Showing results by narrator "Amy Rubinate" in All Categories

Judy Moody is in a royal purple-mountain-majesties mood. Make that Majesty with a capital M! With Grandma Lou’s help, Judy has dug up proof that some old-timey Moodys (aka the brave Mudeyes) lived in merry olde England. In fact, if her grandpa’s notes are right, Judy might even be related to - royal fanfare, please - the Queen herself! Should Judy start packing her purple robe for a sleepover at Buckingham Palace?

A mysterious death brings Deputy DeeDee Clawson to the scene of a movie being filmed at an old mansion in Silver Hollow. Tucker Rockwood, the star of the movie, is found dead, a stake through his heart. Lots of people might have wanted to kill Tucker, but when DeeDee's investigation points in the direction of the movie's producer, Caine Hunter, she thinks she has her man. As if investigating this murder isn't enough, DeeDee has something else hanging over her head: an arranged marriage....

When a woman's body turns up in a lake - a bullet to the back of her head - Violent Crime Unit commander Maria Kallio, freshly back from maternity leave, is fast to get on the case. The victim is ID'd as Annukka Hackman, wife of a prominent publisher and author of an upcoming unauthorized tell-all book on Sasha Smeds, Finland's celebrated racing rally driver. Almost as soon as the inquiry starts, it goes off the rails, as those connected to Annukka - and to Smeds - seem to have more secrets than they have alibis.

An unsent letter in a first-edition copy of Charlotte's Web leads to a hunt for treasure in this heartwarming middle-grade mystery from the author of The Mother-Daughter Book Club. Now that Truly Lovejoy's father has been injured by an IED in Afghanistan and is having trouble finding work back home, the family moves from Texas to tiny Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire, to take over Lovejoy's Books, a struggling bookstore that's been in the family for 100 years.

In December 2011, 21-year-old Victoria’s Secretmodel Kylie Bisutti stunned the fashion industry when she chose faith over fameand fortune and made the switch from supermodel to role model. In I’m No Angel, Kylie shares her story - from her early years struggling to make it big in the cut-throat world of modeling, her big break winning the Victoria’s Secret Runway Angel competition, and the disillusionment and spiritual warfare that followed, to the moment she realized she could no longer reconcile her career with her Christian beliefs and surrendered her life to God.

When the well-known director of a women's retreat center goes missing, Espoo Police Detective Maria Kallio is called to investigate. As the missing woman's friends and family quickly become the pool of suspects, Maria must soften her tough interrogation style to uncover the information she needs to solve the crime. Meanwhile, a killer Maria put in prison escapes and sets out to take revenge.

After a devastating fire pitted their families against each other, high school sweethearts Phoebe Ritter and Aidan Payne were torn apart. Twenty years later, Aidan is called back to Blessings, nervous about confronting his painful past. And that's before he knows about the 19-year-old secret Phoebe has been harboring all this time. As Aidan tries to make up for lost time with the family he didn't know he had, Phoebe and Aidan rediscover long-suppressed feelings. But the past won't lie buried, and old enemies threaten to destroy the peace they've fought so hard to find.

Hurricane Fanny left no one in Blessings, Georgia unscathed - including Rowan Harper, the only surviving member of her family. Rebuilding her life now seems almost impossible. Bowie James comes back to help repair his grandmother's house, but he doesn't intend to stay long. He and his mother were forced out of Blessings a decade ago, and he's neither forgiven nor forgotten those responsible. But Rowan is kindhearted, beautiful, and lost, and Bowie discovers that he can entrust her with his deepest secrets.

Audrey Whitticomb has nothing to fear. Her mother is the superhero Morning Star, the most deadly crime fighter in the Twin Cities, so it's hard for Audrey not to feel safe. That is, until she's lured into the night by something human and not human - something with talons and teeth, and a wide scarlet smile. Now Audrey knows the truth: her mom doesn't fight crime. She fights Harrowers - livid, merciless beings who were trapped Beneath eons ago.

Callie Henderson had to fight to put her tragic past behind her, but now the up-and-coming player in the hospitality industry is well on her way to happiness. She has her sights set on the lead renovation position at the Sunset Harbor Inn—an inn that just happens to be owned by Sam Edwards, the man who comforted her in her grief and gave her one night of passion before walking away.

After completing a dangerous mission training police officers in war-torn Afghanistan, Detective Maria Kallio returns to Finland as the head of a new special crimes unit. But what awaits her in her home country is her most challenging and unsettling case yet. Three immigrant Muslim girls, all members of the same social club, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. When the body of a fourth girl is found in the snow, strangled with her own headscarf, the investigation takes on a grim new urgency.

One night in San Francisco, three women make a birthday wish believing it can't possibly come true. Liz is turning thirty. A successful nurse, she has a good career, but no man to share her life. All her friends are married, and she's alone, still trying to outrun a tragedy from her past. Then she meets a handsome stranger. Angela, a member of a large, loving Italian family, is facing thirty-five with no baby in the nursery. Eight years of infertility treatments have put a strain on her marriage. Will she have to choose between her husband and having a child?

Every storm they've weathered... has led them to each other. Dan Amos lost his wife and son years ago, when they inadvertently got in the way of a death threat meant for him. He's never had eyes for anyone since, and he doesn't want to. But fellow Blessings resident Alice Conroy sparks something inside him...

Judy Moody is in it to win it. Win the Book Quiz Blowout, that is. Judy and her brother, Stink, are two-fifths of the Virginia Dare Bookworms, and they’ve been reading up a storm to prepare for Saturday’s face-off against second- and third-grade readers from the next town. Judy’s trying out all kinds of tactics, from hanging upside down like Pippi Longstocking to teaching herself to speed read The Princess in Black, and Stink has fashioned a cape of book trivia sticky notes to help him remember all the penguins in Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

After surviving a terrifying assault during her last investigation, Maria Kallio traded in her badge for a comfortable desk job. But when the head of social affairs for the Finnish Athletics Federation is murdered - the victim of an apparent poisoning - Maria is drawn back into a race against more than murder. A series of crimes has unfolded, and to Maria’s trained eyes, they look like the makings of a conspiracy. As Maria follows the track to a doping scandal, a money-laundering scheme, domestic abuse, and explosive death threats leveled against a sports reporter, she collects the pieces of a baffling puzzle.

Detective Harry Jordan sees his lake home as a respite from solving crimes on the streets of Boston. The Osborne family views their cottage as a way to avoid the distractions of life - especially for Wally Osborne, a famous horror writer who seems to need the peace and quiet more than anyone. One night, Harry is walking alongside the lake when the night is rocked by an explosion: the Havnel house is engulfed in a conflagration, and young Bea is seen fleeing, hair on fire, and plunging into the lake.

Kendall Jordan knows she doesn’t need an elaborate wedding with a Vera Wang dress and a three-tiered cake. All she needs is the love of her life, the hot and romantic Cruise Elton. But she’s been dreaming of a picture-perfect wedding since childhood, and so with her finances in peril and a rock band squatting in the Elton B and B Kendall must take extreme measures. She decides to pen a book about the kinky sexcapades of one Penny Whoredon and one Cruz Belton, but in order to do the writing justice she’ll need to conduct some sexy research with the love of her life.

After a student choir’s practice session at a Helsinki villa turns deadly, Detective Maria Kallio finds herself in the middle of the action - and her first murder case. Someone in the group wanted playboy Tommi Peltonen dead, but that’s one song these suspects refuse to sing. Behind the choir’s jovial facade lies bitter passion, and the victim’s seemingly perfect life hid a host of sins that made him a target of almost everyone in the villa. As a young female - and a redhead to boot - Maria knows that solving this case will help her overcome her perceived shortcoming in the eyes of her colleagues.

Willow Parsons’s two new best friends are getting married, putting her squarely on the sidelines of romance - which suits her just fine. After the nightmarish situation she escaped from, featuring the ultimate Mr. Wrong, she is more than happy to spend her days slinging drinks in Dempsey’s Bar & Grill, and her nights alone. But her Anchor Island refuge has just one catch: muscle-bound charmer Randy Navarro. Everyone in town knows that Randy, owner of the local fitness club, is a giant teddy bear. Everyone, it seems, except for Willow.

HE’S A BAD BOY - Famous criminal defense attorney Jackson Moore thought he had left his bad-boy past behind him - but his childhood sweetheart had different plans for him. HE'S JUST A COWBOY - For six agonizing years Heather Tremont Leonetti tried to make a lie of the breathless summer when rodeo rider Turner Brooks broke her innocence and branded her heart. But now only the truth could save her most precious, cherished memento.