Showing results by narrator "Karen Peakes" in All Categories

It was supposed to be a typical October evening for renowned portrait artist Will Light. Over dinner of lamb tagine, his wife, Sophie, would share news about chorus rehearsals for the upcoming holiday concert, and their teenage daughter, Lucy, would chatter about French club and field hockey. Only Lucy never came home. Her body was found, days later, in the woods. The Eastern Seaboard town of Port Fortune used to be Will's comfort. Now, there's no safe harbor for him.

The community along Oregon’s Deschutes River is one of successful careers and perfect families. For years, up-and-comers Liz and Owen have admired their good friends and neighbors, Carole and David. They appear to have it all - security, happiness, and a beautiful young son, Charlie. Then Charlie vanishes without a trace, and all that seemed safe is shattered by a tragedy that is incomprehensible - except to Liz.

1945: Along with hundreds of other war brides, Betty, Madeline, Alice, and June set sail for New York to be with the men they love. In the days they spend at sea, the four young women become firm friends and vow to stay in touch no matter what their new lives bring. Life in a new country comes with many challenges, but Betty, Madeline, Alice, and June didn't move half way across the world to give up without a fight.

In the Pacific Northwest, police officer Lindsay Jackman is investigating the murder of a young journalist found at the bottom of a ravine. Lindsay soon learns that the victim was writing an exposé. Her subject: a charismatic wellness guru who’s pulled millions into her euphoric orbit.

Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl - pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop - not until one special woman has been made to suffer....

Every brilliant person comes with problems. Even if that brilliant person is a child. At least, it seems that way for Nathan. All he wanted was a perfect family. Is that too much to ask? But instead of a perfect child, he got Cassie. She's a genius, sure, but she's not what he wanted. He doesn't care that she's a virtuoso on the violin or doing college level work at ten. She doesn't speak. Ever. To anyone. And Nathan knows that that means there's something wrong with her. No matter what his wife says, he has to do something about his daughter.

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined.

Colorado, 1976. When Reverend Mike Fuller and his beautiful wife, Sharon, arrive in the sleepy town of Rocky Ford, local residents think something’s off about the new couple. The God-fearing minister is gruff and cold, while charismatic Sharon has her husband wrapped around her finger.

Helen lives a decent, uncomplicated life. Satisfied in her career, she’s raising three happy teenagers, and her family has the most envied house on the street. Admittedly, she’s growing just a little disenchanted with her marriage to her workaholic husband, Werner. But that’s nothing she can’t fix. For disaffected, young petty criminals Ralf and Brian, it was a scheme to make some cash: a quick home invasion. The targets they’ve chosen are Helen and Werner. Just as planned, Brian disappears into Helen and Werner’s house. And he never comes out again.

The SARAH M. EDEN BRITISH ISLES COLLECTION contains two brand new historical romance novellas A FRIEND INDEED and A HAPPY BEGINNING, as well as four hand-picked readers' and reviewers' favorites of Sarah's popular Timeless Romance Anthology novellas. Listeners will love this selection of six historical romance novellas set in the British Isles.

Detective Megan Carpenter is no stranger to horrifying crime scenes, but when she arrives at the home of a woman whose body has been brutalized, Megan is shocked to discover that she knows the victim. Monique Delmont helped Megan when she was in danger years ago. And the killer has left a disturbing calling card...two laminated photographs of a 16-year-old high school girl - Megan. 

Ten years ago, Claire Hines lost her unborn child - and her short-term memory - following a heartrending tragedy. With notebooks, calendars, to-do lists, fractured pieces of the past, and her father’s support, Claire makes it through each day, hour by hour, with relative confidence. She also has a close-knit community of friends in the remote Alaskan town where she teaches guitar to the local children. It’s there, in the reminders. As determined as Claire is to regain all that’s disappeared, she’d prefer to live without some memories of her before life.

When the body of Leann Truitt is found in a secluded cove in Mystery Bay, Detective Megan Carpenter is one of the first on the scene. The victim has telltale marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck where she has been bound. But that’s not all. Next to Leann’s body lies a puzzling clue - an unusual symbol scratched into a rock. With rookie Deputy Ronnie Marsh under her wing and the investigation underway, Megan starts to receive disturbing messages. Someone knows about her traumatic past. They know what she did.

Hannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug up - one of them her mother's. The killer was never found....Twenty years later Hannah is a talented CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back. A killer with unfinished business is on the hunt. And an anonymous message turns Hannah's blood cold: Your Mom called....

In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame - beautiful, sharp-tongued Daisy.

Samantha Reid, the brilliant Director of the White House Office of Homeland Security, is enjoying a rare evening away from Washington at a Florida charity ball when a bomb sends the well-heeled attendees stampeding into the night. Narrowly escaping the blast, Reid returns to the White House, where she has been trailing the massacres and illicit arms sales of a shadowy group of Russian oligarchs... all of whom want her dead.

Florida homicide detective Maggie Novak has seen hundreds of brutal murder cases, but when she is called out to investigate the charred remains of a young woman, in what appears to be a Halloween prank gone wrong, she is confronted with a twenty-year-old secret. The body is formally identified as that of school counselor Dana Cullen, but a distinguishing mark makes Maggie look again. She believes it is the body of her school friend Rita, who perished in a fire twenty years ago. Maggie’s hunt for the truth behind the murder takes her back to a cruel high school trick.

Eric Brach's new book Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the moment: opioid addiction. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us - even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives. 

After losing first her husband, then her daughter, 78-year-old grandmother Ruby wants to teach her risk-averse granddaughter, Tulsa, that some leaps are worth taking, no matter how high the potential fall. Tulsa loves her grandmother dearly, but she has a business to run and no time for romance - not even the paperback version. But when Ruby ropes her into a book club, Tulsa can't bring herself to disappoint the woman who raised her.

An airplane plunges into an icy river and the world witnesses the dramatic rescue. Then, life after the Miracle on the Hudson landing puts three families on another crash course...with their own fragile humanity.