Showing results by narrator "Anne Hancock" in All Categories

Victoria Gracen's life in middle age has settled into a round of club meetings and faithful attendance at her Presbyterian church. But all that changes when she invites her newly orphaned 16-year-old nephew (whom she's never met) to come live with her.

Jean Grayson is traveling alone to visit her sister out west when a terrible accident occurs and she is saved from certain death by a stranger. Together they make their perilous way through the wilderness. His name is Jasper Holt, and their care for each other blossoms on their journey. But Holt warns Jean that when they reach the safety of their destination, she'll find that her relatives and the townsfolk have nothing good to say about him.

Miss Marilla Chadwick has been preparing a celebration for her nephew Dick's return from the war. Her young neighbor, Mary Amber, has agreed to help but she isn't excited by the prospect. She remembers the child Dick from years before as nasty and unfeeling but it means a lot to sweet Marilla to welcome her "war hero" in style. When a telegram from Dick arrives turning down the invitation, Marilla hides it and her disappointment from her friend, pondering what to do next. Then she sees a tall, young soldier walking down the road toward her house and hatches a plan.

Wakefield was a mild-mannered man of no particular energy or imagination. The only fault his wife could find with him was that he had a tendency to be secretive about small things and perhaps a little selfish. Still, there was no hint that on the day he left for a short journey, his plan was to take a room in the next street and spy on his wife. He would not return for two decades.

Hilda Adams' life as a nurse has become a bit dull. As she approaches 30, she sees long, monotonous years of trained obedience to orders ahead of her. But a rascally patient, a police detective, sees in her the intelligence and discretion of a born criminal investigator. People confide in a private nurse; she could unearth clues that can crack a case. Her first case is the disappearance of Clare March, a wealthy debutante who has been missing without a trace for a month.

Author Jean Webster ("Daddy Long Legs") presents the antics of irrepressible Patty Wyatt and her friends at a women's college at the turn of the 20th century. Patty takes full advantage of the freedom that college life provides, skirting the rules, getting into "scrapes", and doing as little work as possible while still managing to learn life lessons along the way.

E.J. Kincaid has one thing on his mind. He wants to get the hell out of Dodge, or in this case, Langston, Texas. He sees nothing but miles and miles of Texas panhandle, even though his daddy does seem to own most of it. He wouldn't be here at all, except that his father committed a heinous crime, for which he is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison. E.J. feels obligated to stay and try to hang onto the land and cattle empire his father built for him.

In an effort to evade the men who killed her boyfriend, former model Teri Slaughter flees New York City and takes refuge in a San Antonio convent, masquerading as her own sister. But when hot and hunky homicide detective Angel Garcia tries to protect her from the killers, he proves to be a threat to her heart. He takes her to the only "safe house" available: the one where he was raised. His parents and siblings take her in and teach her the real meaning of family and home.

When her suspicions about her great-aunt's death prove to be true, she resolves to uncover the villain herself. Breck tries to convince her that the community needs her just as much as he does, but when she uncovers a decades-old crime, she puts her own life is in danger.

Imagine a visiting-nurse service with hot young guys as caregivers. What golden girl wouldn't dig that? Valerie Palka is a savvy businesswoman who is obsessed with keeping her elderly mom, Helen, safe from all the lethal disasters that can befall widows living alone. Helen thinks the workaholic Valerie should focus on having as much luck in the bedroom as she does in the boardroom.

When Rachel crosses "The Line" she leaves behind everything she has ever known and enters a strange new world: Away. Life there is hard, and survival is never guaranteed. The rules are different away, and Rachel has a lot to learn. The people of Away - the same people she's always been told are dangerous and untrustworthy - have gifts she's never thought possible.

Old Mother Duck's six little ducklings are her pride and joy. But it's very hard work teaching ducklings how to behave and keeping them safe. Sometimes their curiosity makes them forget her warnings not to talk to strangers, not to stray too far from her, and to come in from the rain. Children will identify with these gentle stories where nothing bad happens but the lessons and consequences are clear. A hundred years after Katharine Pyle's delightful tale was written, the same principle holds true: mother knows best.

Eleanor H. Porter’s most famous literary creation is Pollyanna, but she isn’t the only precocious young girl to spring from the author’s pen. Mary Marie Anderson describes herself as “a cross-current and a contradiction", the offspring of incompatible parents who couldn’t even agree about her name. When the two divorce when she is thirteen, Mary Marie is delighted since she’s always liked being different. None of the other girls have two homes and spend six months with each parent! Father will remain in their small town and mother will live in Boston with her family.

The Lycett-Landons are a well-to-do Victorian family living in a large, comfortable house across the river from bustling Liverpool. The father, Robert, is a partner in a thriving business; his wife Eleanor has the care of the house and six children to occupy her; and Horace, the eldest, is looking forward to moving to London to work in the family firm. But trouble is brewing. The London office is in distress, and Robert must go there often to straighten things out. When the length of his visits becomes more extended, his family worries that he has taken ill and doesn't want to concern them.

Mrs. Blencarrow is a lovely middle-aged widow with five adoring children and a comfortable income with which to raise them. She holds a position of admiration and respect in her strictly Victorian village society. But the good lady who seems beyond reproach has a secret, and not all her neighbors wish her well. When one of them stumbles upon incriminating information, Mrs. Blencarrow stands to lose everything she holds dear ... Originally published in 1890 by Margaret Oliphant, a keen and prolific chronicler of the strict laws and customs of her time.

When Agnes Blakiston and her maid Maggie take possession of a rental house for the summer, their idea of a tranquil stay is almost immediately upended. First, there is the telephone. It rings late at night, just one ring, but there is never anyone on the line. They begin to notice things have moved during the night. A candle has burned low, and a shawl has disappeared. And then Maggie, spooked and suspicious, discovers a note. It's a confession to a murder. But who has written it and, equally confounding, who has been killed?

In the novel Little Women, Mr. March goes off to war. But in real life, it was Jo March (Louisa May Alcott herself, an avowed abolitionist) who traveled to Washington to nurse Northern soldiers. This is Alcott’s memoir but she chose to use the pseudonym “Tribulation Periwinkle” to tell her story. Despite the subject matter, her account is full of amusing anecdotes as she makes her way alone from Concord, Massachusetts to DC, trying to finagle a free ticket and convinced she will drown during the journey.

Hitty is a doll, so a listener would be forgiven for assuming that this is a story written only for little girls. But Hitty's tale which spans a century, told from her perch in a New York antique shop, includes a hazardous journey on a whaling vessel, a stint as assistant to an Indian snake charmer, and, like Moses, abandonment in a basket on a muddy river. This is a story of adventure.

Sue Ives and Stephen Bellamy are charged with the murder of Stephen’s wife Mimi, found stabbed in an uninhabited cottage on a Long Island estate. The eight-day trial introduces a trove of witnesses (some reliable, some not); an avuncular defense attorney who may be incompetent; a wily and relentless prosecutor; and the voracious members of the press and public captivated by a crime that lays bare the intrigues and jealousies of the country club set. Two of the reporters, a veteran, and a rookie attending her first murder trial, act as a Greek chorus commenting on unfolding events.