Showing results by narrator "Natalie Ross" in All Categories

The time: 1941, at the cusp of America’s entry into World War II. The place: southwest Missouri, on the edge of the Ozark Mountains. A young single woman named Allen Liles has taken a job as a junior college teacher in a small town, although she dreams of living in New York City, of dancing at recitals, of absorbing the bohemian delights of the Village. Then she encounters two young men: George, a lanky, carefree spirit, and Toby, a dark-haired, searching soul with a wary look in his eyes.

When I inherited this isolated land near the Mexican border, I knew running it would be difficult and dangerous - very different from my privileged life in Louisiana, where I was the genteel Miss Trilby Lang. But I certainly didn't expect that my neighbor, Thorn Vance, would be challenging me at every turn. Or that his brusque, ruggedly appealing ways would prove a dangerous temptation that I'm finding harder and harder to resist. Now, with trouble sweeping the territory, I need his help.

A hit man stalks his mark at a race track. A sociopath crosses every moral boundary to become a published author. An ex-mercenary obsessively defends his "perimeter" from a dangerous interloper. A man for hire grudgingly accepts help from a teenage girl to track an online predator. In a dystopian future, young people struggle for survival underground, forming themselves into vicious gangs with only the graffiti of the "last journalists" accepted as truth. Andrew Vachss collects 20 tight, powerful stories - all from the past decade of his career, including some now published for the first time - along with an original screenplay.

The Idaho Territory gold mines and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom come together for a wilderness-dwelling drifter in this tale of the Weird West.

Gabe Wilde has never been more ready for a change. Thirty-three and in the midst of a divorce, he's packed up his second-grade daughter and come home to Birch Bay, Montana. New house, new career, new life. Only, with changes come stress. His daughter is struggling with the transition to their new norm - and Gabe is out of ideas as to how to help.

Trapped in the body of the legendary Scheherazade, a young woman named Camille finds herself in a land of harems, wizards, and ruthless rulers. A student of time travel, a descendant of a witch, and a curious and sensitive soul, Camille is trapped by the king's order. Night after night she's forced to tell stories of her travels across the planes in order to keep herself alive. With tales of the erotic, the romantic, the magical, and the sensual, she entertains the king in the hope that he will spare her life.

As Mallory Alvarez and Luis Moreno grow closer, Lacey longs for forgiveness. Brittany and Marcus have a true meeting of hearts. Meanwhile, Jeffry grapples with his father's failures and finds solace in unexpected arms. When things take a dangerous turn, Jeffry's mother and sister, as well as his friends, unite behind him as the Senator threatens his son.

When innocent, wealthy Nora Marlowe came to visit the Wild West, she was as wide-open to adventure as the vast Texas horizon. Its rugged individualism - and dashing cowboys - suited her romantic spirit. That is, until the wrong cowboy decided to take the elegant heiress down a notch! Cal Barton didn’t like haughty Eastern misses. And he certainly didn’t appreciate one invading the ranch where he worked. But something about Nora was irresistible. The pull between them only grew stronger the longer she stayed - until a simple kiss became a full-fledged seduction....

Katie Nash is 13 years old in 1961, and she's facing a summer full of conflict. Her father has enlisted her in two care-taking jobs - baby-sitting for the rambunctious Wexler boys and, equally challenging, looking after Mrs. Randolph, her elderly, bedridden neighbor. To make matters worse, Katie has been forcibly inducted into the "loser" Girl Scout troop, compliments of her only new friend Cynthia's controlling mother. Her only saving grace is a trip to her childhood hometown in Texas, to visit her best friend Cherylanne. But people and places change - and Cherylanne is no exception.

When innocent, wealthy Nora Marlowe came to visit the Wild West, she was as wide-open to adventure as the vast Texas horizon. Its rugged individualism - and dashing cowboys - suited her romantic spirit. That is, until the wrong cowboy decided to take the elegant heiress down a notch! Cal Barton didn’t like haughty Eastern misses. And he certainly didn’t appreciate one invading the ranch where he worked. But something about Nora was irresistible. The pull between them only grew stronger the longer she stayed - until a simple kiss became a full-fledged seduction....

A story that tugs at the heartstrings...Thirteen-year-old Katie is new to her Missouri town, living alone with a stern, inaccessible father following her mother’s death. Unable to fit in at school, she forges alliances where she can: With her housekeeper, with a pimply fellow misfit named Cynthia, and with the gorgeous Taylor, who gets her kicks out of shoplifting. Most frustrating of all is Katie’s imperfect friendship with the proprietor of a local gas station, a handsome twenty-three-year-old who shares her love of checkers but doesn’t return her crush.

Dark-haired beauty Indiana Keller buys a property in Hope Springs, Texas, for three reasons: to expand her vegetable business, to harvest and sell delicious honey from the property's established bee colony, and to reunite with her estranged siblings. But her older brother Tennessee keeps his distance, even after Indiana hires his construction crew to fix up her cottage. It's almost as if he shares her guilt over the disappearance of Dakota, their missing brother…

In Grizzly Falls, Montana, Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli are struggling with a new commander and a department in the midst of upheaval. It's the worst possible time for a homicide. A body has been found, missing a finger. Alvarez hopes this means a murderer with a personal grudge, not a madman. But then a second body turns up.

Undercurrents rise to the surface as Dell employs his mercenary soldier skills to follow the trail of a man who unwisely threatened his beloved wife, Dolly. This is a man with the deadly patience of a gila monster and a complex agenda: possibly the first partner in literature who tries to pass as a gay man, as a light-skinned person of color would have passed for white decades ago.

It was stolen from a New Orleans grave - the centuries-old bust of an evil man, a demonic man. It’s an object desired by collectors - and by those with wickedness in their hearts. One day, its current owner shows up at Danni Cafferty’s antiques shop on Royal Street, the shop she inherited from her father. But before Danni can buy the statue, it disappears, the owner is found dead…and Danni discovers that she’s inherited much more than she realized. In the store is a book filled with secret writing: instructions for defeating evil entities. She’d dismissed it as a curiosity...until the arrival of this statue.

Her mother called it a gift. But for Caitlyn O’Connell, the voices in her head are a curse, dooming her career, her marriage, and her sobriety. Now the former cop scrapes by as a private investigator, counting down the minutes until happy hour. But when her sexy former partner (and estranged ex-husband) appeals to her for help with a bizarre murder case, Cait can’t say no - to the crime or the man.

The last thing Detective Sam Pierce wants is to revisit the past. But the very secret that doomed his marriage to Cait may be the key to cracking this case.

If there's a naughty list, Izzy Sassafras is on it - but she's ready to make a new start this Christmas. Especially after leaving her lying, cheating, no-good husband and fleeing to her old hometown of Matrimony, Georgia. Izzy's made herself a promise: No more men. All she wants to do is get her wedding business up and running - and mend fences with her estranged sisters. But Izzy knows she's in trouble when her very first client, a smooth-talking Texan, makes her light up like a Christmas tree.

Cody's best friend, Spencer, and his parents are moving in with his grandmother right around the corner, and Cody can't wait. For one thing, Cody needs Spencer to help solve the mystery of the never-seen Mr. Meen, who lives on the other side of the porch with a skull-and-crossbones sign in the window and an extermination truck out front. How's Cody to know that a yellow jacket would sting her, making her scream, "Ow! Ow!" just as they start spying?

Laney Foley is the first woman from her hardworking family to attend college. That's why she can't act on her powerful attraction to one of the gorgeous teaching assistants in her Introduction to Art History course. Getting involved with a man who has control over her final grade is just too risky. But ever since he first laid eyes on her, Michael Brouchard seems to think about little else but the two of them together. And it's become harder for Laney to ignore his intelligence and his charm.

I'd thought that he was mine, the dark, arresting man who commanded not only my body but my heart. Dante had swept into my life, and I'd succumbed to the burn of passion in his arms. I'd believed we had a love that would last forever, but he'd shattered my dreams and broken me into pieces when he'd walked away, taking a piece of my soul with him. Now he has come back seeking my help, and though I try to keep my distance and protect my heart, I cannot deny that the fire between us burns hotter than ever.