Showing results by narrator "Cindy Piller" in All Categories

Kellogg in the late 1940s and 50s was a typical American small town complete with high school football and basketball teams, marching band, and anti-Communist clubs; yet its bars, gambling dens, and brothels were entrenched holdovers from a rowdier frontier past. The Bunker Hill Mining Company, the largest employer, paid miners good wages for difficult, dangerous work, while the quest for lead, silver, and zinc denuded the mountainsides and laced the soil and water with contaminants.

"Millionaire" had just entered the American lexicon and Cassie Chadwick was front page news, becoming a media sensation before mass media, even eclipsing President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Using these newspaper articles, Hazelgrove tells the story of one of the greatest cons in American history.

When Sheriff Claire Wilson is attacked, she calls Texas Ranger Gavin Sterling for help with the investigation. The handsome lawman is smart and kind, but Claire is determined to ignore the sparks between them. Divorce shredded her heart and left her jaded when it comes to love. She pours everything she has into raising her small son and protecting her hometown.

A week-long stay in a creepy Connecticut mansion is replete with hidden passageways, disappearing corpses, and quirky inheritance recipients. And if that’s not enough to make for hair-raising moments on the secluded, storm-bound estate, how about a ghost named Fred? The stipulation in the will of Jill Jocasta Fonne’s aunt reads: If a guest leaves early, his or her share will be divided among those remaining. The first one to leave - permanently - dies just hours after arriving.

For many outsiders, the word “ranching” conjures romantic images of riding on horseback through rolling grasslands while living and working against a backdrop of breathtaking mountain vistas. In this absorbing memoir of life in the Wyoming high country, Mary Budd Flitner offers a more authentic glimpse into the daily realities of ranch life - and what it takes to survive in the ranching world. Some of Flitner’s recollections are humorous and lighthearted. Others take a darker turn.

Prosecutor Hannah Lawton is thrust into the spotlight after a local doctor is arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. The case has fractured the county and made her a target for death threats. When she’s attacked and nearly killed, Hannah believes it’s connected to the upcoming trial. She refuses to back down.

In 2012, fiction author Monica Leonelle made a life-changing decision to learn to write faster. Through months of trial-and-error, hundreds of hours of experimentation, and dozens of manuscripts, she tweaked and honed until she could easily write 10,000 words in a day, at speeds over 3500+ words per hour!

Engineer Edie Michaels loves her life—she has a good job, close friends, even a chance at romance with former soldier Beau Daniels. But she could lose everything if her secret comes out…that she's the German daughter of a devoted Nazi. And when her father sends spies to force her loyalty, everything Edie values is at risk. Time in a Nazi POW camp changed army medic Beau Daniels. When he discovers a letter of Edie's written in German, he can't help his suspicions. Is she truly the woman he's started to love? Or has she been the enemy all along?

The woman gives her name as Betty. No last name. No phone number. Just a meeting place - a deserted, wooded park on the outskirts of Lake Tahoe. The one condition - come alone. San Francisco attorney Kali O'Brien understands client confidentiality, but something about Betty's urgent request has her a little spooked. The moment Betty meets with Kali, she's shot and killed by a sniper, and Kali barely escapes with her life. She's left with more questions than answers.

Elsie Edens, the teen detective who found her sister’s killer in Seeking Signs, is back. In her early twenties now, and solving cases on her own, Elsie has developed into a full-fledged investigator working for a prominent agency in Clinton, Iowa. It’s Sunday, November 5, 1922. In the local paper, rural Iowa residents are shocked to read the headline: Coldest-blooded double murder in the history of Clinton county.

She never thought she'd see John Davenport again. Merrilee Daniels Davenport's former husband has returned to their small Georgia town after fighting in the Pacific. And now the soldier is bearing a letter from the little girl he didn't know he had. Merrilee wishes that she and her daughter could lean on John's able shoulders, but her new assignment as a homeland informant won't allow it.

One hundred years ago, Minnie Seamer's death shocked her rural Iowa community. A young farmhand found her body hanging in the barn on a rainy summer morning in 1913. The coroner ruled it a suicide, but distraught family members were not convinced. Was it suicide or was it murder? Seeking Signs, based on actual events, is the story of a young girl's search for answers in the wake of a family tragedy. To solve the mystery of her older sister's puzzling death, 13-year-old Elsie follows tips from a booklet titled The Baum Detective Agency Course.

Claudia Wilson never quite trusted her roommate, an artist named Tom. After finding a body buried in a snow bank outside her front door, her suspicions about his eccentric behavior only worsen. Unemployed and obsessed with the murder, she realizes how little she knows about the people who live around her, including Tom. Tempted by love but unable to trust a man with a past in light of the murder, Claudia does everything she can to find out about the killer. The results lead her to a startling discovery.

For baker Madeline McDougal, life is sweet - literally. As a bakery owner, Madeline spends her days baking a large variety of tasty treats, a skill passed down to her by her late mother. Madeline's pastries are a hit with not just locals but people from all across the country. As of late...business has been waning. But everything changes when Madeline notices that the back door of her shop has been tampered with and is led to an even more gruesome discovery.

Molly Ferguson’s comfortable life unravels when her Louisiana home is burned to the ground, her family murdered, and she is enslaved in a Baltimore brothel. Amidst the threat of the Civil War, Molly learns of secessionist plans to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln as he makes his way to Washington for his inauguration.

You'll love how Nail Your Story doesn't give you another laundry list of items that your story is supposed to have. Instead, Nail Your Story attempts to reveal the connections between the various parts of a story so that you can more easily build cohesive plots, characters, themes, and settings - without having to stress over the decisions, because (surprise!) you've probably already made them in another area of your book.

Ivi Green is happy to present to you our latest book, Life Skills 101: All You Need, But Won’t Learn in School. This book is intended to share with both children and their parents those life skills that are commonly overlooked in school curriculums. After listening to this book, we are confident that both parents and their kids alike will gain a sense of accomplishment from being able to set goals and focus on what is really important.

The last time the police knocked on psychic Valentine Zalmanzig Cohen's door they ignored her advice and the wrong man ended up in prison for murder. Five years later the knock comes again. Another couple killed in the same house. A copycat killer? Or has the original killer struck again? The police are willing to consider that perhaps they'd been wrong, but is Val willing to risk her marriage, career, and maybe even her life to try again?

Has pregnancy affected Brianna's psychic abilities? When Doc Myers, her mother's boyfriend, who also happens to be Brianna's boss, is kidnapped and a respected member of the community turns up dead, this medium doesn't have a clue. It's hard to fight crime when you're fighting 24/7 morning sickness. With ghosts only talking in riddles, Brianna must rely on old-fashioned sleuthing and her intuition to find Doc and stop the murders.

Ready to make art and money, at the same time? Monica Leonelle has written the playbook for authors on building a sustainable writing career as an independent publisher. The path to becoming a full-time author is clear cut, but no one is talking about exactly what you need to focus on, and when. This book is for authors who feel overwhelmed and overworked while trying to reach their dreams of writing full-time.