Showing results by author "Michelle L Levigne" in All Categories

Not your Granny's Christmas stories … Step off the beaten path and enjoy six stories that look beyond the expected, the traditional, the tried-and-true.

Merrigan wasn't really an evil queen. Her royal siblings referred to her as the brat, and she lived down to it. However, she was married to an evil king. When he lost a fight with a magic apple tree and got himself killed, she did whatever she could to hold onto the kingdom. Including lying to a powerful seer. Big mistake. Merrigan was cursed: turned into an old woman, she was doomed to wander until she learned to care about others.

Becca Sheridan comes home from overseas with big hopes, but Conrad Price, the center of those hopes, has changed. For one thing, he has kicked her square dancing club, the Four Corners, out of Windows on the River, the venue they have used for years. It's little comfort that he also kicked out the Tippy Toes tap dancing club, led by Becca's high school rival, Simone Radcliffe, because now Conrad and Simone are an item.

Family secrets and patterns of suspicion, accusations, and abuse slowly come to light. Can Lisa and Todd regain their first love and forgive each other, and break free of a family tradition that could destroy them both?

Dinah doesn't want a new man in her life, after her current boyfriend seriously blew their first Christmas together - and became her ex-boyfriend. She has to find a new church and job, after being fired from her position as church secretary (and dealing with the church politics fallout). Then there's the suitor who insists they are perfect for each other, despite the fact she never filled out a profile at "A Match Made in Heaven".

Captain Genys Arroyan has a problem with her shiny new command - the dregs of the universe are laughing. While the Defender is in spacedock, getting upgrades, Genys has to deal with mind-hunters and farting fur balls, merchants-of-insanity and diplomatic intrigue. Her Chief of Talents is hiding from forced matrimony, and her new crewmembers aren't too happy to be transferred to the Nanny Ship.

The shadows from Lanie's past continue to haunt her and her friends as Neighborlee moves from Christmas to New Year's Eve. Something or someone is tampering with the magical defenses of the town. Things and people disappear and reappear, with no explanation, leaving gaps in memories and time. As New Year's Eve approaches at Eden, the Neighborlee community center, the disappearances and time gaps increase. Instead of trying to convince town officials to cancel the New Year's Eve party, the guardians prepare for a showdown, and brace themselves to do what they have always done.

Saundra Bailey has a rough few first days after moving to Camden Township to be the new children's librarian. First a strange man who smells of cheap cigars tries to get into her apartment, then she’s caught between two Welcome Wagon teams, which results in her feeling rather unwelcome. When Cigar Man later tries to steal her purse, she meets Kai, owner of Book & Mug, a coffee shop and bookstore. Cigar Man tried to break into the building Kai owns with his cousins, Eden and Troy, after trying to hire Eden, an investigator, to find lost family documents.

High school is rough enough, but the town of Neighborlee, Ohio, has traditions that make it even harder - culminating in Senior Prank Night, when some seniors try to ensure they never walk through graduation. Lanie and her friends even have to cut short their own Senior Prank Nights to protect their classmates. It's rough being a semi-pseudo-superhero, especially when you don't even get a costume or a cool name. Lanie and her friends grow into their duties as guardians. The threats to Neighborlee grow darker as enemies gather from many different directions. Other worlds.

Just when the guardians of Neighborlee believe they can relax and enjoy the results of their labors, a new enemy makes a strike, aiming at some newcomers who have come to town seeking shelter. Is this another roundabout attempt to break down the defensive shield around the town, or a more sinister plot? Are the attacks aimed ultimately at Angela? Clues indicate this isn't a new enemy at all, but an old enemy making another attempt to get a foothold in Neighborlee and perhaps not just steal magic, but break open the gates that Divine's Emporium and Angela keep securely closed.

Lanie saved her student's life on Senior Prank Night, but broke her back and blunted some of her semi-pseudo-superhero powers. Now it's four years later, and Lanie's orderly life is starting to fall apart. Her brothers are living with her while their parents are out of the country on another book research trip. Not so bad, but their parents have missed two check-in phone calls already.

Lanie saved her student's life on Senior Prank Night but broke her back and blunted some of her semi-pseudo-superhero powers. Now it's four years later, and Lanie's orderly life is starting to fall apart. Her brothers are living with her while their parents are out of the country on another book research trip. Not so bad, but their parents have missed two check-in phone calls already. The newspaper where Lanie works has been taken over by a conglomerate she now refers to as the Evil Empire. A series of increasingly nasty pranks lead her to believe someone is out to get her.

Toni returns to Tabor Heights to help identify the White Rose Killer. He stalks young women who look like her sister, murdered twenty years ago. Is he the same boy, grown up, who left white roses on Angel's grave? Curt found Angel's body, and he doesn't want Toni to be the White Rose's next victim. He reluctantly partners with her at the newspaper, to find the killer before he strikes again. To protect her, they pretend to have a relationship that slowly becomes real.

When the Tweed cousins, Melba and Cilla, set out to open their candle shop, Brighten Your Corner, obstacles pop out of the woodwork. And from out of the walls and under the floor. Starting with an overbearing cousin who wants to take over, insisting the shop was her idea, a nasty former tenant with shady business associates, who insists the shop they now lease still belongs to him, and a family mystery tangled with rumors of a treasure hunt.

Etrusca was a warrior woman in the distant past of Nisandros, who defied the clan heads and fought to turn her world from the worship of the Ancestors and back to worshipping and serving Enlo.

Daniel Morgan's past returns to haunt him when a freshman girl shows up for class wearing his college sweetheart's face. Lynette Tyler is determined not to face her past, even when she learns her daughter's favorite new teacher is the man she had forced out of her life when she got pregnant.

Saundra Bailey's hopes for her first Christmas in Cadburn Township lose their shine, even as the town dresses up for the holidays. First, her aunt might not make it back from out of the country. Then, nasty relatives who made her childhood so miserable follow her to her new home. Kai, Eden and Troy want to trust Saundra, but her relatives pose a threat to their search for answers and identity. Can Kai move forward in pursuing her heart when she might be keeping secrets from them?

Under a false identity, Joan finally has the life she has always wanted. With pressure to deepen a relationship on one side, and the threat of an old nemesis finding her on the other, she refuses to run, no matter what it costs her. Into this chaos comes a letter from a man claiming to be her unknown father, and an invitation to visit him at Quarry Hall. He has a proposition for her.

Ess Fremont already hated her boarding school before discovering the headmistress was trying to steal her inheritance. With her archeologist grandparents presumed dead in South America's turmoil, and her older brother missing, she struck out for freedom.