Showing results by narrator "Beverly Ann Astley" in All Categories

Elaine Smith and her friends just want to keep their small beachside town of Sabal Palms as it is. They have enough to worry about trying to navigate Bonnie's diagnosis as a borderline diabetic. But after Hurricane Jada wreaks havoc on the town, the small Southern paradise suddenly finds itself the object of a rich businessman's next big venture. And with the town in need of funds to rebuild, the community may have no choice but to accept the deal.

Elaine Smith lived in the small coastal town of Sabal Palms long enough to know when to worry about a squall and when to simply close the windows and wait for it to pass. This one would be significant. It would be significant in terms of damage, but that was to be expected. What no one expected was the profound effect it would have on the lives of people from the Texas coast to New York City. Positive qualities of humanity are often displayed during times of natural disaster.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone.

Losing his father at a young age is almost more than Mark Fortier can handle, especially when he feels responsible for his father's death. Mark's life takes many twists and turns on his road to adulthood as he struggles to understand who he is and what it means to be a man. Leaving Mark takes you back to the 1950s and 1960s, a tumultuous time in this country's history and in Mark's world, as well.

Willard Manor is the story of a fictional house built in 1840 and the Willard family, who called it home for 170 years. A young couple, Shelley and Tony Maguire, buy the vacant, rundown house and begin to renovate it. During the renovation process, the little treasures they find within its walls help them piece together the history of the house and its former occupants, from the Civil War to Woodstock and beyond.

After escaping from a seemingly hopeless environment of poverty and religious fanaticism, Angel Adams finds herself in a Victorian mansion on Nob Hill in San Francisco and enmeshed in a sinister society known as the Serpentine Order and under the influence of its Grand Master, the evil Merl Lynn. Drugged and deceived she is coerced into murdering Alexander Thorpe, an aspiring gubernatorial candidate.

When Amy's husband divorces her and files for bankruptcy, she needs to find a job. She can't believe her luck when a prominent psychiatrist hires her to take his six-year-old daughter, Jenny, on a train to spend the summer with her grandparents. Before they arrive in Florida, Jenny is missing. The FBI questions Amy and threaten to arrest her. The psychiatrist who hired her accuses her of kidnapping his daughter. No one believes her. She wonders if she is losing her mind.

Buck Flemming has been struggling for years with her inner demons. She has hidden them for years, but what will happen once they decide to come out and play? Follow Buck as she learns to let go of her fears and live with her demons, her trials, and tribulations and make peace with the past.

After her husband was killed, Athena moved to Alaska for a fresh start. The wilderness always called to her. In the middle of nowhere, she found her true purpose in life. A simple life was all she wanted, until one night, that all changed for her. 

Professional crisis manager Philippa Tannenbaum is spokesperson for the law enforcement task force charged with solving a high-profile case. She never dreams her position as homecoming pageant director and her second-place finish in the previous year's competition has placed her on a serial killer's hit list. Always a runner-up in life, she wants to finally come in first at finding the killer targeting the current crop of beauties.

An accusation of attempted murder rudely interrupted Mary Arnold’s dalliances with working men and her extensive shopping sprees. When her husband Benedict fell deathly ill and then asserted she had tried to kill him with poison, the result was a dramatic petition for divorce. The case before the Rhode Island General Assembly and its tumultuous aftermath, during which Benedict died, made Mary a cause célèbre in Newport through the winter of 1738 and 1739. Elaine Forman Crane invites listeners into this salacious domestic life and reveals the seamy side of colonial Newport.

Many of the women who went west for the gold rush shared the same eagerness for adventure as the men (in contrast to the conventional image of the long-suffering martyr accompanying her husband). Levy intersperses her text with excerpts from diaries and journals and concludes with brief biographies of 17 women participants.

Daniel Eastbriar has finally made good use of that camcorder his parents gave him for his birthday. How? He has secretly recorded his overbearing mother Annie, or Hitler with breasts, having her "afternoon delight" with their neighbor. Not a normal activity for an 18 year old boy and his sister but it's a last ditch effort to expose her double life to their spineless father.

Summer's steamy haze coats North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, but feisty Agnes Marie Hopper discovers the heat isn't the only thing causing her blood to boil. After a kitchen fire destroys her home, Agnes moves in with her daughter, Betty Jo. Three months later they come to an understanding: neither can tolerate living with the other. So on a sultry August morning, Betty Jo drives Agnes and her few belongings to Sweetbriar Manor, a local retirement home and former house of ill repute.

Indulging in the attentions of the house's handsome caretaker helps numb her pain, but Abby's ex-boyfriend won't let go of the past. He hounds her about his newfound religion in hopes of reconciling, but why reach for him or the God who couldn't or wouldn't spare her mom? In the stillness of the old house, the spirit world feels so close she can almost touch it. But she doesn't know yet that there's more than one way to be haunted.