Showing results by narrator "Sarah Naughton" in All Categories

Julia Derks loves the small town of Mapleton where she grew up and launched her business, On Deck Café. What Julia doesn’t love is change. So when a smooth-talking stranger arrives with plans to develop the site of Mapleton’s cherished, shuttered paper mill, she doesn’t even try to hide her contempt. First impressions aren’t everything, though.

Darby Thorne is a college student stranded by a blizzard at a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere. She’s on the way home to see her sick mother. She’ll have to spend the night in the rest stop with four complete strangers. Then she stumbles across a little girl locked inside one of their parked cars. There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, no way out because of the snow, and she doesn’t know which one of the other travelers is the kidnapper.

What you see isn’t always what you get. Take Ainsley. The gorgeous mother of two lives a picture-perfect life with her husband, Ben—aspiring politician and heir to a candy fortune—in suburban Washington, DC. But in reality, Ainsley has no idea what she’s doing and is terrified someone will figure out who she really is and where she came from.

In 1625, the Franconian village of Eisbach has been plagued by disease, famine, heinous crimes, and a merciless winter. Katarin Jaspers is the maidservant to the enigmatic Reverend Zacharias Engel, appointed by Rome to cure the village of suspected diabolism and save every God-fearing soul.

Trapped in a dead-end town, Justin Warren has had his life defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents. The unsolved crime happened long before Justin was born, but the ripple effects are still felt after thirty-eight years. Justin always knew he wouldn’t have much of a future. He just never imagined that his life might take him backward.

Josie Bianci was killed years ago on a train during a terrorist attack. Gone forever. It’s what her sister, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, has always believed. Yet all it takes is a few heart-wrenching seconds to upend Kit’s world. Live coverage of a club fire in Auckland has captured the image of a woman stumbling through the smoke and debris. Her resemblance to Josie is unbelievable. And unmistakable. With it comes a flood of emotions - grief, loss, and anger - that Kit finally has a chance to put to rest: by finding the sister who’s been living a lie.

When Isabel Marshall moved away from her hometown with hopes of making a name for herself in Los Angeles, she didn’t mean to abandon her roots, but that’s what happened. Now, four years later and having amassed an interior design empire, Isabel must return to Mapleton to film a home renovation special for her TV show. While most of the village welcomes her with open arms, her family and the ex-boyfriend she left in her dust are another story.

Florida journalism undergrad Rebecca Sorley is like any other college student. She tries to keep up with her studies, her friends, and her hot-tempered roommate, Ellie, who regularly courts trouble with the law. When a male student's remains are found in alligator-infested waters, the university warns students to stay away from the reptiles. But then a second body shows up, and the link is undeniable. Both men belonged to the same fraternity and had a reputation for preying on and hurting women.

Agent Sydney Swift is going home for the holidays. She's just discovered that her younger sister, Calla, is engaged to Johnny Jones - the heir to the nation's most notorious crime dynasty - and she's determined to stop their perfect winter wedding at any cost. But gathering incriminating evidence on Johnny isn't as easy as she'd hoped, especially as her biggest obstacle is Nick, his infuriatingly handsome and charming bodyguard! As Sydney spends more time with Nick, lines begin to blur, and while seducing him to gather intel was bad enough, falling for him is even worse.

Lucy Marshall has hit rock bottom. After failing to succeed as a single mom in Atlanta, she’s back home and moving in with her older brother, Drew. Reconnecting with her support system is the right thing to do, but Lucy can’t help but feel like a failure. Her four-year-old son deserves the world, and all she can give him is a spare bedroom. But Drew is the sweetest uncle, and some quality time might be exactly what they both need to start fresh. That is until she meets Cooper, her brother’s incredibly hot best friend.

For her sixth birthday, Fiona Campbell’s mother, Claire, made her a peace-sign piñata filled with wishes for a better planet instead of candy. When she got her period, her mother held a womanhood ceremony at their café and invited the neighborhood. On her 16th birthday, they celebrated with a drum circle. Fiona grew up trying to keep the impulsive Claire in check and their struggling café afloat. She plans to move out, but first she must find a way to stop a big corporation from tearing down their business and destroying her mother’s livelihood.

Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they're very different women - the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite - they're each other's rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat's financier husband, Howard, plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion. Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully, and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up.

After a reminder goes off for the Caribbean sailing trip Anna was supposed to take with her fiancé, she impulsively goes to sea in the sailboat he left her, intending to complete the voyage alone. But after a treacherous night’s sail, she realizes she can’t do it by herself and hires Keane, a professional sailor, to help.

It's been years since Zoe Fairchild has been to the small Devon village of her birth, but the wounds she suffered there still ache. When she learns that her old friend and grandmother's caretaker has gone missing, Zoe and her fifteen-year-old daughter return to England to help. Zoe dreads seeing her estranged mother, who left when Zoe was seven to travel the world. As the four generations of women reunite, the emotional pain of the past is awakened. And to complicate matters further, Zoe must also confront the ex-boyfriend she betrayed many years before.

Mia is reluctant to go camping with her boyfriend and sister, who are graduate students working on a dissertation about American folklore. But ultimately, they convince her to help document the trip. The group sets off to Black Creek, a remote destination in the Pacific Northwest where Bigfoot has allegedly been sighted. They think they’re prepared for anything, but their sense of terror grows as they find more and more evidence to suggest the monster really is out there. Eventually, Mia realizes she’ll be lucky just to make it out of the woods alive.

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: the call that comes in the middle of the night. When Kat Jenkins awakens to the police on her doorstep, her greatest fear is realized. Her nine-year-old son, Ethan, is missing - vanished from the cabin where he’d been on an overnight class trip. Shocked and distraught, Kat rushes to the campground, but she’s too late; the authorities have returned from their search empty-handed after losing Ethan’s trail in the mountain forest.

Celia Fairchild, known as advice columnist "Dear Calpurnia", has insight into everybody’s problems—except her own. Still bruised by the end of a marriage she thought was her last chance to create a family, Celia receives an unexpected answer to a “Dear Birthmother” letter. Celia throws herself into proving she’s a perfect adoptive mother material—with a stable home and income—only to lose her job. Her one option: sell the Charleston house left to her by her recently departed, estranged Aunt Calpurnia.

The future doesn’t just happen.... Somebody has to build it. Martin L. Shoemaker, author of "Today I Am Paul", presents stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary work. Planning, exploring, constructing...living and growing and dying...across the Solar System.

Recalling the great muckrakers of the past, an outraged team of America's best-selling writers unite to confront the disasters of wrongful convictions. Wrongful convictions, long regarded as statistical anomalies in an otherwise sound justice system, now appear with frightening regularity. But few people understand just how or why they happen and, more important, the immeasurable consequences that often haunt the lucky few who are acquitted years after they are proven innocent.

Rachel Vinson is a bridesmaid for hire: part confidante, part wedding planner, and one hundred percent pretend BFF. Discretion guaranteed. Her next gig is a destination wedding - livestreamed and sponsored - for an Instagram influencer. That means a paradise of new contacts, which could be a boon to her already booming business. If Rachel can keep the very handsome and slightly too interested best man at bay, that is.