Showing results by narrator "Caroline Shaffer" in All Categories

Soap opera star by day, harried, single mom by night, Calliope Hart’s life is a delicate balancing act. When the network cancels her show, Callie’s world crumbles and she must decide whether it’s more important to fight to save the show or take a risk and start over from scratch.

By beginning a conversation that encourages self-examination and compassion, Combined Destinies invites listeners to look at how white Americans have been hurt by the very ideology that their ancestors created. Editors Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell, both experienced psychotherapists skilled at facilitating dialogue about racial issues, are cognizant of the challenges that even the thought of such conversations often presents. Their book is based on the premise that for positive and lasting change to occur, hearts as well as minds must be opened.

Food has power to nourish your mind, supporting emotional wellness through both nutrients and pleasure. In this groundbreaking book, journalist Mary Beth Albright draws on cutting-edge research to explain the food/mood connection. She redefines “emotional eating” based on the science, revealing how eating triggers biological responses that affect humans’ emotional states both immediately and long-term.

Silver Screen Kisses is a collection of stories inspired by movies that are on every favorite-movie list. Written by award-winning and best-selling authors, these contemporary romances take the listener back to Echo Ridge in the spring, when the promise of new love is budding just like the tulips around the Emerald Inn Bed & Breakfast.

Living in the present as well as the past, Montserrat de la Rosa plans a grand escape from her assisted living community, banking on the help of her deceased husband.

A newly blended Irish-Chilean Jewish family sits down for their first Passover dinner together. Joe Wenderoth, who chose Ghost Deer was the winner of the 2015 New Guard Machigonne Fiction Contest, writes, "Ghost Deer, for me, is nothing less than the conjuring of human beings. They have grown strange - they appear haunted - from years (and centuries) in the trap of loving one another."

Stuck in a dead-end job at the DMV, Brenda feels invisible, certain no one could guess she was once loved by someone who's now a famous movie star. But when she fails an angry woman on her driving test and the woman turns the situation into a violent standoff, Brenda discovers just how grand her own stage can be in this funny, wrenching story of how past loves can reverberate for years and keep us going in ways we never imagined.

Three men are trapped in time. One woman could save them all. Historian Lia Carrer has finally returned to southern France, determined to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. But instead of finding solace in the region's quiet hills and medieval ruins, she falls in love with Raoul, a man whose very existence challenges everything she knows about life - and about her husband's death.

Possibly the only romance ever set in a high-end Montreal kosher restaurant, A Taste of Heaven layers spicy love scenes with directions for making velvety pâté and musings about babies. Will Dena and Richard Klein's marriage overheat - or will they find more savor and sweetness?

Within the course of a week, Natalie is dumped by her husband, receives an urgent call home from her father, and discovers her estranged sister is pregnant. A road trip on Route 66 may not help, but it sure couldn't hurt. Or so Natalie thinks until Lindsay's boyfriend starts stalking them. Will their trip down the Mother Road bring the two sisters closer together or turn out to be the biggest wrong turn yet?

Gwendolyn Golden and Armand Leopold have been America's go-to couple for home decorating tips, letting the cameras into their So Perfect house, their So Perfect life, their So Perfect marriage. One problem: It's all an act. Actually, two problems: America just found out it's all an act. When a picture of Armand kissing another man hits the newsstands, everyone knows the jig is up. Both are evicted from their home and eviscerated by the press.

At first, Manhattan financial planner Melanie Banks adores Dan Swain, her pro-football player husband who has a sexy Oklahoma drawl to go with his athletic good looks. But then his career comes to a screeching halt, and he spends the next few years out of a job, seemingly unconcerned about it. Suddenly, she's the one bringing home the bacon and falling out of love with the paycheck-devouring, couch-sitting mooch. Divorce is the answer, she decides - only to learn she has to fork over alimony while he lives like a prince on her income, and she has to share custody of their precious dog.

Former foreign correspondent Lola Wicks is getting a little bored in Magpie, Montana, where she landed at a small local newspaper after being downsized from her job in Kabul. Then Judith Calf Looking, a local Blackfeet Indian girl missing for several months, turns up dead in a snowbank with a mysterious brand on her forearm. The sheriff - whose romantic relationship with Lola provides Magpie with its most delicious gossip in years - thinks Judith probably froze to death while hitchhiking back to the reservation from wherever she'd been.

Kimmer Reed is a Hunter Agency operative, a street foundling escaped from an abusive family and raised to be code-name Chimera - a fierce, savvy loner with a natural gift for reading people. Now on her first assignment with the one man she trusts - the one man she can't read - she finds herself overseas in the Basque countryside, framed for the theft of the very antiquity she has been sent to guard and doubting her ability to work with a partner at all - never mind the man she loves.

On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers.

It was in New York that he discovered Sarah. As Simon recovers from a professional disaster - and escapes Chicago for New York - he is drawn to the beautiful, exciting, and mysterious Sarah. Even though the forty-year-old Simon has a wife and child, he falls madly in love with Sarah. Devoting themselves with abandon to the pursuit of happiness, the lovers tour New York, Paris, Venice, and beyond. Their journey takes them deep within their emotions, and reveals dangerous secrets in Sarah’s past.

Thirteen authors (fifteen if you count pseudonyms) from the Book View Cafe got together one rainy Saturday afternoon with a big bowl of popcorn and reruns of Buck Rogers. They started comparing short stories and a new anthology took form. Rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites, and new tales all combine in this one-of-a-kind story collection, available exclusively from Book View Press.

Forget the French perfume and the boxes of candy, the Hallmark cards and the gift certificates. The birthdays in this collection are observed in more carnal ways, with suitably sexy presents for all. In Simone Harlow's "Happy Birthday", a tough policewoman gets the tables turned when naked Nick arrives to tame her. In Marilyn Jaye Lewis's "The Birthday Party", an unexpected menage a trois in the dark proves the perfect gift.

In the wake of the financial crisis, investors are faced with a stark choice: entrust their hard-earned dollars to the Wall Street casino or settle for anemic interest rates on savings, bonds, and CDs. Meanwhile, small businesses are being starved for the credit and capital they need to grow. There's got to be a better way. In Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit from It, Amy Cortese takes us inside the local investing movement, where solutions to some of the nation's most pressing problems are taking shape. 

This groundbreaking anthology presents 40 narratives, both nonfiction and fiction, that together capture the impact and complexity of Alzheimer’s and other dementias on patients, as well as their caregivers and family. Deeply personal, recounting the wrenching course of a disease that kills a loved one twice - first they forget who they are, and then the body succumbs - these stories also show how witnessing the disease and caring for someone with it can be powerfully transformative, calling forth amazing strength and grace.