Showing results by narrator "Liza Ross" in All Categories

On a clear day, you could see America from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather when he had had a drink. Then, in 1818, he left and sailed to the New World with his family. This is the story of those shepherds from the Ettrick Valley and their descendants. They were a Spartan lot: showing off was frowned upon, and fear was commonplace, at least for females. But opportunities present themselves for two strong-minded women in a ship's close quarters.

On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski's dogs lead her on a mad chase that ends when they find a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word. V.I. helps bring her to a hospital, but not long after, she vanishes before anyone can discover her identity. As V.I. attempts to find her, the detective uncovers an ugly consortium of Chicago power brokers and mobsters who are prepared to kill the girl before VI can save her.

When two girls are abducted and killed in Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to report on the crimes. Long haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family's mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half sister she barely knows - a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town.

BBC Audio present six fantastic tales of twisted futures and times beyond tomorrow. Inspired by the pulp sci-fi of '50s America, these perfectly pitched parodies are redolent of the atomic age—when the space race was at its height, Cold War paranoia was at fever pitch and the future seemed both thrilling and terrifying.

When a young woman named Sabrina disappears without a trace in Kansas, private investigator V.I. Warshawski knows she must act fast. But when she discovers Sabrina close to death in a drug house, the locals don't take kindly to her - and Sabrina's mother becomes suspicious. V.I. finds herself under the sharp gaze of the FBI - and the men running the county's opioid distribution. And when a dead body surfaces a few days later, V.I. is pitched headlong into a battle between the locals - with roots that date all the way back to the American Civil War.

Moments of change, chance encounters, twists of fate that create a new way of thinking or being: The stories in Dear Life build to form a radiant, indelible portrait of just how dangerous and strange ordinary life can be. The collection includes four powerful pieces, "autobiographical in Feeling", set during the time of Munro's own childhood, in the area where she grew up.

A unique a thriller from James Patterson. Frannie O'Neill is a young and talented veterinarian living in Colorado. Plagued by the mysterious murder of her husband, David, a local doctor, Frannie throws herself into her work. It is not long before another bizarre murder occurs and Kit Harrison, a troubled and unconventional FBI agent, arrives on her doorstep.

Sixteen thrilling and chilling stories by some of the greatest writers of horror and the supernatural.

Ohio, 1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled in the Black Swamp, planting apple trees to claim the land as their own. As fever picks off their children, husband and wife take solace in separate comforts. Fifteen years later their youngest son, Robert, is drifting through gold rush California. When he finds steady work for a plant collector, peace seems finally to be within reach. But the past is never really past, and one day Robert is forced to confront the brutal reason he left behind everything he loved.

Sixteen classic stories.

While driving home after celebrating friend Murray Ryerson's big break into TV hosting, V.I. almost collides with a fatally wounded woman lying in the street. The deceased is Nicola Aguinaldo, former employee of security giant B.B. Baladine and recent prison runaway. Taking on the case, V.I. finds herself plunged into a sinister network of corruption that pits her against the police, the prison and the entertainment industry - with potentially lethal results.

Twenty-five years ago, Stella Guzzo beat her daughter to death and then walked up the street to play bingo at her church. V. I. Warshawski grew up with the Guzzo family. She dated Frank Guzzo when they were teens and knew Stella's murderous rages firsthand. She didn't think about the family again until the day Frank came to her office, wanting V. I. to help his mother with an exoneration claim. The detective wants no part of Stella Guzzo's world, but she doesn't feel able to say no.

Mindfulness meets execution...at work. The wisdom of 13 Eastern sages, augmented by modern research on workplace influence, is the basis for profound yet practical advice on getting things done without force. The Art of Quiet Influence shows anyone how to use influence, a key mindfulness principle, to get things done. Through the classic wisdom of 13 Eastern sages (especially the Buddha), relevant insights from influence research, and anecdotes and advice from 25 contemporary experts, Davis lays out a path for becoming a 'mainspring,' an unobtrusive yet powerful influencer.

As students at the prestigious Anya Sedgwick School of Decorative Arts in Paris, Alexandra Gordon, Kay Lenox, Jessica Pierce and Maria Franconi share the challenges and excitement of developing their artistic talents to the fullest under Sedgwick's caring and demanding guidance. But once best friends, they part enemies, and after graduation they go their separate ways, pursuing careers and establishing lives in different corners of the world.

The Early Birds is the feel-good and funny follow-up to The Future Homemakers of America that proves that no matter what life throws at you, great friends and regular cocktails will always see you through. In this hymn to lifelong female friendship, Peggy soldiers on through new upheavals, including her ex-husband Vern's Alzheimer's diagnosis, the death of one of her nearest and dearest, a life-changing house move and the world-shattering events of 9/11.

Wallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and worked briefly as a journalist. In 1923 ‘Harmonium’ was published. At last, at age 38, he was an overnight success. His career was not prodigious in quantity but its quality was exceptional and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

When V.I.'s close friend Lotty Herschel is approached by a man claiming to be a fellow Holocaust survivor, she's forced to recall a painful past she's tried desperately to forget. Coming to Lotty's aid, V.I. decides to investigate the mysterious stranger. But her findings lead to the exposure of something much darker involving an international conspiracy reaching all the way back to Nazi Europe - as well as a shocking truth which could potentially devastate her friend....

Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, but V.I. Warshawski knows its politics: 'Pay to Play.' Money changes hands in the middle of the night; by morning, buildings and parks have been replaced by billion-dollar projects. Private Investigator V.I. gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals when her impetuous goddaughter Bernie tries to rescue a famed Singer-Songwriter, now living on the streets. Thanks to Bernie, V.I. finds herself in the path of some developers whose negotiating strategy is simple: they bulldoze - or kill - any obstacle in their way.

Sissy Sawyer, an unredeemed hippy, has an uncanny ability to read the future – and the lives of those she holds dear may soon depend on it... - One afternoon, shadows started to flicker along the corridors of The Red Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and both guests and staff heard persistent grinding noises that gave them “the freesons” – or goosebumps. Months later, Sissy Sawyer’s step-nephew Billy drops by with his new girlfriend, T-Yon. Sissy has an uncanny ability to read the future using her special Tarot cards, and T-Yon wants her help.

When private eye V.I. Warshawski is called out to a derelict drug house in a rural town just south of Chicago, she discovers something she wasn't expecting: the mutilated corpse of a man, dumped in a cornfield. It is a discovery that throws V.I. into the fascinating world of physics and invention: a design that sparked the construction of the computer as we know it, the development of nuclear weapons, the wonder of Newton's prisms and a train of dramatic events that occurred in wartime Vienna.