Showing results by narrator "Amy Rubinate" in All Categories

For 14-year-old Lucy Martinez, the moment when everything changes comes one night during a long road trip with her older brother, Jamie, and his friend, Kit. They’re on their way to Phoenix to visit Lucy’s father for spring break, but never quite make it. While driving across northern New Mexico during a blinding rainstorm, their car hits something - an animal, they think. But after backtracking, they find a girl, dead, on the side of the road.

Evie is living on borrowed time. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer several months ago and told that by now she'd be dead. Evie is grateful for every extra day she gets, but she knows that soon this disease will kill her. Until, miraculously, she may have a second chance to live. All Evie had wanted was her life back, but now that she has it, she feels like there's no place for her in it - at least not for the girl she is now.

The crash and burn of a helicopter mom! Soap writer Dena Higley was all things to all people. A wife, mother of four, and head writer for Days of Our Lives, Dena ably hovered over the numerous people and responsibilities in her life, eager to right every wrong and fulfill every need. But when her very “normal” family began to spiral out of control, Dena soon became the central character in her own real-life drama, and a night spent in the ER made her realize that her pursuit of perfection was backfiring big time.

In the midst of a Christian subculture that idolizes families, an evangelical history of overcelebrating families, and a secular culture that overprograms families, one American family identifies the danger they’re in the midst of and embarks on a radical adventure. Household Gods offers an examination of the culture that spawned family idolatry and the steps we can take to flee this idolatry and escape to the Cross.

The year is 1981, Reagan is in the White House, and the country is stalled in a recession. Cressida Hartley, a gifted PhD student in economics, moves into her parents' shabby A-frame cabin in the Sierras to write her dissertation. Cress, increasingly resistant to her topic (art in the marketplace), allows herself to be drawn into the social life of the small mountain community.

Rachel has inched her way toward financial security after three years of solo parenting. Clinging to her hard-won independence, she is on guard against the type of man who deceived her in the past. Men like the too-hot and too-charming divorced dad, Theo, who claims to be nothing like her ex. Theo longs to earn Rachel’s trust. Rachel’s heart yearns for him, but her instincts have devastated her before. Every step they take could be a disastrous misstep.

Janice Newton avoids close ties by directing all her energy toward her job and using her well-developed defense system to keep everyone, especially the coworker she secretly craves, at arm's length. But will her fear of reopening old wounds keep her from a relationship with the one person who sees through her tough exterior and into her vulnerable heart?

Steady, focused graphic artist Serena has her life perfectly planned out. After a childhood being moved from one place to another, she craves the permanence of a home that's hers and hers alone. And everything is lining up just right. That is, until disruptive copywriter Dillon comes blasting into her workplace and spins her personal life out of control.

The Shelter Cycle tells the story of two children, Francine and Colville, who grew up in the Church Universal and Triumphant, a sect that predicted the world would end in the late 1980s. While their parents built underground shelters to withstand the impending Soviet missile strike, Francine and Colville played in the Montana wilderness, where invisible spirits watched over them.

Joanna can't get over how her brother broke his promise never to leave like their dad did. Sam is thousands of miles away on a navy ship, and no matter how often he sends letters, Joanna refuses to write back. But then President Kennedy comes on TV with frightening news about Soviet missiles in Cuba - and that's where Sam's heading. Suddenly Joanna's worries about being home alone, building up the courage to talk to a cute boy, and not being allowed to go to the first boy-girl party in her grade don't seem so important.

Photographer Victor Anthony has one lifelong friend - Anton Bellamy - and one lifelong crush - Anton’s big sister, Gillian. A romantic to the core, each pic he snaps of Gill sharpens his conviction that she’s the key to finally having a family that sticks around.

Anna Bolles is a born athlete whose life was irrevocably changed after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis five years ago. Anna fills her days with the vibrancy of life in New York City, teaching at a private school, but shutting the door on any possible romance. Until Joe Malone enters her life. A businessman, pilot, and amateur photographer, Joe Malone has it all - except happiness. He sees far more in Anna than just her MS diagnosis, and takes Anna on a roller coaster of love, hope, and hanging on.

Sharlie Converse is twenty-six with a vivid and romantic interior life. Born with a heart defect that has defeated an army of specialists, she has lived her short life from moment to moment. Everything that matters most to her – color, excitement, adventure – is forbidden except in her imaginings and in the secret yearningss that she has long accepted will never be made real.

Christmas concierge Holiday Smith, known as “the Wish Granter,” procures impossible-to-find gifts for her elite clients. But after years of granting everyone’s wishes but her own, she promises her family that this year she’ll finally make it home for Christmas. Just one tiny glitch: a favorite elderly client begs Holiday to set up her grown granddaughter on a blind date with her old high school crush, tech-world escapee Alex Sappier… who is somewhere off the coast of Maine.

Quilter Ashlyn May has her hands full. When she accepts a spot at the FireWind Artist Retreat, she's prepared to defend her craft against the skepticism of her fellow artists, even as she struggles to rediscover her creative drive. She doesn't expect to learn a devastating family secret, or to find comfort in the arms of photographer Caleb Kendall.

Natalie East and Evan Lee are determined to stay single. Their parents are just as determined to get them together. Nat, still reeling from the abrupt end of a three-year relationship, needs to prove to her mother that they are both capable of enjoying successful single lives. Her conventional mother pressures her to date their new friends' self-indulgent and status-obsessed son. The interference drives Natalie wild. Evan worked like a demon to launch his career. Now he's ready for a devilish amount of fun.

A handsome stranger almost makes up for a lost phone in a comedy of errors across New York City. Christy prides herself on her efficiency as a personal assistant, fueled by her ever-present iPhone. When she loses the phone on the train on the day of her sister’s engagement party, Christy is sure the day is ruined - until she borrows a phone to reach Will, the cute guy who picked up hers for safe keeping. Dealing with family emergencies of his own, he can’t meet her until the evening, but maybe there’s still hope.

When You Live By a River is the fictional story of a Catskill Mountains valley community soon to be flooded to create a reservoir for New York City. The drama centers on a farmer whose wife dies in childbirth and on the farmer's 15-year-old niece who comes to take care of the baby in exchange for the promise of college tuition.

Romance - and murder - is in the air! Medical insurance fraud investigator Pauline Sokol likes to keep her feet firmly placed on the ground, but her new undercover assignment has the aero-phobic ex-nurse flying high and her stomach lurching! Compelled by her convictions of right and wrong, she takes off in order to ground a land-and-air ambulance company that's been doing some rather creative billing, and needs to crash and burn before they soak the insurance company for more.

Liam Thayer would do anything for his twin daughters and for his beloved Celebration, Texas, hospital. But a bachelor auction for the new children's wing was out of the question for the dignified doctor! He didn't intend to date till his girls were in college, and besides, he'd already lost the love of his life. Why try again? Until he finally caved, no thanks to a pushy event planner. Rigging the auction to win his date was a piece of cake for organizer Kate Macintyre. Resisting the handsome doctor? A problem she hadn't expected!