Showing results by narrator "Hollis McCarthy" in All Categories

In this age of lunchtime lifts, wrinkle-erasing injections, furrow fillers, and lip plumpers, there’s no question that anyone who aims to look younger easily can. But Lauren Kessler wants something more than to follow the cosmetic path to youthfulness. She wants to live with energy, stamina, vitality, resilience, and health for a very, very long time. Her goal: to reverse her biological age from the inside out.

Just when I thought I could take a break from solving murders and sort out my emotions, fate had other plans. Dean, my ex-boyfriend and local chief of police, confessed that he still had feelings for me. Unable to resist our emotional connection, we began meeting in secret around town to talk, but our meetings often led to passionate and guilt-ridden kisses.

Brook Ridge Falls' favorite bakery owner, Lexy Baker, has everything she ever wanted. A new husband she adores. A thriving bakery business. Everything is going great.... Until a new bakery springs up across the street and tries every trick in the book to put her out of business! Lexy smells something rotten about the bakery, and it isn’t just their stale brownies. When her own bakery is broken into, she knows who did it...but what she can’t figure out is why. Could the new baker be after her great-grandmothers prize winning scone recipe, or is there another more sinister reason?

Stealing a code book from an enemy spy should be easy for someone like Frederica Vale. As the plain-looking older sister, she's practically invisible at social events. Never mind that she has no experience as a spy or that the codebook rests in the possession of one of the most powerful men in England. Freddie has no choice - she's desperate to save her young sister from the lecherous intentions of their guardian and recovering the book is her only option.

After a solving the last case in Harland Creek, I was looking forward to some much-needed rest. But that plan goes out the window when I discover that my ex-boyfriend, Dean, has gone missing. Determined to find him, I travel to Tennessee, only to uncover a bigger mystery. A young college student has also disappeared, and the whole campus is on edge.

After Windsor Ebonwood’s love life and successful career as a book conservator vanish in one fell swoop, she’s determined to begin anew. Win moves to Darkly Island off the coast of Louisiana, where she’s been bequeathed an unusual bookshop and a charming home on the edge of a dark swamp. Win gets to work settling into her new life in the sleepy Southern town but discovering Darkly’s heartless town alderman impaled on a gravestone wasn’t on the books. Nor was finding out about her family’s legacy as powerful witches responsible for protecting the bookshop at all costs.

Something’s not right at the local retirement home, Tranquility Terrace. The residents are losing more than their memories—jewelry, watches, and keepsakes are disappearing too. Enter Ray Leonard, a detective who could use a break. His secret weapon? Earl—a snarky cat with a nose for trouble.

Elizabeth was drawn to Malcolm Burns from the first moment she saw him loading cargo onto the ship that would take her to Boston. When she is made to share a room with him for the duration of their voyage, the breeches that protect her female identity do nothing to shield her heart against the growing attraction she feels for her handsome and mysterious cabin mate.

The Earl of Frome gets a shock when a gaggle of nosy bird watchers gang up on him. When one of them winds up dead, it doesn't look good for the Earl. Amateur baker Poppy Wilkinson gets embroiled in yet another murder mystery. It's a good thing she's got witchy powers as she has to solve a murder, try and learn more about her own mysterious beginnings, and turn out a winning cake, because it's cake week in the competition tent.

Caina Amalas cheated death and escaped certain doom. So did her mortal enemy, the sorcerer Cassander Nilas. Now the city of Istarinmul teeters on the brink of civil war and sorcerous annihilation. Unless Caina summons all her bravery and cunning, Cassander's dark spell will kill millions of people. Starting with the people she loves.

My name is Nadia, and I’m a shadow agent of the High Queen of the Elves. I don’t have many friends, but I look after the ones I do have...and I pay my debts. So when Hakon Valborg’s teenaged granddaughter Lydia is arrested for the murder of her computer science teacher, I agree to help. But there’s more going on here than just murder.

My name's Nadia, and I do favors for the High Queen Tarlia of the Elves. Tarlia is not the kind of woman who accepts no for an answer. So when the High Queen orders me to help a top investigator solve a murder, I have to do it. Even though I've spent most of my life on the run from the law. I don't like the investigator, and he doesn't like me. But that doesn't matter, because if we don't work together, the creatures we're hunting will kill us both.

When the patriarch of Moorecliff Manor drops dead at dinner, it’s up to Aunt Araminta and her Siamese cats Arun and Sasha to uncover the identity of the killer. It will be no easy task, as there is no shortage of suspects...including the butler.

Designer Marly West has one reason for taking the job at Draconia Fashions...and it's not to come up with the latest clothing trends. But when she blurts out a good idea in a corporate meeting, she gets exactly what she didn't want...an opportunity of a lifetime. Too bad taking advantage of it might reveal the secret she desperately needs to keep hidden. But it's too late to get out of it now, and she soon finds that she's in over her head with a boardroom full of resentful executives, a hot CEO, and an assistant that wants to make sure Marly doesn't succeed.

The Barrali family has seen its share of scandals. But what of those who work for the famous royals? This collection of three romantic holiday tales takes you to the Barrali Winery, to an elegant royal yacht, and through the palace's secret garden to experience the passions of those who serve.

When a man shows up strangled by his own mummy costume, literally unmasking the killer among the guests proves to be the least of the polices problems. Between overbearing relatives trying to micromanage the investigation to inexplicable events in the library targeting Rory and her family, she finds herself wondering if there was more to the man's death than meets the eye.

In prose vibrant and witty, The Queen of the Tambourine traces the emotional breakdown - and eventual restoration - of Eliza Peabody, a smart and wildly imaginative woman who has become unbearably isolated in her prosperous London neighborhood. Eliza must reach the depths of her downward spiral before she can once again find health and serenity. This story of a woman's confrontation with the realities of sanity will delight listeners who enjoy the works of Anita Brookner, Sybille Bedford, Muriel Spark, and Sylvia Plath. Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year.

A deadly puzzle. A closing trap. My name is Nadia, and I'm a Marshal of the High Queen of the Elves. That means it's my responsibility to broker a peace deal between the dwarves and the Elven commoners...and there are lots of Elven nobles who would like to see the deal fail.

Until she stumbles across the dead body of judge Amanda Scott-Saunders. ? What starts out as a bad day for Lexy becomes even worse when the police discover the judge was strangled with Lexy's apron. Now Lexy's sitting at the top of the suspect list with a motive, means and opportunity...but no solid alibi. Lexy soon finds herself in a race against time to find the real killer before she ends up disqualified from the contest, or worse, in jail. But that's no easy task. There's a bakery competition full of suspects who all hated the victim and have a $100,000 motive for murder. And then there's the gorgeous, smart police detective who has mysterious ties to Lexy's boyfriend and thinks Lexy is the killer.

Rory Hawthorn knows her family's magical library contains an endless array of secrets, but even her fellow biblio-witches little expect a corridor that’s been missing for over two decades to suddenly materialise again.