Showing results by narrator "Gabra Zackman" in All Categories

Mimi and Charles take some time off from the detective agency to help Charles's friend, Anthony DeLuca, sell his exclusive line of voodoo dolls at a trade show in San Francisco. Mimi is less than thrilled to find out Charles has invited homicide detective Nick Christianson to come along. But as luck would have it, Mimi finds the body of a dead sales rep. When Anthony is implicated in the suspicious death, Mimi is back on the investigative job, and Nick goes off with his old partner at the SFPD, to find a killer.

A thoughtful collection of soul-soothing writing, O's Little Book of Calm & Comfort is the antidote to life's trying times. Featuring essays and interviews from some of the most celebrated contributors to O, the Oprah Magazine, this heartening collection offers solace, wisdom, and connection.

After twenty years of the American Dream, this AADD afflicted heroine is suddenly alone, left to review where she went wrong. She has mastered her dread of expressway driving but can't sleep without the radio. She despairs that she cooked seven thousand evening meals but sometimes, she misses that awful deadening life. She thinks aerobics and weight training might be the answer but there has to be something more. She joins an Obesity Study to look for her inner self but it freaks her out.

About this story, author Cat Rambo says, "This is the second time I've written about Serendib (the first story featured the antagonist from this one), but the world's been floating around in my head for a couple of decades now, originally as a game setting, and I can tell more stories and a possible novel are lurking within it as well. I chose a middle-aged married couple as my protagonists because I don't see much heroic fantasy with characters like that, and it seems like a definite lack to me."

Pittsburgh has recently (and more than once) been called the most livable city in America; yet the old image of smoky skies and steel mills spewing forth grit has never quite disappeared. Its history as a dirty industrial center is a part of its residents, a part of their toughness. The people of the steel city fight.

Alexander Porter is on the phone with his six-year-old son when he is struck by lightning and killed. It is a freak accident, without meaning or justice. Alex’s sudden death disintegrates his family. His mother takes off for a new life in California. His father descends into kleptomania. His ex-wife begins selling makeup door to door. His sister mourns by taking Sam, Alex’s son, on a journey into the family’s past, putting her own life on hold. Young Sam, who heard his own father die, has gone silent.

Modern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In 11 stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.

When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the soon-to-be-deceased themselves.

Here, in her first collection in eight years, McCorkle collects 11 brand-new stories bristling with her characteristic combination of wit and weight. In honeymoon shoes, mud-covered hunting boots, or glass slippers, all of the women in these stories march to a place of new awareness, in one way or another, transforming their lives. They make mistakes, but they don’t waste time hiding behind them. They move on. They are strong. And they’re funny, even when they are sad.

Coast Guard helicopter pilot Olivia Carver is on a very personal mission. Her twin brother, an undercover officer, was murdered by a drug cartel, and she won't stop until she finds the man responsible for his death. In the course of her own investigation, Olivia meets informant Rico Cortes. He's mysterious and sexy, and despite her reservations, the two share a night of passion. But Rico turns out to be more than a one-night stand....

Starting her junior year, Logan McRae is excited about her internship at CRUSH magazine. But she is not so excited about her new boyfriend Jeremy's travel abroad in Ireland. Logan is in over her head trying to balance school, love, and friends, while trying to solve an astrological mystery the fate of a Gemini is star-crossed. Will Logan find out who is in danger before the CRUSH Halloween costume party? Can she prove to the publisher she deserves her own astrology column?

Acclaimed writer Pam Houston says that “Mandelbaum is wise beyond her years and twice as talented”, and The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals poignantly explores the unique love and tension between mothers and daughters and humans and animals alike. Perceptive and funny, moving and eloquent, and ultimately buoyant, Mandelbaum offers a panoramic view of family and forgiveness and of the meaning of home. Her debut reminds us that love provides refuge and underscores our similarities as human beings, no matter how alone or far apart we may feel.

Set in the hardscrabble landscape of early 1900s Oklahoma, but timeless in its sensibility, Prairie Fever traces the dynamic between two sisters: the pragmatic Lorena and the chimerical Elise. Their connection to each other supersedes all else, until the arrival of a schoolteacher sunders the sisters' relationship as they both begin to fall for him. Expansive and intimate, with poetic intensity and deadpan humor, Prairie Fever tells the story of characters tested as much by life on the prairie as they are by their own churning hearts.

Rosie and Laura are as different as two sisters can be. One is stable and has the perfect family. The other struggles to break free from her troubled past. When Laura disappears after going on a blind date, Rosie takes matters into her own hands. But as Rosie begins to search for her sister, her greatest fears come to the surface. Could Laura be more of a danger than the stranger she meets, or is the night before her last night alive?

In one week, Karen Carmody, 30, manages to lose both her job and sublet. She’s unemployed, broke, and homeless. As with every era, heartless landlords and high rents rule in 1980s Manhattan, landing Karen in the Arcadia, a “Home for Young Ladies”. Among its many eccentricities, the Arcadia is run by the Army of Light and thus off-limits to males - so why has Karen’s secretive roommate, Martha, crammed a teenage boy into their tiny room? And speaking of males, there’s stockbroker and sexy Jury Duty pal Mark Pitofsky to consider.

You and your little one can learn the alphabet while exploring each of God’s wonderful seasons in this audiobook collection that includes F Is for Fireflies, K Is for Kite, P Is for Pumpkin, and S Is for Snowman.

Poland in 1991 was changing dramatically from a communist to a capitalist society. My wife and I experienced these changes when we taught at the Wroclaw Polytechnical University and lived in a small village for that year. In this transitional period, we had to face unexpected difficulties like finding housing , repairing a foreign car, heating a house and doing laundry. Poles generously helped us survive these challenges.

Molly and Liza have always been close in a way that people envy. Even after Molly married Daniel, both considered Liza an honorary member of their family. But after Liza moved away, things grew more strained than anyone wanted to admit - in the friendship and the marriage. When Daniel goes away on business, Molly and Liza plan to reconnect with a nice, long video chat over wine after the kids are in bed. But then Molly leaves the room to check on a crying child. What Liza sees next will change everything.

Pears is a divorced 40-something living with her mother in Queens when the unsexiest pandemic ever hits the country and smatters her potential love life. If her mother wasn’t enough to cock block her, this virus does a double cock block of trapping her in masks while dosing her in hand sanitizer.

In Victorian-era Louisville, the Home for Friendless Women is run by benevolent benefactors with one mission: to reform the fallen women who live there into pious mothers and wives through religious lessons and hard work. For Ruth, a college student who’s expelled after a campus sexual assault, the Home is a purgatory to endure before she can get her life back. For Belle, a queer sex worker who exchanged her bed at a brothel for one in the Home, it’s a safe place to rest her feet until she can track down her missing lover.