Showing results by narrator "Laurie Klein" in All Categories

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert of Green Gables had no intention of adopting the talkative, mischievous, red-headed girl the orphanage in Nova Scotia sent by mistake. What they wanted was a sturdy, sensible boy to help with the chores. Instead, they got 11-year-old Anne Shirley, whose capacity for adventure was only matched by her bright spirit and love of life. Still, there was something about the little girl that gave them second thoughts. She was keen of wit with a scintillating effervescence that was purely captivating. Just perhaps....

Rebecca Fletcher grew up on the genteel plantation of Live Oaks, her father's family home on the James River in Virginia. After her father was killed in Vietnam, her grandmother, Minnie, assumed the role of both mother and father to Rebecca. Rebecca's mother, Nina, was never talked about. But after Minnie's death, Rebecca's Uncle William decided to subdivide Live Oaks. Now, to save Live Oaks, Rebecca must find Nina alive.

Notorious outlaw Manitoba Joe Clark seems to have been caught red-handed this time, but he's begging Judge Kingston to find out who framed him. At home, life seems to be unraveling for the judge and his wife Judith. Will their widowed missionary son marry a most unlikely woman and return to India? Can evidence implicating Roberta's fiance as an embezzler and the father of an illegitimate child be true?

Hattie Clark is an aging advocate of peace in an Idaho town torn by World War I. Crippled by a stroke, she hires Kirsta Strom, a German refugee, to help in her bookstore. But Kirsta has her own problems. A shyster lawyer and powerful man, Carl Foreman has some hold over her, and has her watched constantly. And she must deal with new neighbors, who hate her for her German birth and treat her cruelly.

A cool New England background mingled with the passion of hot Cherokee blood to challenge the savage land - that was Deborah Leigh, a copper-haired beauty, gently reared. To all appearances she was white. But she could never forget, never betray her Indian ancestry. She was swept away from her family’s gracious home in Georgia onto the Cherokee Trail of Tears – the migration of a whole tribe driven from their lands to travel west beyond the Mississippi. The Cherokee blood in Deborah rebelled against the government that oppressed them.

A legend on the frontier, only Ross could guide the wagon train that was taking them across the vast, unmapped continent. Born white, but raised as a mighty Sioux warrior, his desire for the golden-haired Marlette had taken him from his Indian people and left his soul divided. Now together, Ross and Marlette faced the unknown terrors of this great trek west...and a stirring destiny that would test the love and courage of both...

Winter 1914. Sara Lee Kennedy reads the newspaper account of the war in Europe and is appalled. Others in her sheltered Pennsylvania home are interested only in her coming marriage to solid, self-centered, Harvey. Struggling with compassion, Sara Lee feels compelled to help the suffering Belgian Army whose country is overrun by Germans. She defies her parents and travels alone to the front lines to help anyway she can. It is there she meets Henri, a Belgian officer.

Nan Prince first becomes interested in medicine as a child, as the ward of the widowed physician Dr. Leslie. In time she becomes his protégée. But when she enters medical college, she realizes that she will have to choose between marriage and her career, between the demands of her society and her obligations to her true self.

It's 1882, and developer Kellen O'Roarke wants to build a resort near a natural mineral spring in northern California, but he needs a strategic piece of land owned by Guinevere "Guin" Talbot, who apparently would rather die than part with her property. Guin is still in mourning for her parents, who, ironically, lost their money investing in a resort. Kellen isn't her only worry. Grandmother Henrietta, bitter and critical, has taken it upon herself to move in with Guin as her "chaperone."

All Abigail had to still her fears of the unknown were love, and trust in Ross Gallagher, the handsome, reckless Irishman who had snatched her from her New England family to make her his wife. But Abigail was soon to learn how frail even this man's strength and spirit were in the face of the dangers and terrors of the West. As a captive of a Sioux chieftain, Abigail was fated to experience a living hell.

Jonathan and Ellen Ware have immigrated to the area from their farm in Illinois with 13-year-old Christy Ware and her two older brothers. The Wares are only one of the families that will soon be caught up in the burning issue of slavery with raids from the Border Ruffians out of Missouri and John Brown's small army devoted to ending slavery and helping runaways to escape to the north.

Girl from New Hope is a heart-warming tale of love won and lost, how people react to cultural change, a quite different look a life in the frontier west, and a wonderful addition to the literature of the west. The author writes authoritatively about Colorado, New York, horsemanship, and about the "real west" of American history.

For 16-year-old Hattie Rood, Mr. Lincoln's War has brought nothing but death and hardship. She has lost one brother to a Yankee sharpshooter, another is away fighting with the Confederate army, and her aging father is barely able to keep the family tobacco farm going. One hot August night in 1864, Hattie's life takes another dramatic turn when rebel bushwhackers bring a wounded Jesse James to the Rood farmhouse, to recover or die.

Danielle Alexander's life has suddenly turned upside down. On a wagon train to California to join her fiance, her father falls terminally ill. Add to that a motherless newborn half-breed baby boy dropped literally into her arms by a wise, ancient Indian chief, who wants her to be the baby's mother "just until" her fiance comes to rescue her. Throw in, for good measure, a heady attraction to a handsome stranger named Joel Riley now making his fortune in the untamed west....

Kansas is deeply split by the national conflict. Jonathan Ware and his wife are deeply troubled that their sons have enlisted on opposing sides of the conflict. The Wares and the other homestead families are subject to raids by renegades from both sides. When Jonathan Ware and Bishop Jardine are killed, the women are left without protection. Earlier Christy Ware and her father had discovered a hidden valley, opening out from an underground river.

She had the face of an angel, the will of a spitfire, and a mind of her own. Behind her was the slavelike existence in a Welsh mining town. Ahead, the promise of freedom in America, but to her horror, Eden Richards was soon to discover that slavery wears many disguises. The strict Mormon laws that could bend her to her will. The terrifying rites of the Sioux who had captured Eden and made her one of them. The lustful advances of the arrogant mine owner who would make her his prisoner.

Nicki Chandler was too busy fighting natural disasters on her homestead and trying to avert a range war to worry about romance. She was more likely to chase a man off at gunpoint than invite him in to tea. Then a handsome stranger with a mysterious past came looking for a job. In desperate need of a strong back to help with the work, Nicki reluctantly allowed him to stay, completely unprepared for the assault he would make on her heart.

Pinocchio is a naughty, disobedient wooden puppet that longs to grow up and become a real boy, but as long as he misbehaves and disappoints his father, old Gepetto, he is doomed and his dream will never be realized.

Four months have passed since Fred Nighthawk, a ranger for the Bureau of Land Management, vanished in Paiute Valley. Now, vandals have destroyed Indian petroglyphs in the remote area. Marcie Gibbs, an archeologist turned Special Agent for the BLM, is given her first assignment as an officer - look for a possible connection between the vandalism and Fred's disappearance.

Cordelia Lu Hankins is the half Caucasian, half Chinese - and all albino. She has grown up in a remote lumber town with her distant father and a giant stepmother nicknamed Babe (after Paul Bunyan's blue ox), convinced she is ugly. Then, in the summer of 1918, when she is fourteen, she falls in love with the dashing Squirl. One day they meet on the mountain and Cordy receives her first kiss, as well as a wild ride down a log flume that gets Squirl fired.