, as well as familiar faces on the teaching staff - her friend, Marguerite Grenier; her half-brother, Oscar Lansing; the abrasive division chair, Richard McClintock; and the predatory Taylor Curzon, known for her relentless pursuit of young male students - and Taylor now has Daniel firmly in her sights.

Food has power to nourish your mind, supporting emotional wellness through both nutrients and pleasure. In this groundbreaking book, journalist Mary Beth Albright draws on cutting-edge research to explain the food/mood connection. She redefines “emotional eating” based on the science, revealing how eating triggers biological responses that affect humans’ emotional states both immediately and long-term.

In the wake of the financial crisis, investors are faced with a stark choice: entrust their hard-earned dollars to the Wall Street casino or settle for anemic interest rates on savings, bonds, and CDs. Meanwhile, small businesses are being starved for the credit and capital they need to grow. There's got to be a better way. In Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit from It, Amy Cortese takes us inside the local investing movement, where solutions to some of the nation's most pressing problems are taking shape.

We've all heard the saying "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Luckily, for Jack, this collection offers more than 20 stories filled with the art of sexual play at work to make even Jack more lively. Here the most mundane 9-to-5 job can lead to a rowdy romp that's sure to leave people talking by the water coolers.

Charlotte Kingsley loves to write and dreams of having her reimagined fairy tales published, but she keeps getting rejected over and over. And to top it all off, her best friend, Anders, gets engaged, making her realize she’s going to lose the Prince Charming who lives next door. After yet another rejection letter, Charlotte decides to switch gears. What if she wrote a book about celebrating women for who they really are instead of trying to create a fantasy world for them to visit? Then she discovers that Anders has called off his engagement....

Master short story writer Ellen Gilchrist, winner of the National Book Award, returns with her first story collection in over eight years. In Acts of God, she has crafted 10 different scenarios in which people dealing with forces beyond their control somehow manage to survive, persevere, and triumph, even if it is only a triumph of the will. For Marie James, a teenager from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the future changes when she joins a group of friends in their effort to find survivors among the debris left when a tornado destroys a neighboring town.

Former foreign correspondent Lola Wicks is getting a little bored in Magpie, Montana, where she landed at a small local newspaper after being downsized from her job in Kabul. Then Judith Calf Looking, a local Blackfeet Indian girl missing for several months, turns up dead in a snowbank with a mysterious brand on her forearm. The sheriff - whose romantic relationship with Lola provides Magpie with its most delicious gossip in years - thinks Judith probably froze to death while hitchhiking back to the reservation from wherever she'd been.