Showing results by narrator "Cassandra Campbell" in All Categories

On February 5, 1908, Kate Skinner, a 21-year-old unmarried barmaid in Brighton, England, gave birth to twin girls. Mary Hilton, Kate's employer and midwife, adopted Violet and Daisy and promptly began displaying the babies as "Brighton's United Twins". Exhibitions at street fairs, carnivals, and wax museums across England and Scotland followed. At eight years old, the girls came to the United States, eventually becoming the stars of sideshow, vaudeville, and burlesque circuits in the 1920s and 1930s.

A happily married woman's perfect life shatters when her husband turns up dead hundreds of miles away from where he should have been, and she suddenly discovers there was a part of him about which she knew nothing.

An intimate portrait of a celebrated magic life and the famous and infamous who dropped in, summered, traveled with, played with, and the decades of friendship with everyone from Truman Capote and Robert Penn Warren to the Kennedys, the Bernsteins, Alexander Calder, John Hersey, and Lillian Hellman.

Since childhood, spending those cherished days with her father in his greenhouse, Rose Fiorni always understood the power of flowers to comfort and uplift a human heart. And now as adult, she needs uplifting bad. Single and unemployed, she’s back living at home with her parents in the old neighborhood along New York’s Hudson River Valley. Her dream airline career is more than grounded. It’s gone for good. At least by moving home she has Vinnie Scorsese, the boy she used to dream of marrying. Her long-time crush on Vinnie is stronger than ever.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama, aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered.

Unemployed business major, Penny, has rebelled against her family her whole life – by being the conventional one. Her mother was a member of a South American tribe; her father was a Jewish Shamanist with a psychedelic 'healing centre'. But everything changes when her father dies and Penny inherits his childhood home.

A fiercely personal memoir about coming of age in the male-dominated literary world of the 90s, becoming the first female literary editor of Esquire, and Miller's personal and working relationship with David Foster Wallace.

Kathleen Paulson has her hands full in Mayville Heights, Minnesota, running the public library and taking care of her two uncanny cats, Hercules and Owen. Kathleen's good friend Maggie says items are being stolen from the local artists' co-op. She doesn't want to call the police, because the main suspects are all close friends. Luckily, Kathleen and her faithful felines are there to put their paws on the truth!

Emily Covington has turned her life around after a drug addiction, but her family still has trouble trusting her. Though Emily has committed herself to a year-long treatment program and has been sober for almost a year beyond that, even her mother walks on eggshells around her, fearing she’ll relapse. After her behavior during her drug years, Emily realizes she has a lot to prove. When police discover a homemade bomb under Emily’s car, and she then learns the wife of one of her friends was murdered that same morning, she knows things are deadly serious.

Margaret Stuart, the proud wife of a prosperous Iowa farmer, sets high standards for herself and others. Happy in her marriage, she tries to look the other way when her genial husband, Alec, takes to the bottle. When Elspeth, Margaret’s sister, comes to live with them, the young woman is immediately captivated by the beauty and vitality of the farm and by the affection she receives from those around her.

Lincoln is a good boy. At the age of four, he is curious, clever and well behaved. He does as his mum says and knows what the rules are. 'The rules are different today. The rules are that we hide and do not let the man with the gun find us.' When an ordinary day at the zoo turns into a nightmare, Joan finds herself trapped with her beloved son. She must summon all her strength, find unexpected courage and protect Lincoln at all costs - even if it means crossing the line between right and wrong.

Seeking to wrest power, members of the Pazzi family draw their blades in a church and slay the beloved Giuliano. But Lorenzo de' Medici survives the attack and seeks revenge on everyone involved, plunging the city into murderous chaos. Bodies are dragged through the streets, and no one is safe. Five women steal away to a church to ply their craft in secret. Viviana, Fiammetta, Isabetta, Natasia, and Mattea are painters, not allowed to be public with their skill but freed from the restrictions in their lives by their art.

Gilbert Sinclair is going to marry an heiress. With his latest business venture sunk at the bottom of Lake Superior, he needs money to replace the steamship he lost. He heads to Chicago, where his father's business connections should land him a suitable wife. Like most things in his meticulously planned life, everything goes as expected - until he discovers Rebekah Cummings working as the new cook on his ship.

From the time she is nine years old and discovers a “Private Way” full of the wonderful and creepy creatures of the wild - spiders, deer, moles, chipmunks, and foxes - Lauren Slater finds in animals a refuge from the troubled life of her suburban home. As she matures, her bond with animals - raccoons, horses, swans, cats, and primarily, dogs - strengthens and grows more complex and compelling. They offer relief from the pain of her mother’s mental illness.

Victoria Donnelly wants to do something right at least once in her lifetime. Her plan to redeem herself requires her to return to her hometown of Eagle Harbor, where forgotten feelings for a man she can never have lie buried. Elijah Cummings has loved Victoria for 15 years. But fishermen's sons don't marry shipping barons' daughters. Resolved to keep his distance from Victoria, Elijah focuses on establishing a much-needed life-saving station...until he learns she's about to make an irreversible decision, one she'll spend the rest of her life regretting.

In Carbide Tipped Pens,over a dozen of today's most creative imaginations explore these frontiers, carrying on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the 21st century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries.

What is it like for a convicted murderer who has spent decades behind bars to suddenly find himself released into a world he barely recognizes? What is it like to start over from nothing? To answer these questions Sabine Heinlein followed the everyday lives and emotional struggles of Angel Ramos and his friends Bruce and Adam - three men convicted of some of society's most heinous crimes - as they return to the free world.

From the time she was a little girl with a chocolate stand instead of lemonade, Alice Bailey dreamt of opening a chocolate shop. After all, chocolate heals everything, from heartache to woes. If Alice has learned anything recently, it's that life is precious. It’s now or never - carpe diem time. She's ready to put down roots and live her dreams.

When 39-year-old Maria Forssmann wakes up in her 17-year-old body, she doesn’t know how she got there. All she does know is she has to get back: to her home in Bienville, Mississippi, to her job as a successful psychiatrist and, most importantly, to her husband, daughters, and unborn son.

When the four adult sons of recently retired Senator John Bright, and their significant others, join their parents at the family’s Berkshire compound for their mandatory summer vacation, the matriarch Patty decides to hire a documentary filmmaker to memorialize their time together. The Brights, a family of outsized pride, are beautiful, competitive, athletic, and terrible… They have everything they need, except the ability to see themselves clearly. Naturally, they let their guard down.