Showing results by narrator "Elisabeth Ashby" in All Categories

When Joanie Crea is found strangled on the grounds of the crumbling Grandgeorge estate, Sheriff Red Hammergren faces a chilling mystery as dark as the dense forest surrounding the crime scene. All eyes turn to Derek Grandgeorge, the reclusive heir with a penchant for wearing a green jacket—even in the sweltering Minnesota summer.

For almost three decades, renowned baby-seller Georgia Tann ran a children's home in Memphis, Tennessee—selling her charges to wealthy clients nationwide, Joan Crawford among them. Part social history, part detective story, part expose, The Baby Thief is a riveting investigative narrative that explores themes that continue to reverberate today.

In the not so distant future, six mega corporations and their privatized armies have supplanted the American government. They compete for resources, market position, and the ultimate long game prize of colonizing the stars. Chevy Cole left her conservative family behind for life as a Launch Tech marine and never looked back, proud of her role as a first-into-the-fire grunt, even if she were well below the revered female super soldiers known as Aces. When rumors spread that one of the Big Six has created a fusion device that would put the stars within reach, all-out war looms.

A Southern white writer, educator, and activist, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) spoke out all her life against injustice. In Killers of the Dream, her most influential book, she draws on memories of her childhood to describe the psychological and moral cost of the powerful, contradictory rules about sin, sex, and segregation—the intricate system of taboos—that undergirded Southern society.

When LAPD Homicide detective Marcy Kendrick and her partner Angel Reyes investigate the bizarre death of a drug dealer in an abandoned warehouse, they discover he was waterboarded—with baptismal water. As the death toll continues to rise, it becomes clear the killer is on a religious mission. It's the kind of sensational case the press loves, and they make the most of it, stirring up a frenzy, dubbing the killer the Templar.

Long before Delaney McPhearson learned of her destiny, a brave group of women defended a heritage that would one day aid us all. The history of the forces working to protect the world extends far beyond the time of Delaney McPhearson. One of the first tests of those chosen to defend the good in the New World dates back to one of the uglier times in American history: the Salem Witch Trials.

When Sheriff Red Hammergren welcomes billionaire Vance Judson back to Lykkins Lake for his high school reunion, his return stirs up more than nostalgia—it unearths old grudges, long-buried betrayals, and a reckoning sixty years in the making. At the same time, a young podcaster, drawn to whispers of an unsolved hit-and-run from the same era, begins asking questions—questions that cut too close to the truth and put a target on her back.

Out of print for two decades, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, the explosive international bestseller, is back with a new foreword analyzing the unprecedented impact it had on the lesbian community and mainstream culture. In new afterwords, the coeditors reveal how the book came to be and what...

In a trio of popular gender rituals—sorority rush, beauty pageants, and the Confederate Pageant of the Natchez (Mississippi) Pilgrimage—young white southern women have readily ditched contemporary modes of dress and comportment for performances of purity, gentility, and deference. Clearly, the ability to "do" white southern womanhood, convincingly and on cue, has remained a valued performance. Based on ethnographic research and taped interviews, Southern Beauty goes behind the scenes of the three rituals to explore the motivations and rewards associated with participation.

They seemed like ordinary housewives. Until the killing started. When a woman from an affluent LA neighborhood is brutally murdered, Detective Marcy Kendrick and her partner Angel Reyes are sent to investigate. And soon discover that the victim is no ordinary housewife. She is one of several wealthy women who are connected to organized shoplifting rings—they receive stolen goods from the gangs, then sell the merchandise through online "discount" stores.

Marcy Kendrick is a cop with a body count. A successful detective in LAPD Homicide, she is infamous for one thing: killing three serial killers before they could be brought to trial. Marcy knows her actions were in self-defense, but her coworkers can't help wondering if she is on some kind of vendetta—because Marcy's own mother was brutally murdered by a serial killer. Is this her way of getting payback? Adding to the pressure on Marcy, her ex-husband, Jordan Brasswell, has just been promoted over her, and seems determined to keep her under a microscope.

'The queen of atmospheric suspense' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'A top tier thriller' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Impossible to put down' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Twenty years ago, Harper's grandmother died suspiciously in her huge Victorian house on Lake Twilight while in her care...

Told against the backdrop of the deprivation of World War I, the tragedies of the influenza epidemic, and the burden of generations of betrayal, That Pinson Girl unfolds in lyrical, unflinching prose, engaging the timeless issues of racism, sexism, and poverty.

Negative, broken, lie-filled sentences fill your head as you work, play, and go about your life. These scripts are sidelining you, maligning you, harming you. What if there were another way? What if your life didn't have to be defined by what others say? Or even by what you say to yourself over and over? What if you knew that beauty and life are yours to be found and you finally danced in the freedom that awaits you? There is more for you, friend—so much more.

No one is at all sure what a book wraith might be, but whatever it is definitely has the battered tomes in the Library of the Sapphire Wind very worried indeed. Figuring out what a book wraith could be is hardly the least of the challenges that the newly formed House of Rough Diamonds will face as the motley assortment of members-including three women who are literally "out of this world"-attempt to secure ownership of the Library.

This compelling and compassionate mystery takes place in the quirky island town of Key West, Florida, where 21-year-old Jillian Dougherty, a newly graduated Boston nursing school student away from home for the first time, finds herself completely absorbed into the island's homeless population. Meet the island inhabitants that live under the bridges, behind the hedges, and on the edge of sanity in this tourist-island mecca.

Vincent was on the hunt. His sister was still on the run. First, on a job to the alien planet Viridian and then beyond. It didn't make any sense. Wasn't one alien world enough? Not for Helen. She discovered a vast network of worlds connected through a system called The World Engine, and she was on the move. Looking for a way past the gravity well, keeping her ship stranded on Viridian. She was out there searching, and he was nipping at her heels.

What could possibly go wrong in a wealthy matriarch's country home when her dilettante son, his restless wife, and his widowed brother live there together? Strong Passions, rooted in the beguiling times of Edith Wharton's "old New York," recounts the true story of a tumultuous marriage.

Facing execution, or worse, at the Agency, Sebastian Parker's life hangs in the balance. As Sebastian grows in power, he learns shocking truths about his true identity and his ultimate destiny. Will he assist the Agency in their battles? Are they fighting the real enemy? Can Sebastian evade his terrifying fate?

In the company of the "inquisitors," Xerak, Grunwold, and Vereez, the three newly appointed mentors rediscovered the Library of the Sapphire Wind, and, within it, revelations that transformed the young people's pasts into a vast tangle of lies and half-truths. But there are still questions to be answered. Before they are done, Meg the retired librarian, Teg the archeologist-turned-mage, and the multi-talented, ever surprising Peg will deal with kidnappings, betrayal, arcane artifacts, romantic intrigues, and the inescapable reality that past lives cast long shadows.