Showing results by narrator "Melinda Cumming" in All Categories

An unexpected—and unrecognized—visitor attends veteran writer Esmé’s reading and brings events of 40 years past squarely into her present. Struggling with writer’s block and uncertain about a future with her romantic partner, Esmé undertakes a journey through her own history. Esmé revisits a particular year she had written off as the worst of her life as well as her whirlwind early marriage. In the process, Esmé ultimately overcomes the wounded hesitancy that has characterized her life and rediscovers her former courage and openness to risk.

In the 25th century, the recently widowed Prince Jack Windsor escapes his grief after the death of his wife and child by fleeing to Mars to solve the mystery of the dormant HMS Ares. When Harlow Hanson, the Robin Hood of the Martian colony, sneaks aboard to plunder the ship in order to save her people, the Ares springs to life and begins communicating with her. Prince Jack realizes the woman stealing from him is the key he's been searching for.

Granny Oakley—aka Martha Moses Kane—bakes killer pies, and enjoys her new career of trick shooting like her famous shirttail relative Annie Oakley. Especially as it helps daughter Pepper Kane's Best Little Bed, Barn & Breakfast in Oregon. She's eighty and greaty. Older and bolder. Has a new man and is hot to trot out her skills and horse at the famous Bites, Kites & Lights Festival on the Coast.

Early Alaskan military and bush pilots navigated some of the highest and most rugged terrain on earth, taking off and landing on glaciers, mudflats, and active volcanoes. Although they were consistently portrayed by industry leaders and lawmakers alike as cowboys—and their planes compared to settlers’ covered wagons—the reality was that aviation catapulted Alaska onto a modern, global stage; the federal government subsidized aviation’s growth in the territory as part of the Cold War defense against the Soviet Union.

Dennis didn’t figure on marrying, but he finds himself falling in love with Isabelle du Pres, the widowed daughter of his boss. Not able to make his affections known, he yearns for an opportunity to prove his love. When unexplained, troubling things start happening in the rail yard, it seems that Martin Crawler, Isabelle’s father, has an enemy.

Martha Moses Kane—a former rodeo queen and a shirttail relative of Annie Oakley—sees being an 80-year-old widow as no obstacle, but a banquet. By staying fit, loving pets, and baking pies for a cafe and her daughter’s Bed, Barn & Breakfast, she blows a raspberry at old age. But she’s bored. She wants more. Color. Excitement. Maybe a man. When her daughter dragoons her into headlining a Wild West show like her famous 19th-century sharpshooter cousin, she reluctantly agrees. But practicing is a blast.

A spirited ex-reporter questions her deepest beliefs and desires while rushing to learn who killed a woman in the long-abandoned cabin of a famous writer—a riverfront gem she and a fellow horsewoman hoped to turn into a guest ranch. The timing couldn’t be worse: She’s preparing for a major horse show and trying to save her tack store, The Best Little Horsehouse in Oregon. But when she receives a death threat and, with her Lakota police partner, finds shocking evidence related to Indian adoptions, she shifts into overdrive. Unless she IDs the killer, her dreams—and life—will go up in flames.