Showing results by narrator "Barbara Benjamin-Creel" in All Categories

Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a “contract wife” performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, and she soon took on bigger and more significant roles at the Agency. She parlayed her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA.

Near the end of her life, Mary Mann Hamilton (1866-c.1936) was encouraged to record her experiences as a female pioneer. The result is the only known firsthand account of a remarkable woman thrust into the center of taming the American South - surviving floods, tornadoes, and fires; facing bears, panthers, and snakes; managing a boardinghouse in Arkansas that was home to an eccentric group of settlers; and running a logging camp in Mississippi that blazed a trail for development in the Mississippi Delta.

After Gus flips the seasons and manages to bring summer into winter, everything starts going weirdly wrong. Summer refuses to leave. Household electronics start going haywire. When J.J., a local boy, vanishes from Mara's car, Mara begins to suspect he's been turned into a rat. But it's such a crazy idea, who could she possibly talk to about it? Then, her dead Aunt Tillie shows up to warn her that Gus is in trouble, and it's up to Mara to save him.

In Drinking in America, best-selling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the 17th to the 20th century.

Former Chief of Staff to President George H.W. Bush and New York Times bestselling author of The Man I Knew, Jean Becker shares touching and pivotal life lessons from a leader that left a mark on people's hearts and souls.

Christina McMullen, psychologist extraordinaire, has problems - not least of which are her needy clients, a schizophrenic septic system, and her sizzling-then-fizzling romance with Lieutenant Jack Rivera. But Chrissy has yet another problem she'd like to ignore: finding her secretary's missing boyfriend. Okay, so she secretly hopes the vertically challenged computer geek has harmlessly departed from Elaine's life - after all, there's no evidence to suggest foul play. But when her razor-sharp instincts, honed by years as a cocktail waitress, start screaming, she'll have to use her skills.

Faculty squabbling at a large state university turns deadly when Professor of Education Susan Lombardi joins a committee to make a tenure decision about Abby Gillette, a controversial faculty member. After one colleague is hospitalized following a suspicious fire and another is found dead in Abby's office, Susan must try to figure out who is doing what to whom...without becoming the next victim. At the same time, she must deal with her husband's highly dysfunctional family and help a friend handle a questionable romance.

Christine Hemp's debut work of nonfiction, Wild Ride Home, is a brilliant memoir, looping themes of finding love and losing love, of going away and coming home, of the wretched course of Alzheimer's, of cancer, of lost pregnancies, of fly fishing and horsemanship, of second chances, and, ultimately, of the triumph of love and family—all told within the framework of the training of a little white horse named Buddy. Wild Ride Home invites the listener into the close Hemp family, which believes beauty and humor outshine the most devastating circumstances.

Los Angeles homicide detective Jack Rivera has a killer body, a wicked smile, and a velvet touch. Just ask Christina McMullen. The cocktail-waitress-turned-psychologist has handled obsessed patients, love-struck drunks, and her own guilt-tripping mother with aplomb. But when it comes to the lieutenant, Chrissy has an old-fashioned case of irresistible attraction - until things turn fatal when Rivera is accused of murder.

Chrissy McMullen has made a career leap, all the way from slinging drinks at Chicago's most notorious nightclub to dispensing psychotherapy from her sleek new practice in LA. Even if she can't quite shed her too-loud, too-curvy alter ego - or the brawling family that insists on claiming kinship. So when her most famous client, buff football star "Bomber" Bomstad, starts chasing her around her desk and getting, well...unzipped...Christina gets just a little miffed - until Bomber has the bad manners to drop dead at her feet.

Lois prepares her log home in the Virginian countryside for a visit from her son James and his new husband, Henry. But beneath Lois's serene surface lie quiet turmoils and fraught relationships with her husband and mother-in-law. This short story by Virginian author Marigold Evans deftly and sympathetically explores the interior life of a woman as she navigates change.

Blessed are the stressed, grouchy, and grumpy - for they too can learn the secrets of a happy heart! Best-selling author Sr. Mary Lea Hill helps you delve deeper into the beatitudes, our special passageways to joy, and unlocks their secrets for a happy life. You will find yourself smiling, if not laughing out loud, at her unique insights into the would-be blessings often hidden in the ups and downs of our everyday lives.

This collection of supernatural tales includes "The Talking Corpse"; "The Hound of Goshen"; "The Ring"; "The Phantom Rider of Bush River"; "The Witch Cat"; "The Gray Man"; "Tsali, the Cherokee Brave"; "The Ghost of Litchfield"; "City of Death"; "Treasure Hunt"; "House of the Opening Door"; "The Ghosts of Hagley"; "Return from the Dead"; "Whistle While You Haunt"; "The Brown Mountain Lights"; "Alice of the Hermitage"; "The Night the Spirits Called"; and "Swamp Girl".

Insightful and irreverent, one baby boomer helps Generation X parents to find humor in the family situations boomerang children have caused and continue to cause. These situations include frustration, exasperation, carpal tunnel, early menopause, flatulence, and Prozac-induced stupor.

In awe of her DNA, at war with her anxiety and at odds with her heartstrings, author Kaitlyn Wylde is never at a loss for words. In her new collection, The Head, The Heart & The Home, she gives her listeners orchestra seats to a timeless drama of love and intimacy, and struggling with the absence of them. Under the white-knuckled grip of anxiety, the chainmail blanket of despair and the windless knock of heartache, Wylde thrives as a storyteller.

Since the day that Tom Middleberry was rejected by the International Federation of Magical Law Enforcement, he has never been the same. He spends his days at his detective agency, Mysterious Happenings and Conundrums, Inc., trying to eat, drink, and smoke his tragic life away - until the murders, that is. Tom doesn't give up his gluttonous habits, however - for the first time - there's a sense of purpose in his step.

What high school class has a 32 year reunion? A class whose president has left the country, whose vice president is dead, and whose treasurer is in the Witness Protection program - in fact, Professor Susan Lombardi's class from Count Basie High School. Susan has misgivings about revisiting her hometown: she's leery of seeing her former high school sweetheart, now a high tech millionaire, and reluctant to get involved in a battle between her squabbling brothers.

Professor/sleuth Susan Lombardi is back with two mysteries to solve: Who is playing the cruel pranks on the new teacher - a twisted student or a jealous colleague? And what has become of the teacher whose wife's body was found in their cellar?

The headmistress of an exclusive private school for girls has been found murdered in her office. When professor Susan Lombardi learns that her friend John is the prime suspect, she sets out to clear his name, but her research uncovers some troubling secrets about the school's faculty and students. And soon it becomes clear that John is not the only one with a motive for murder.