Showing results by narrator "Courtney Patterson" in All Categories

A completely revised and updated values-based guide to navigating the first year of college that speaks to college students in their own language and offers practical tools that readers need to keep from drinking, sleeping, or skipping their way out of college. In the four years since its...

Gwen, the straight-talking narrator of this poignant tale, has always kept herself moving from one place to the next. But when she meets Danny, a Blackfoot Indian, she glimpses what it might be like to feel grounded. Drawn to an increasingly longer stay in East Fork, Montana, amidst the trailer parks, stray dogs, and mountains, Gwen allows herself to hope. This story, about loss and something like love, is a skillful study of people and place.

Paris. 1968. A young woman has an affair. The one-night stand may be a failure, but the buttery croissant she eats on a snowy morning-after is not. Even after she marries and has children, time won't stop polishing that simple memory, until it glows in unexpected ways.

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor getting over a breakup with the help of a patient, a newly married gay man who reconnects with his estranged mother, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert.

In Mr.Tall, his first story collection in two decades, Tony Earley brings us seven rueful, bittersweet, riotous studies of characters both ordinary and mythical, seeking to make sense of the world transforming around them. He demonstrates once again the prodigious storytelling gifts that have...

Together as husband and wife, Nick Ward and Lena Grant ran a successful boutique law firm in Minneapolis, vanquishing all their legal foes side by side. When Nick’s charmingly erratic behavior finally became too much for Lena, the marriage and the partnership ended. But like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord it seems that Lena and Nick just can’t quite separate. Lena works out fiercely, keeps her dates with the boring and conventional Preston Winter, and daily battles on against corporate greed. But Nick’s not doing so well. Still brilliant and devilishly clever, he is now also almost crazy....

Eight years ago, Tyler Donnelly left Wishing River, Montana, after a terrible fight with his father and swore he’d never return. But when his father has a stroke, guilt and duty drive him home, and nothing is as he remembers - from the run-down ranch to Lainey Sullivan, who is all grown up now. And darn if he can’t seem to stay away.

Sarah Calhoun has taken her father's throne and ascended into her goddess' presence in Unfallen Eden as her father never did. And Sarah Calhoun is dying. Her uncle Thomas Penn isn't done with her. Armed with new powers conferred upon him by the Necromancer and with new allies won via his impending marriage, Penn aims to remove Sarah from her throne - and from the world of the living. 

Beckett Walker hasn't stepped foot in Maple Valley in years. There's no getting past the painful memories, and there's every chance he'll be arrested as soon as he shows his face. Which is exactly what happens when he finally returns. Suddenly his dream of adventure as a military lawyer comes skidding to a halt. Horticulturist Kit Danby has spent too much time missing home and her childhood best friend - Beckett Walker. Now she might have a shot at reclaiming both. 

A murder in Braxton, Tennessee? Poor little town. If it's not one thing, it's another. An untimely death under nefarious circumstances spawns an odd lineup of potential suspects. Who killed one of Braxton's favorite sons? New resident and Pastor Peyton Gellar has already conducted more than his share of funerals for such a small town, but this one hits close to home.

Back in tiny Braxton, Tennessee, photographer Gevin Parker finds himself surprisingly smitten by the wedding singer who stepped in at the last minute to sing at his sister's wedding. A recent Belmont graduate, Emily Randolph is an aspiring singer-songwriter with bittersweet ties to Braxton's namesake family. But when the town's most valuable artifact goes missing - a sword dating back to the American Revolution - she and Gevin embark on a journey to help solve the mysterious disappearance. 

Tiny Braxton, Tennessee, is a tight-knit community wrapped around an old town square just a stone's throw from Nashville. But when the town's most prominent citizen is found dead at the base of its water tower, news of Peter Lanham's apparent suicide roars through town like a tsunami. Peter, the handsome, beloved CEO of Lanham's Fine Foods, had taken a small, family-owned grocery store founded in 1927, and grew it into a successful national chain. With most of Braxton's residents employed by Lanham's corporate headquarters, word of Peter's demise left them searching for answers.

Evie Austin, native of Hatteras Island, North Carolina, and baddest girl on the planet, has not lived her life in a straight line. There have been several detours - career snafus, bad romantic choices, a loved but unplanned child - not to mention, her ill-advised lifelong obsession with boxer Mike Tyson. Evie is not plucky, but when life's changes smash over her like the rough surf of the local shoreline, she muddles through - until that moment of loss and longing when muddling will no longer suffice.

In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of 12 men. Most accounts of this event have linked Standing's murder to the virulent 19th-century anti-Mormonism that also took the life of prophet Joseph Smith and to an enduring southern tradition of extralegal violence.  

This Appalachian Big Creek sequel is set in West Virginia, during the 1920s, where granny witches and spiritualism often show the path for wanderers to take, especially in matters of the heart. Emerald Ashby's younger sister, Coral, determines to visit the family's nemesis, Charlie, now stewing in prison. When Mercy returns to the holler of Big Creek, she comes well-armed to re-enter Ernst's life, but he has already found a new romantic attraction. No matter, Mercy has brought along her own spiritual tools and a special friend who guides her way around this inconvenience.

Cleverly suspenseful and sweetly spoken, the storyteller's unassuming voice transforms an Appalachian trail of tears into holy terror against an evil that stalks the innocent. In The Whispering of the Willows, an Appalachian marriage practice might be compared to the modern sex trade which exploits young females. Not since Catherine Marshall's strong heroine named Christy, has an Appalachian drama come to life like The Whispering of the Willows.

At 26 years old, Kat is still living in the shadows of her family in Bayou Bend, Louisiana. Still working shifts at her Aunt Maggie's bakery. Still wondering what to do with her passion for baking and her business degree. And still single. But when Lucas Brannen, Kat's best friend, signs her up for a reality TV bake-off on Cupcake Combat, everything Kat ever wanted is suddenly dangled in front of her: creative license as a baker, recognition as a visionary...and a job at a famous bakery in New York. As the competition heats up, Lucas realizes he might have made a huge mistake.

Does good fortune always change things for the better? The Kaplan family has just won 10 million dollars in the lottery. But haven’t they always been lucky? Gwen thought so. She’s carefully curated a perfect suburban existence with a loving husband and two children. For over a decade...

A gifted writer makes her fiction debut with this lyrical and haunting story of missed chances and enduring love, set against the backdrop of high society Charleston, which probes the eternal question: can we ever truly go home again? When Eliza Poinsett left the elegant world of Charleston for...

“Delicious reading! Sasha Summers writes books brimming with warmth, humor, and the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.” —Cathy Maxwell, New York Times bestselling author Can best friends become something even better? Coming home to Honey, Texas, for her aunt’s wedding should be a joyful...