Showing results by narrator "Amy Melissa Bentley" in All Categories

Seventh-grader Zoey has her hands full as she takes care of her much younger siblings after school every day while her mom works her shift at the pizza parlor. Not that her mom seems to appreciate it. At least there's Lenny, her mom's boyfriend - they all get to live in his nice, clean trailer. At school, Zoey tries to stay under the radar. Her only friend, Fuchsia, has her own issues, and since they're in an entirely different world than the rich kids, it's best if no one notices them. Zoey thinks how much easier everything would be if she were an octopus.

I wasn't supposed to kiss my best friend's sister when I was a college senior and she was barely eighteen... and I'm definitely not supposed to kiss her again now that she's my assistant.

Jace is back in Ridgewater and confident he's over Alyssa. After all, she's moving on with his best friend and doesn't seem to remember their kiss from last summer—the one he hasn't been able to forget. But if she's happy, he's happy. Or so he tells himself. But when his best friend offers Jace a chance to win her back without ruining their friendship, it's an offer he can't resist. One week to charm Alyssa and if he succeeds, his best friend will step aside.

Follow the aroma of shamrock sugar cookies to the Beacon Bakeshop, a lighthouse on the shores of Lake Michigan where amateur sleuth Lindsey Bakewell is busy preparing for Beacon Harbor's St. Patrick's Day festivities—with a little help from her adorable Newfoundland, Wellington, of course!

Lindsey prefers to keep her bakeshop's Halloween decor light and autumnal, rather than gruesome and ghoulish. But everyone knows her lighthouse home is haunted. Some intrepid teens have even tried to break in to witness the resident ghost themselves. Dreading Halloween night, Lindsey reluctantly allows her influencer and podcaster best friend, Kennedy, to host a live ghost hunting investigation in the lighthouse, conducted by a professional team. Protective of her ghost, Lyndsey is understandably nervous about what they might uncover.

When Juniper Wilder’s grief spiraled into addiction, leading first to an arrest for drunk driving, then jail and court-ordered rehab, she lost the most important thing in her life: her baby girl. Now, sober and on probation, Junie is determined to prove she can be the mother Fern deserves. But she’s burned a lot of bridges, ones that can’t be easily rebuilt. Not every road is closed to her, however.

Maddie James has finally given in to her friend Katrina's pleas to open up her cat cafe to more than 10 felines: They're now up to 15 purring friends. In fact, JJ's House of Purrs is making such a splash that she's getting national attention. The East Coast Animal Rescue League is quite interested in the cafe, and so Maddie accepts a request to meet with Laverne Gardner, the executive director. But Laverne ends up strangled with a fancy cat leash - a piece of swag they were intending to use for the fundraiser - leaving Maddie with a lot of questions to answer.

Benjamin Church came to the Grange Hall expecting to meet someone else, but then the girl in the red dress looked across the dance floor and smiled.... Passing Through Perfect is a heart-wrenching Southern family saga that starts on the night Benjamin falls madly in love with Delia. Once he tastes the sweetness of her kiss, he envisions them spending the rest of their life together. He doesn't stop to consider that her daddy is a learned Pastor, and her mama a woman with a college degree; he knows only that she sets his heart to racing.

Hattie Walker dreams of becoming a painter, while her parents want her to settle down. As a compromise, they give her two months to head to Denver and place her works in an exhibition or give up the dream forever. Her journey is derailed when a gunman attacks her stagecoach, leaving her to be rescued by a group of Arapaho, but she's too terrified to recognize them as friendly.

Maddie is hoping to have some downtime during Daybreak Island's off-season to tackle her to-do list. Her grandfather's house-turned-cat-cafe is under construction, and she's also scoping out places to open a juice bar on the island. On top of that, her relationship with adorable dog groomer Lucas has taken a pawsitive turn. But easy is getting harder every day for Maddie, especially when a big-name writer who's on the island working on a new project winds up floating in the canal.

Maddie James has big plans for the summer season at JJ’s House of Purrs. But when her friend, master meditator and Tai Chi teacher Cass Hendricks, brings a potential animal hoarding situation to her attention, Maddie has to refocus her attention on the furry felines who may need a helping paw.

Everyone has three lives. A public life, a private life, and a secret life. I'm a junior in high school, and yet, I've never been on a date. Everybody says it's because my overprotective brothers scare all the guys away, but I can't help wondering if there's something wrong with me. That is, until I hear a rumor that I'm secretly dating my brothers' best friend. What?

Lively, determined, and independent, Poppy Christner isn't about to let some vandal keep making mischief on her family's farm. She's been outrunning boys and standing up for picked on children ever since she was a girl - no matter how much her prideful, arrogant schoolmate Luke Bontranger insulted her. So Poppy certainly doesn't need his interference now, especially since he's made it plain he prefers demure, ladylike companions.

It was the early 1900s when Obadiah (Oba) and Merriweather's (May's) parents died tragically, leaving them orphans at ten and eleven years old. When none of their nearby relations volunteer to take them in, they are set on a train to Arkansas to go live on their Amish aunt and uncle's cotton farm. Once there, it didn't take long to discover they would be treated cruelly, no matter what they did. May, always anxious to be a godly young lady, took on more and more responsibility, trying desperately to keep the peace and convince her older brother not to run away.

After a career on Wall Street, Lindsey is making a different kind of dough in a pretty lakeside village, and the upcoming blueberry festival—including the pie-eating contest her bakery is hosting—is the highlight of the summer. But soon Beacon Harbor runs into a patch of trouble. A local real estate agent gets pranked. A parade float gets pelted with water balloons. It's all laughed off until the stunts start escalating—and looking more like sabotage.

When my math tutor made me sign a contract promising I wouldn't fall in love with him, I thought he was joking. He wasn't. Yes, Carter Hastings is the prince of Eden Falls Academy—one of the most beautiful humans on earth—and boy, does he know it. But I can use this to my advantage. Since I basically signed a paper saying I'd never catch feelings for him, it makes my plan even more perfect. So I offer him a deal: a fake relationship.

Classic movie buff Bailey "Mink" Rydell has spent months crushing on a witty film geek she only knows online by "Alex". Two coasts separate the teens until Bailey moves in with her dad, who lives in the same California surfing town as her online crush. Faced with doubts (what if he's a creep in real life - or worse?), Bailey doesn't tell Alex she's moved to his hometown. Or that she's landed a job at the local tourist-trap museum. Or that she's being heckled daily by the irritatingly hot museum security guard, Porter Roth - a.k.a. her new arch-nemesis.

In 1969 Dixie Dupree is 11 years old and already an expert liar. Sometimes the lies are for her mama Evie's sake - to explain away a bruise brought on by her quick-as-lightning temper. And sometimes the lies are to spite Evie, who longs to leave her unhappy marriage in Perry County, Alabama, and return to her beloved New Hampshire. But for Dixie and her brother, Alabama is home, a place of pine-scented breezes and hot, languid afternoons.

Inspired by true events, a thrilling Depression-era novel from the author of The Librarian of Burned Books about a woman’s quest to uncover a mystery surrounding a local librarian and the Boxcar Library—a converted mining train that brought books to isolated rural towns in Montana. When...

When 16-year-old, Ashlyn Brooks, runs into a sweet British guy in the dark Chemistry lab, she has no idea she's actually sitting in the pitch black room with her longtime rival, Luke Davenport. She also doesn't know that she's stepped into another one of the football captain's pranks. It isn't long before she's sharing things she's never told anyone, and starting to fall for the mysterious guy with a sexy accent who seems to understand her in a way no one ever has before.