Showing results by narrator "Melinda Cumming" in All Categories

Summertime 1929. Hattie Mae Sizemore lives with her family in a Kentucky holler. Her father is a coal miner and a moonshiner. Determined to shield his oldest from the influence of outsiders, he declares Hattie won’t return to school. She is distraught, not even having a single book of her own.

From a working-class family, Scotsman Andrew Cunningham stewards for wealthy travelers aboard elegant cruise ships of the early 20th century, but he resents those who flaunt their inherited wealth. New Yorkers Florence and Bradley Cumings, first-class passengers traveling aboard Titanic, are the exception, and the three discover an ancestral connection.

Ivy Malone and Mac MacPherson have been circling the idea of marriage for some time (see the five books in the Ivy Malone Mysteries series), and now they’ve made the Big Decision. They’re getting married! Except there is the problem of that dead body—and a killer who’s willing to bring their plans to a screeching halt.

Lara McAllister was adored by everyone in the small town of Grants Pass until one rainy day last year when she vanished without a trace. Some believe she simply ran away. Others believe something sinister happened. In a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone's business, is it possible that nobody saw anything?

Downsized from her job. Dumped by her boyfriend. Depressed about that upcoming 60th birthday. Not a good week for Andi McConnell. But now there's good news: She's just inherited a limousine, a long, sleek, black limousine, from an eccentric uncle. There's also bad news: The dead body that soon turns up in the trunk. And Andi is the top suspect in the murder. Enter Keegan "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, former TV detective, very interested in the case - and in Andi.

Trading her reporter’s ID badge for the vocations of selling horse tack and showing horses, Pepper enjoys her new life and friends in Oregon’s Rogue River Valley. While line-dancing with her Brassbottom Barn buddies one night, she learns a prize show horse has been killed. A suspect herself, she must find the killer before the killer closes in on her.

Early Alaskan military and bush pilots navigated some of the highest and most rugged terrain on earth, taking off and landing on glaciers, mudflats, and active volcanoes. Although they were consistently portrayed by industry leaders and lawmakers alike as cowboys—and their planes compared to settlers’ covered wagons—the reality was that aviation catapulted Alaska onto a modern, global stage; the federal government subsidized aviation’s growth in the territory as part of the Cold War defense against the Soviet Union.

Andi McConnell and her limousine are back! The occasion is the "wedding of the century" at a local estate, and Andi has a five-day, live-in gig transporting the wedding party and Hollywood guests. There's the groom with cell phone welded to his ear. The bride who suspects she'll be murdered at the ceremony. The over-the-hill, movie star stepmother with an ambitious agenda of her own, plus blackmail, betrayal, and enough hot hostility and competition to melt that life-sized sculpture of the bride and groom.

Carlie is not merely traveling. A child trauma survivor as a teen, she steals ten thousand dollars and runs away to Asia. Through Hong Kong, The Philippines, Bali, and Thailand, the Lonely Planet path of hookups, heat, alcohol, and drugs takes on a terrifying reality for the young survivor. Trading sex for protection, Carlie retreats to alcohol and self-starvation. Finally, on the tiny island of oh Phangan, Thailand—home to the infamous Full Moon party—Carlie falls in with an international crew of Tai chi-practicing backpackers.

One midnight 17-year-old Cora Cassidy gallops away from her abusive family on a modern Oregon ranch to illegally catch mustangs. She hoped to be a famous trainer and writer. The desert is breathtaking, its way is hard. Grit by grit, Cora learns to survive, and meets helpful strangers.

What follows a wedding? A honeymoon, of course. The beginning of a happily-ever-after future in which Ivy and Mac will travel the country in their motorhome searching for the perfect place to settle down and live. No more dead bodies. No more murders. Instead, here they are on a detour to an old dinosaur park, and Ivy is up to her possum-gray hair in ghost goats, deteriorating dinosaurs, and… what else? A dead body, of course.

The things 17-year-old Erin Post wants are drastically different from the things she needs. A junior in high school, Erin wants nothing more than to be thin. In reality, she's a depressed girl with a serious eating disorder who needs to stop starving herself. When Erin’s mother insists that she see a psychiatrist, Erin runs away to Chicago. There, she meets Lin and Ari, two homeless teens who show her that there’s a lot more to the world than being thin and fitting in.

Andi McConnell and her "limouzeen" are back—can murder be far behind? Actually, Andi's life seems more or less normal at the moment. Her limousine business is chugging along. Her relationship with former TV detective "Fitz" Fitzpatrick is comfortable. She's growing in her relationship with the Lord. Although there are a few peculiarities. The odd new renter in her duplex. Unlikely changes in grumpy, nosy neighbor Tom now that he has a girlfriend. The girlfriend's questionable "helper". But the limo can't avoid its "magnet for murder" reputation—because there is that dead body.

Enoch Miller was Kate Bieler’s first love, but when it was time for her to go on rumspringa, he cut all communication with her. Furious, Kate married another Mann. Now she is a widow, her parents are dead, and she has an orphaned child to raise. Out of options, she turns to Gott for help. One night while praying, she realizes she must marry, and quickly. Unfortunately, the only single Mann in her Amish community is Enoch Miller, who hasn’t spoken to her in years. Trusting in His guidance, she summons her courage and asks Enoch to marry her. Will Enoch agree to marry her?

In the 25th century, the recently widowed Prince Jack Windsor escapes his grief after the death of his wife and child by fleeing to Mars to solve the mystery of the dormant HMS Ares. When Harlow Hanson, the Robin Hood of the Martian colony, sneaks aboard to plunder the ship in order to save her people, the Ares springs to life and begins communicating with her. Prince Jack realizes the woman stealing from him is the key he's been searching for.

Perfectly Hugo is a gently provocative and emotionally layered novel that explores the boundaries of love, memory, and identity in an age of advancing technology. Enid and Hugo built a life together—full of quiet joys, deep conversations, and unshakable devotion. But when faced with the inevitable, they make a decision few would dare: to sign with Assembled Souls, a cutting-edge company that offers the ultimate promise—rebirth through AI. If one of them dies, the other can bring them back.

A spirited ex-reporter questions her deepest beliefs and desires while rushing to learn who killed a woman in the long-abandoned cabin of a famous writer—a riverfront gem she and a fellow horsewoman hoped to turn into a guest ranch. The timing couldn’t be worse: She’s preparing for a major horse show and trying to save her tack store, The Best Little Horsehouse in Oregon. But when she receives a death threat and, with her Lakota police partner, finds shocking evidence related to Indian adoptions, she shifts into overdrive. Unless she IDs the killer, her dreams—and life—will go up in flames.

First Sgt. Carlos Gonsalves has pledged his allegiance to the rogue Mars colony and to his best friend, the former rebel aristocrat, Jack Windsor. Going all in for the colony means he's been declared AWOL and cannot return to Earth, but it was worth it, especially now that he's found the love of his life: Safia Asfour. With the off-world colony on the brink of civil war, the rebels recruit a savior to tip the balance.

Ivy Malone is back! This "invisible" LOL (little old lady) has been on the run, hiding out from the vengeful Braxtons, for almost three years now. With an unlikely propensity for getting tangled up in murder, and with the threat of the Braxtons always on her heels, they have not been dull years. Friend (boyfriend?) Mac MacPherson is usually around too, hints of marriage occasionally surfacing — but always sinking. But Ivy's longing for home back in Missouri has been growing ever stronger.

The Lowell Brothers are used to hard luck and hard times. But when they decide to leave their rough-and-tumble neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, they hope their fortunes will change in Spruce, Washington, where they go to mine for gold. But they are not the only gold-diggers. Victor Lowell, the eldest brother, loses his heart to a conniving beauty whose father has cheated them out of the worth of the gold they’ve mined....