Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Woodward" in All Categories

There’s something in Jack’s past she doesn’t want to face, an evil presence that forever changed the trajectory of her family. It all began when the Toy Thief appeared, a being drawn by goodness and innocence, eager to feed on everything Jack holds dear. What began as a mystery spirals out of control when her brother, Andy, is taken away in the night, and Jack must venture into the dark place where the toys go to get him back. But even if she finds him, will he ever be the same?

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

Great friends. Amazing Apartment. An incredible job. Paige has ticked off every box on her 'perfect New York life' checklist. Until disaster strikes, and instead of shimmying further up the career ladder, Paige is packing up her desk. Her brother's best friend, Jake, might be the only person who can help her put her life back together. He also happens to be the boy she spent her teen years pining after, and Paige is determined not to repeat her past mistakes.

When her father and stepmother are found brutally murdered on a summer morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden - thirty-two years old and still living at home - immediately becomes a suspect. But after a notorious trial, she is found innocent, and no one is ever convicted of the crime. Meanwhile, others in the claustrophobic Borden household have their own motives and their own stories to tell....

When a man is found gruesomely murdered in the local pub, all fingers point to the backpackers working behind the bar that night—two American girls who skipped town before the body was discovered. Despite all the evidence against them, rookie cop Tara Harrison knows there must be more to this case than a pair of sorority sisters who couldn't take a joke. She's determined to uncover the truth, and is soon on the trail of a devastating secret that could tear her hometown apart.

On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother's home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. 'Home' is the sprawling Italian castle of Roccasinibalda, and Diana's mother is the legendary Caresse Crosby, one half of literature's most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of Harry Crosby, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the Lost Generation.

He'd noticed her across a crowded room, and in that instant Sheikh Shaheen wanted her. With just a few words, Shaheen had his mystery woman in his bed, where she awakened passions he'd long denied. Then the sheikh discovered his lover's true identity. She was Johara, his childhood friend, now fully blossomed into a vision he could not do without. But his lineage demanded he take a wife of the throne's choosing. Anything else would have catastrophic results.

Erica Cantelli feels weighed down and it has nothing to do with the extra pounds she's trying to lose. Juggling a successful career with two children and a deadweight husband, most days can feel she's biting off more than she can chew. In fact fantasising about getting rid of her increasingly disinterested husband is just about all that keeps Erica sane. That and daydreaming about the incredibly handsome new school Principal, Julian Foxham. So when her husband jokes about trading her for a size 0 model, Erica knows something has to change.

Rose Anderson is done with being known as "the nice one" in the small town where she lives. She’s done with playing third, fifth, or seventh wheel at loud gatherings on her family’s flower farm. And most of all, she is done with the pitying looks she gets about her single status from the way-too-interested townsfolk. Busy with her flower-arranging business, Rose has no time for a man, thank you very much. And it has nothing to do with the scars she still nurses from her last breakup. So when she meets Cole McKittrick, Rose gets an idea.

On a cold day in 1997, student Sara Morgan was killed in the woods surrounding her liberal-arts college in upstate New York. Her boyfriend, Blake Campbell, confessed, only to be acquitted following a plea of temporary insanity. In the wake of this senseless act of violence, the case comes to haunt a strange and surprising network of community members, from the young woman who discovers Sara’s body to the junior reporter who senses its connection to convicted local serial killer John Logan.

On August 4, 1892 Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. During the inquest into the deaths, Lizzie Borden was arrested and charged with the murder of her father and her stepmother. Through the eyes of Lizzie's sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, the enigmatic stranger Benjamin and the beguiling Lizzie herself, we return to what happened that day in Fall River. Lizzie Borden took an axe. Or did she?

As penance for a bet, millionaire Rafe King must complete one job as an everyday carpenter. And that’s when he hit the jackpot – an introduction to Katie Charles. With every word, every touch, the sweet, sexy lady made Rafe feel like more than the cold-hearted tycoon he was reputed to be. There was only one problem: Katie despised all wealthy men, especially the King family. But if he kept this secret, it might cost him…everything.

When the Bergamots move to a well-to-do neighbourhood, they're unsure how well they'll adapt. Soon though, Richard is consumed by his new role and Liz is hectically playing mother to 4-year-old Coco and 15 year-old Jake. But the day Jake unthinkingly forwards his friends a sexually-explicit email from a young girl is the last day of the Bergamots' comfortable existence. Faced with impossible choices, what Richard and Liz do next risks destroying not only their marriage, their daughter, and their place in the community, but also Jake - the child they have set out to protect.

Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of Maria von Trapp: a novice nun sent to teach a widowed baron's sickly child. Yet much of Maria's life will have to be reinvented for THE SOUND OF MUSIC. When Maria sees the script that is supposedly based on her life, she becomes so incensed that she sets off to confront Hammerstein in person. Told that he's busy, she is asked to express her concerns to his secretary Fran instead. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship as Maria tells Fran about her life.

A young woman struggles to finish her PhD on stars and galaxies. Instead, she obsessively tracks the experience of her own body, listening to its functions and rhythms, finally locating in its patterns the beginning of illness and instability. As she discovers the precarity of her self, she begins to turn her attention to the distant orbits of her family members, each moving away from the familial system and each so different in their experiences, but somehow made similar in their shared history of illness and trauma, both political and personal.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole and Linda Porter, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos - all are summer guests of Gerald and Sara Murphy. Visionary, misunderstood, and from vastly different backgrounds, the Murphys met and married young and set forth to create a beautiful world. They alight on Villa America: their coastal oasis of artistic genius, debauched parties, impeccable style, and flamboyant imagination.

In the title story, we meet Maya, who is torn between her wryly funny boyfriend and the allure of her veterinarian. In "Andorra," a woman's lover calls her every Thursday as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counselling. "How to Give the Wrong Impression" shows us a woman pining for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tell her that her palm is sweaty.

The perfect family. On the perfect night. About to become trapped in the perfect crime. Will and Karen Jennings have it all. From modest beginnings they have built the life of their dreams and they share it with their beloved five-year-old daughter, Abby. But now, they have been targeted by John Hickey, the genius who has found the key to perfecting one of the oldest crimes in the world. Kidnapping.

Abby Jones, a young nanny from a small town outside Boston, is the last person with infant Jacob Rotterdam when he becomes seriously ill. Within hours, tragically, he dies, and Abby is charged with his murder. Heather Baxter, her defense attorney, knows the case is not as clear cut as the Assistant District Attorney claims, and with enormous media attention on the trial, the stakes couldn't be higher.

‘Should come with a warning…highly addictive.’ Karin Slaughter. When prep school junior Julia Whitmire is found dead in the bathtub of her family’s Upper East Side apartment, her left wrist slashed and suicide note resting on her dresser, Ellie Hatcher and her partner, J.J. Rogan initially write the case off as a suicide.