Showing results by narrator "Paige McKinney" in All Categories

Hit woman and thief Reed Gable works for the highest bidder, no matter where the job takes her. An orphan of circumstance, Reed knows the streets of Las Vegas better than anyone. Growing up rough has gotten her to the top of her profession, and she plans to stay there. Accountant Brinley Myers, a recent hire at the Moroccan Casino, discovers a money laundering operation orchestrated by the New York mob, and suddenly, her life and the people in it become collateral damage.

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human. Shannon Reed, a longtime teacher, lifelong reader, and New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind, she makes the case that we should read for pleasure above all else.

As New Orleans recovers from Hurricane Katrina, Detective Sept Savoie recovers from a gunshot wound with the help of her new love Keegan Blanchard. As the city returns to normal, so does the crime rate. Sept’s first case back on the job is a strangely ritualistic killing, which quickly escalates into serial murder. As the bodies start to pile up, the last thing Sept needs is the city’s newest celebrity crime writer, Nicole Voles, poking into the case looking for information for a new bestseller, especially when Nicole appears just as interested in Keegan as she is in murder.

Cain Casey is close to getting everything she wants. Her partner Emma is pregnant with their third child, her children are safe and happy, and her business is still thriving despite the FBI's vendetta. Life is perfect on the surface, but it's the underbelly that worries her.

Accountant and financial advisor Lacey Chamberlain doesn't consider herself a control freak. She's merely a planner-orderly, neat, and content in her tidy little life. When a marketing firm moves into the empty office next door, the loud-music-playing, stinky-food-ordering, kickball-in-the-hall staff make Lacey crazy. Marketing expert Alicia Wright is spontaneous, flies by the seat of her pants, and lives in the moment-all the things Lacey is not. She's also gorgeous, thoughtful, and seems determined to make Lacey like her. They say opposites attract, but for how long? And is that really a good idea?

At age 13, Major Wiley Gremillion sat with Aubrey Tarver under their dragon tree, sure of her future. She'd share her life with Aubrey and continue her family's tradition of military service. But as a sniper with Special Forces, code name Black Dragon, her enemies cost her a future with Aubrey. Walking away was the only way to keep Aubrey whole. Now retired, Wiley knows she'll be alone, dividing her time between her canvasses and helping others with her unique military skill set.

Commander Berkley Levine is content with her life as a Top Gun instructor in Fallon, Nevada, flying F-18s for the Navy and trying to get over the death of her sister. A change of government and a new equality initiative place Captain Aidan Sullivan at the helm of the Navy's newest carrier, the USS Jefferson. Her first mission could have serious international consequences if she fails. Aidan's orders are to destroy two sites housing the nuclear program of an unfriendly nation, and she can think of only one person she trusts enough to get the job done: her old lover Berkley.

It's business as usual for crime boss Cain Casey as she maneuvers to form an alliance with the Jatibon organization and secure peace among the ruling families in New Orleans. Cain's new associate Remington Jatibon is a lot like Cain used to be - a playgirl with a passion for bedding beautiful women and an even greater passion for expanding her father's empire, on both sides of the law. When Remi meets Dallas Montgomery, a budding actress working for the studio Remi's father has just acquired, she finds that there is more to Dallas than is included in her press pages.

Tally Dewilde forges her own path when she chooses to go into veterinary medicine and ignores her mother’s desire that she establish a boutique clinic for the pets of the wealthy in Manhattan. When she arrives in rural Upstate New York to join Sydney Valentine’s animal hospital, the break with her old life seems complete on every level. Until an unwelcome reminder of the painful past arrives at her door in the form of Roman Ashcroft.

Dr. Bennett Anderson accepts a short-term contract at a rural medical center to fill the gap year, before taking the high-profile job she’d put on hold while chasing a dream that had slipped away. In a deep-rooted community where everyone seems to know everyone else, Ben is an odditya stranger just passing through with no plans to build any ties.

Between ruling the night shift in the ER at the Rivers and raising her teenage daughter, Blaise Richelieu has all the drama she needs in her life. When a dashing young attending appears on the scene and relentlessly pursues her, Blaise has plenty of reasons to say no - or at least she tells herself she does, despite Grady’s nearly irresistible charm. Even if Blaise had the slightest desire to play Grady’s game, the past she’s kept hidden from everyone is a secret she intends to keep buried.

Six months after Hurricane Katrina has devastated most of New Orleans, detective Sept Savoie is battling the nightmare of everything the storm has taken from her when a brutalized body turns up behind one of New Orleans's most famous restaurants, which is run by Keegan Blanchard. The more Sept works through the clues, the more they point to Keegan, which makes the relationship growing between them anything but love at first sight. The first death is only the beginning, though, as the miles of deserted neighborhoods Katrina left behind provide the perfect stage for murder.

Jay "Flash" Reynolds has a brilliant future as a trauma surgeon until a truck on a rainy night changes her life. Assistant chief medical examiner Olivia Price is more at ease with the dead than the living - at least the dead never lie. All she needs to do is listen to their stories. What she doesn't need is a surly new resident who would rather be somewhere else. Two women, one with a damaged body, the other a damaged spirit, challenge each other to dare to live again.

Levi Montbard loves history and isn’t afraid to search it out no matter where it takes her. A scroll she acquires to sell in Montbard’s Antiquities in New Orleans leads Levi on an adventure that will take her from London to Morocco, by way of the Sahara Desert. A story of a female Templar Knight should sound like a hoax, but to Levi the new information rings true. Proving the scroll accurate becomes an obsession. She’ll stop at nothing to uncover the truth.

Emma Verde has left everything behind in Wisconsin to attend Tulane in New Orleans. She sees an opportunity to make enough money for the coming semester when she lands a job at an Irish pub in the French Quarter. That job soon spirals into something else. That’s the story we know, but this is the tale of how Cain and Emma fell in love, and their history proves that love was the only thing that saved the heart of the devil.

The last time Brody Clark left the Rivers, she walked away from her life. For 10 years she'd told herself there was nothing in her past she cared about - not the family who'd given her a home or the one girl she never stopped thinking about. But now she’s back...Brody figures cutting her ties to the past would be a hell of a lot easier if she could only avoid the woman she’s never been able to forget. When their lives collide, both women discover what might have been is closer than they think.

Jane Dunne has a future in Hollywood. After years of striving, she’s finally landed a juicy part on Valentine Valley, the highest-rated soap on daytime TV. Fame will be hers, no matter whom she has to hurt to get it. But fate, it seems, has other plans. As Jane readies for her first close-up, a stage light falls from above, breaking Jane’s neck on her first day of work. The tragedy shocks the set, and terrifies Valentine Valley star Serena McCormack, who fears the deadly blow was meant for her.

A fragile melody of love is played between these damaged souls, a song made sweeter and stronger by the day. But will their blossoming romance be destroyed by an outsider's greed or will it succumb to the discord of Graham's tormented heart? Can Graham find happiness with Anna, caught up in the fiery overtures and darkly gothic strains of Love's Melody Lost?

With the arrival of Courtney Carrington, Margaret's youth sparked into color. But first loves can scar. Margaret hasn't seen Courtney in years and that's for the best. But when Courtney loses her father and returns to Tanner Peak to take control of the family store, Margaret comes face-to-face with her past and the woman she's tried desperately to forget. The fact that Courtney has grown up more beautiful than ever certainly doesn't help matters.

Anything can happen on Valentine Valley. People recover from amnesia, awake from comas, and rise from the dead - all to the delight of the daytime soap’s millions of fans. But while Valentine Valley may be glamorous onscreen, behind the camera the soap’s grueling production schedule punishes actors, directors, and writers in the name of ratings. Soap star Jennifer Connolly is near her breaking point, and a murderer is about to push her over the edge. As Jennifer struggles to care for her ill mother, a serial killer stalks the lot, committing a gory string of murders inspired by classic Hitchcock films.