Showing results by narrator "Janet Metzger" in All Categories

Ellie Calvin is caught in a dying marriage, and she knows this. With her beloved daughter away at college and a growing gap between her and her husband - between her reality and the woman she wants to be - she doesn’t quite seem to fit into her own life. But everything changes after her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away. Ellie’s world turns upside down when she sees her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, at her mother’s funeral and learns that he is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. He wants answers to questions that Ellie’s not sure she can face....

All families have secrets but the facts requiring secrecy change with time. Nowadays a lesbian partnership, a "bastard" son, or a criminal grandfather might be of little or no consequence but could have unraveled a family at an earlier moment in history. Margaret K. Nelson is interested in how families keep secrets from each other and from outsiders when to do otherwise would risk eliciting not only embarrassment or discomfort, but profound shame and, in some cases, danger. 

Meridy Dresden was once a free-spirited, fun-loving girl. All that changed when the boy she loved was killed in a tragic fire. Since then, she alone has carried the burden of a terrible secret. Years later, married to a wonderful man and mother of a teenage son, she is shocked to learn that a childhood friend is being blamed for that long-ago fire. Fearful but determined, Meridy returns to the South Carolina Lowcountry and summons the courage to make a decision that may destroy her well-ordered life, her family’s reputation, her contented marriage, and everything she’s worked so hard to protect....

On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries - Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph - for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Washington was on his own.

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty.

Chief Warrant Officer Necole Belanger created a professional persona that was no-nonsense and highly put-together. But the truth was much more complex. Necole's story is a tale of two lives, the CWO raised in a military family, and the woman coming to terms with her sexuality, in a time where the two could not coexist. A lesbian member of the military police during the LGBTQ Purge in the Canadian Armed Forces, Necole would achieve success and promotion in her career despite a near-constant struggle. But the higher she rose in rank within the Canadian Armed Forces, the less her voice was heard.

If you live on a rapidly changing planet, you'd be wise to learn how it works. The giant old forests on a skinny stretch of land on the far west coast of North America have a lot to say about living in a twitchy world.

Unable to stop herself from investigating another murder, Rachel Murdock gets plenty of help from Samantha, the cat who follows her wherever she goes; her much less adventurous sister Jennifer; and Lieutenant Mayhew, who is grateful to have another sharp mind on the case. Miss Rachel, her sister, and her cat are watching with undisguised interest a bandy-legged man who is spying on a house across the street until a speeding black sedan runs him down. The sisters are curious to know why the man was murdered.

Welcome to Peachtree Bluff: a sweet, cozy small town where family is everything. The “go-to for elevated beach reads,” (People), Kristy Woodson Harvey, returns just in time for pumpkin spice season. The air is crisper, the water is calmer, but, when it comes to the Murphy family, nothing is...

A heartwarming and empowering novel about thriving after tragedy, from the author of the “enchanting, hilarious, and insightful” (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times author) My Magnolia Summer. Violet Adams is the perfect, youngest child in a family of strong women on Sullivan’s Island...

Pulitzer finalist Shoshana Walter exposes the country’s failed response to the opioid crisis, and the malfeasance, corruption, and snake oil which blight the drug rehabilitation industry. Our country’s leaders all seem to agree: People who suffer from addiction need treatment. Today, more...

The James Beard Award–winning, bestselling author of CookWise and BakeWise delivers kitchen wisdom based on her knowledge of food science so that “cooks of any experience level will walk away from this sharp guide with some new tricks” (Publishers Weekly). Want to cook fluffier scrambled...

When book dealers Molly O’Donnell and Emma Clarke meet at an estate sale, they are both there for the books. But Emma ventures past a “No Admittance” sign into the basement and finds, not only a vast occult library, but also the dead body of a notorious book thief. She calls Molly, who spots a warning note in Elizabethan script next to the body. Cautious Emma follows Molly’s adventurous lead as they search for the missing book to which the note belongs, which Molly thinks must be a book of spells—a grimoire.

Just after midnight on October 9, 2017, as one of the nation's deadliest firestorms swept over California's Wine Country, hundreds of elderly residents from two posh senior living facilities were caught in its path. The frailest were blind, in wheelchairs, or diagnosed with dementia, and their community quickly transformed from a palatial complex that pledged to care for them to one that threatened to entomb them. The rescue of the final 105 seniors left behind on an inflamed hillside depended not on employees, but strangers whose lives intersected in a riveting tale of terror and heroism.

Twelve-year-old Mary Frances “Frankie” Jackson has been sent to California for the summer to live on a houseboat with her Aunt Roxy. There’s one catch—she can’t get in trouble, or it’s back to New Jersey and juvenile detention camp. Too bad that days after arriving at the houseboat community, Frankie is accused of animal cruelty (killing a cat) and has two weeks to prove her innocence. In the process, she gets to know all the eccentrics on the dock.

Most of us look forward to our retirement from full-time work, anticipating more free time and opportunities to play. But the reality of retirement can be hard to adjust to. Unexpected challenges may present themselves, leading us to question who we really are and what we can reasonably expect to accomplish in the remaining years of our lives. We may be confused by our changing relationships with family and friends, which no longer conform to an easy structure. 

As far as 12-year-old Frankie Jackson is concerned, mermaids are like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny—stuff made up by grown-ups so that they can sell movies and toys. At least that’s what Frankie’s dad once told her. But one day, while staying on a houseboat for the summer, Frankie finds herself face-to-face with a mermaid. Convinced that it is a dream, Frankie can’t shake the vision of the blue-haired sea creature. Meanwhile, the town of Sausalito is buzzing with rumors about a wealthy woman who disappeared into the Bay wearing a million-dollar necklace (shaped like a mermaid).

In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be true. Just as unlikely is the idea that the United States would make such visas available to foster diversity within a country where systemic racism endures. But in 1990, the United States Diversity Visa Lottery was created to do just that. Dreamland tells the surprising story of this unlikely government program and its role in American life as well as the global story of migration.

A Promise Kept explores the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely the most significant Indian law case in well over a hundred years. Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other tribes throughout the United States.

The 1950s through the early 1970s are widely seen as American academia's golden age, when universities - well funded and viewed as essential for national security, economic growth, and social mobility - embraced an egalitarian mission. Swelling in size, schools attracted new types of students and professors, including radicals who challenged their institutions' calcified traditions. But that halcyon moment soon came to a painful and confusing end, with consequences that still afflict the halls of ivy.