Showing results by narrator "Carrington Macduffie" in All Categories

Lopsided is not your ordinary cancer memoir. Meredith Norton displays the razor-sharp wit of a master humorist as she chronicles her experience, from the first appearance of her bizarre symptoms to moving in with her compulsive parents and their five television sets.

Ida grew up with Jackson and James - where there was “I” there was a “J.” She can’t recall a time when she didn’t have them around, whether in their early days camping out in the boys’ room decorated with circus scenes, or later as teenagers when they were drinking on rooftops. While the world outside saw them as neighbors and friends, to each other the three formed a family unit - two brothers and a sister - not drawn from blood but from a deep need to fill a void in their single-parent households.

Twelve short stories, 12 points of view, 12 neighborhoods of the same town, and finally, 12 pieces of the same puzzle. Paris Noir takes you on a ride through the old medieval center of town with its intertwined streets, its ghosts, and its secrets buried in history. You'll cruise Paris with its nightclubs full of mysterious beauties who seem to have a lot to hide.

Small, almost imperceptible changes are rippling through the New England village of Grandville, altering it in ways its inhabitants cannot yet imagine. Laced through a narrative of one recent year in Grandville's history are stories that reach back to a 17th century family in Rotterdam, and 18th century migration by a farmer's lonely son in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a 19th century underground railway journey by a gifted runaway slave.

In the 14th edition of this seductive series, erotica's veterans and up-and-coming new writers join forces to explore how tantalizing crossing the so-called Lolita gap between youth and middle age can be.

Populating a small town in the Pacific Northwest, the characters in Lucia Perillo’s story collection all resist giving the world what it expects of them - and are surprised when the world comes roaring back. An addict trapped in a country house becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and the people who sell them door-to-door. An abandoned woman seeks consolation in tales of armed robbery told by one of her fellow housewives. Together, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain is a sharp-edged, witty testament to the ambivalence of emotions.

As Janell Burley Hofmann, mother of five, wrapped her 13-year-old's iPhone on Christmas Eve, she was overwhelmed by questions: "Will my children learn to sit and wonder without Googling? Should I know their passwords for online accounts? Will they experience the value of personal connection without technology?" In iRules, Hofmann provides families with the tools they need to find a balance between technology and human interaction through a philosophy she calls Slow Tech Parenting.

Lola Laforet seems to have it all - a whirlwind romance that turned into to have and to hold, a charmed life on the Cote d'Azur, and ownership of the magnificent Hotel Riviera. Tragically the dream ends as abruptly as it begins when her beloved husband mysteriously disappears. Heartsick, confused, and lonely, her life is thrown into further turmoil when a handsome stranger, Jack Ferrar, an American expatriate living on his boat, drops anchor in Lola's harbor and teaches her the meaning of instant attraction.

Four mysterious words prompt antiques dealer Precious Rafferty to embark on a quest across Europe to uncover their meaning. Preshy, at age 38, loves her American-in-Paris life, but thinks that she'll never be swept off her feet: until she meets Bennett James. As their whirlwind courtship progresses, though, she realizes that there is much about his business life in Shanghai she doesn't know. Then she receives an urgent message from Lily Song, a cousin she's never met.

Paen Scott is a Dark One: a vampire without a soul. And his mother is about to lose hers too if Paen can't repay a debt to a demon by finding a relic known as the Jilin God in five days. Half-elf Samantha Cosse may have gotten kicked out of the Order of Diviners, but she's still good at finding things, which is why she just opened her own private investigation agency. Paen is one of Sam's first clients and the only one to set her elf senses tingling, which makes it pretty much impossible to keep their relationship on a professional level.

Welcome to the Lazy Windmill, where guests find that life is what you make it, love is priceless, and family is determined by far more than DNA. Casie Carmichael's accidental dude ranch is well on its way, but the residents of her Hope Springs haven are running wild. With an unwed mother-to-be, a turbulent teen romance, and a bronc-riding grandmother to contend with, the last thing Casie has time for is a romantic relationship. But convincing the recently returned Colt Dickenson that she's not interested in him - or the confusion he causes her - is easier said than done.

San Francisco, 1882: After enjoying an evening listening to the young Oscar Wilde, crusading young lawyer Sarah Woolson and her brother, Samuel, are making their way home when a gunshot sounds and a bullet pierces the fog, striking Samuel. Who could want to hurt Samuel? Was he even the intended target? Determined to find answers, Sarah discovers more murder and mayhem on Telegraph Hill.

Toehold, Alaska, is a bush village about as far away from the world as you can get without falling into the Arctic Ocean. The residents are a motley crew of Alaskans and refugees from the lower 48. The story focuses on the chemistry between Cody, a taxidermist who grew up in San Francisco, and Mel, a gal drifter who decides to lead a grizzly-bear hunt in order to raise the money she needs to care for her teenage daughter.

Enidina Current and Mary Morrow live on neighboring farms in the flat, hard country of the upper Midwest during the early 1900s. This hardscrabble life comes easily to some, like Eddie, but for the deeply religious Mary, farming is at odds with her more cosmopolitan inclinations. Still, Mary creates a clean and orderly home life for her stormy husband, Jack, and her sons, while she adapts to the isolation of a rural town through the inspiration of a local preacher.

In Breaking In, veteran journalist Joan Biskupic tells the story of how two forces providentially merged - the large ambitions of a talented Puerto Rican girl raised in the projects in the Bronx and the increasing political presence of Hispanics, from California to Texas, from Florida to the Northeast - resulting in a historical appointment. And this is not just a tale about breaking barriers as a Puerto Rican. It's about breaking barriers as a justice.

A compassionate, humorous story of faith, betrayal, and coming of age on the sawdust trail. She was just three years old when her mother signed on as the organist of tent revivalist David Terrell, and before long, Donna Johnson was part of the hugely popular evangelical preacher’s inner circle. At seventeen, she left the ministry for good, with a trove of stranger-than-fiction memories.

For Gwen Merchant, love has always been doled out in little packets - from her father, who buried himself in work after her mother's death, and from her husband, Peter, who's always been respectable and safe. But then an old college boyfriend, the irrepressible Elliot Hull, invites himself back into Gwen's life with a surprising proposition. Elliot, it turns out, is in need of a pretend wife, just for the weekend, in order to fulfill his dying mother's last wish.

For Lucy Jane Bledsoe, wilderness had always been a source of peace. But during one disastrous solo trip in the wintry High Sierra she came face to face with a crisis: the wilderness no longer felt like home. The Ice Cave recounts Bledsoe's wilderness journeys as she recovers her connection with the wild and discovers the meanings of fear and grace.

Third in the popular series about the Bottom Dollar Girls from Cayboo Creek, Dollar Daze finds their love in bloom. Attalee, soda jerk at the Bottom Dollar Emporium, is so hot and heavy with her beau, Dooley, that the pair seem headed for the altar via Thrill Hill. But Elizabeth is pining for her newlywed days when she felt more like a wife than a mother, while widowed Mavis has been up nights nursing a case of loneliness.

From 1966 to 1980, Damon Knight created the Orbit series of anthologies, representing the finest writing in the science fiction genre. Nineteen of Kate Wilhelm's stories were included in this series of 21 volumes. Among these are "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang," an exploration of infertility and cloning in the aftermath of global environmental collapse. It won the Locus, Jupiter, and Hugo awards for Best Novel in 1977.