Showing results by narrator "Elisabeth Rodgers" in All Categories

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, 20-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer - his "Keltjin potatoes" are justifiably famous - has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.

Despite her famous pseudonym, no one knows the truth about “Jane Roe”, Norma McCorvey (1947-2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1970 opened a great fracture in American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent years with Norma, discovered her personal papers, a previously unseen trove, and witnessed her final moments. With an explosive revelation at the core of the case, he tells her full story for the first time.

With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for the perfect murder. But the outsize influence that gardens and gardening have had on the mystery genre has been underappreciated. Now, Marta McDowell, a writer and gardener with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, illuminates the many ways in which our greatest mystery writers, from Edgar Allen Poe to authors on today’s bestseller lists, have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardens.

Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy Seal Joe Quinn are about to give Seth Caleb their trust for the most important duty of his life: keeping their daughter, Jane, safe at any cost. Her talent as an artist has caught the attention of a brilliant psychopath with a violent past. Seth, Jane's strongest ally and fiercest protector, is determined to keep her out of danger, but that becomes nearly impossible when Jane is forced to take matters into her own hands and confronts the madman who wants her for himself...and wants Seth Caleb dead.

Transitions of the Heart is the first collection to ever invite mothers of transgender and gender variant children of all ages to tell their own stories about their child’s gender transition. Often transitioning socially and emotionally alongside their child but rarely given a voice in the experience, mothers hold the key to familial and societal understanding of gender difference.

With $1,500 and no business experience, Mel and Patricia Ziegler turned a wild idea into a company that would become the international retail colossus Banana Republic. Reimagining military surplus as safari and expedition wear, the former journalist and artist created a world that captured the zeitgeist for a generation and spoke to the creativity, adventure, and independence in everyone.

It is the turn of the 18th century in Frankfurt, Germany, and young Gutle and Meir Amschel Rothschild struggle to establish themselves in the cramped, restricted Judengasse. But when Meir’s talents as a novice banker catch the attention of a German prince, Meir is afforded entrée into the European world of finance and nobility, and the Rothschilds’ lives are changed forever. As proud as Gutle is of her husband’s success, she is also cautious - very much aware of the fact that her husband’s rise is tied to his patrons’ willingness to “see past” his Jewishness.

Three hundred years ago, accused witch Hester Warren buried a magical box in Mystic Notch. The secret contents within have the power to bring disaster to the town, and when the box is dug up at a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Mystic Notch Historical Museum, Hester's ghost and that of her cat make an appearance to warn the humans and enlist their help to ensure the box doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Too bad the only one listening is Pandora, the cat.

The Girls is a profound exploration of trust, ambition, betrayal, and self-discovery. Award-winning journalist Abigail Pesta unveils this deeply reported narrative at a time when the nation is wrestling with the implications of the MeToo movement. How do the women who grew up with Nassar reconcile the monster in the news with the man they once trusted? In The Girls, we learn that their answers to that wrenching question are as rich, insightful, and varied as the human experience itself.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for - but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important - so terrifying - that they will exterminate anyone in their way.

The Bonobo Sisterhood is a revolutionary call to action for women and their allies to protect one another from patriarchal violence. Internationally recognized legal expert Diane L. Rosenfeld introduces us to a groundbreaking new model of female solidarity; one that promises to thwart sexual coercion. Urgent, timely, and original, The Bonobo Sisterhood harnesses the power of the #MeToo movement into a road map for sex equality in humans.

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to end all traffic between the city’s two halves: the democratic west and the communist east. The iconic symbol of a divided Europe, the Wall became a focus of western political pressure on East Germany; as Ronald Reagan’s famously said in a 1987 speech in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows.

We are at the threshold of the new roaring twenties—a resurgent era of technology-driven advancement with greater financial equality and economic expansion. Not unlike the famed decade of the previous century, our next ten years will be filled with striking cultural shifts, new challenges, and, ultimately, abundant financial opportunities. Paul Zane Pilzer sees a better world on the horizon. In The New Roaring Twenties, he imparts inspiration and a new template for escaping the shadow of a global pandemic, with all its fallout, and stepping into the resplendent possibilities of the future.

Grace Smith has never been one to conform to society’s expectations. She flees small-town Indiana to seek adventure—and finds more than she bargained for when she’s hired by an eccentric millionaire to learn codebreaking. Soon she’s using those skills to help head the government’s fledgling cryptanalysis unit.

Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.

It's been four months since the events of Sight Unseen, and Kendra Michaels is obsessed with trying to track down serial killer Eric Colby. Despite his apparent execution at San Quentin, Kendra is convinced that Colby is still alive. The trouble is, she can't prove it. Even her razor-sharp powers of observation, honed while blind during the first twenty years of her life, have gotten her nowhere. So no one believes her.

Wandering through the snowy woods in the mountains near her home, Angela Constantine stumbles upon a wolf feeding on the body of a murdered young woman. That discovery is only the start of her problems. Throw a blind evangelist and his mute sister into the mix, and New York Times best-selling author Terry Goodkind has concocted another irresistible cocktail of suspense, a tale where the difference between life and death dances on the edge of a razor-sharp blade. Trouble’s Child set in the world of the novel The Girl in the Moon.

When recently widowed Maggie McElroy is called to China to settle a claim against her late husbands estate, she is blindsided by the discovery that he may have led a double life. Since work is all that will keep her sane, her magazine editor assigns her to profile Sam, a half-Chinese American who is the last in a line of gifted chefs tracing back to the imperial palace. As she watches Sam gear up for Chinas Olympic culinary competition by planning the banquet of a lifetime, she begins to see past the cuisines artistry to glimpse its coherent expression of Chinese civilization.

In this astonishing debut, the venerable but gossipy New York literary scene is twisted into a claustrophobic fun house of paranoia, horror, and wickedly dark humor. George March’s latest novel is a smash. No one is prouder than Mrs. March, his doting wife. But one morning, the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that his protagonist is based on Mrs. March herself. Clutching her ostrich-leather pocketbook, she flees, that one casual remark destroying her belief that she knew everything about her husband - as well as herself.