Showing results by narrator "Natasha Soudek" in All Categories

It's the summer of 2008. Chicago's Hyde Park senator is running for the White House, the city is vying to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, and "Poison", a lethal form of heroin, has killed more than 250 people, including dozens of suburban girls from prominent families. Natalie Delaney, a crime reporter from the Chicago Times, discovers that daughters of Democratic powerhouses are the real targets. Obsessed with finding who is behind the killings, Natalie becomes entangled in an underworld where drugs, cops, gangs, politics, and privilege collide.

A gorgeous stranger in an old photograph. A desperate search from another century. And a mystery Camille Gordon cannot resist. It has been two years since Camille discovered that she was going to be a teenage mother. Abandoned by her child's father, Camille is determined that she and her daughter will make it on their own. When she discovers an old picture hidden in a trunk in her grandmother's attic, Camille is at once drawn to the man in the image.

Three years have passed since Joelle Gordon came home to Landon, Minnesota, following her heart back to her family of women and their little café on Flickertail Lake. Joelle, her sister Jillian, and her daughter Camille have grown closer through the shared heartaches and passionate loves they experienced since that first summer. Now the Shore Leave Café is again basking under the brilliant June sunshine, and this summer promises to be hotter than ever.

Tish Gordon has worked tirelessly to earn a law degree from her father's alma mater in Chicago. Although the Shore Leave Café will always be in her heart, Tish wants nothing short of a high-profile law career in the glamorous city. There is just one minor roadblock - a summer internship in Jalesville, Montana, where a fast-talking company is snapping up acreage and threatening local business. Tish heads west, determined to accomplish the internship and return to Chicago, but Montana has distractions of its own, like a sexy musician/cowboy.

With a particular focus on obsession and the abnormal, We So Seldom Look on Love explores life at its quirky extremes, pushing past limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real. Whether writing about the dilemma of a two-headed man who attempts to expunge his own pain or the shock of a woman who discovers she has married a transsexual, Gowdy convinces us with incisive detail, only to disarm us with black humor.

Joelle Gordon is leaving Chicago and her cheating husband to head for her hometown of Landon, Minnesota. There, she returns to the Shore Leave Café, the lakeside diner the Davis women have run for decades. Joelle's family, including her three teenaged daughters, Camille, Tish, and Ruthann, is made up of strong women who have long believed in a curse upon them - a curse that robs them of the men they love.

Twelve years ago, Jillian Henriksen cut off all her hair and placed it in her young husband's hands as he was buried. After his tragic accident, she clung to the only remaining stability she had - her young son Clint, her family of women, and her job at their lakeside diner, the Shore Leave Café. Now it is summer again, and change is in the hot and humid air. Jillian's sister, Joelle, and her teenaged nieces, Camille, Tish, and Ruthann, have come home to Landon, bringing a welcome distraction.

The past summer has been a wild ride for Joelle Gordon, in more ways than one. After discovering her husband cheating, she fled Chicago for her small-town childhood home in Landon, Minnesota. There, her family's lakeside diner, the Shore Leave Café, remains unchanged. Yet nothing else in Landon is the same, including her family of women, her three teenaged daughters, Camille, Tish, and Ruthann, and the intense, passionate love she has found with Blythe Tilson.

Tourmaline Harris's life hit pause at 15, when her mom went to prison because of Tourmaline's unintentionally damning testimony. But at 18, her home life is stable, and she has a strong relationship with her father, the president of a local biker club known as the Wardens. Virginia Campbell's life hit fast-forward at 15, when her mom "sold" her into the services of Hazard, a powerful attorney: a man for whom the law is merely a suggestion.

I may be newly divorced, stranded in a small mountain town, and working as an elf at a cut-your-own-Christmas-tree farm, but I'm finally rid of my ex and putting food on the table. Independence rocks, and I've got zero interest in the former-SEAL-turned-firefighter who literally falls out of the sky and lands at my feet. Okay. Not zero interest. Jacks Benson is the foul-mouthed, irritating, way-too-sexy bad boy who tormented me through high school.

Being a werewolf's mate sucks, but Bera doesn't have a choice - until a big, brutish, and thoroughly pissed-off Viking werebear crashes into her cave and rescues her. He may be hot and their chemistry off-the-charts good, but she's done with domination games and alpha males. Colden isn't a nice guy - and he likes it that way. His rules are simple. Hit hard, fight mean, and defend what's his. But when the Viking werebear rescues a sexy little werewolf and her pack names Colden as her new mate, the rules change.

Waitress Jillian Matheson needs a life makeover. The first thing on her "Get it Together" to-do list is breaking up with her fiancé, Zach Gifford, a struggling rocker who refuses to grow up. With Zach on the sidelines, Jillian pursues the dream career she's secretly craved for decades and finds romance in the arms of a hot, mysterious visitor on Fortune's Island. There's just one kink in her plans. Zach's band has a regular gig at The Love Shack where she works. And she can't deny the effect of his velvet-cloaked voice.

After an abruptly ended engagement, Graciela Ramirez is dying of a broken heart and has to attend her friend's wedding as the only member of her old group who's still a virgin. On a quest to reinvent herself as bolder, braver, and sexier, she tries crazy new things and intends to have a one night stand. Catapulted into the dating game once more, Graci never expects that Neal, the hot musician she literally runs into at a bar, might be her second chance at love. He's supposed to be her transition guy, but love doesn't arrive on a schedule.

Adya Parish has drifted through life for too long and vows to take back control, not relying on any man to take care of her. Her pledge to become more self-reliant requires time spent alone - not with the sweet man, his adorable daughter, and crazy dog that careen into her life. But with one chance meeting in the park, Adya begins to find the family she has always longed for. It will take real strength of will to refuse to fall for them and continue to stand on her own two feet for the first time in her life.

Leah Schaeffer has come a long way since an accident took her sight. She's finally ready for independence, but convincing her wealthy parents she'll be safe on her own isn't easy. The first night in her own place at last, she encounters her neighbor with the midnight velvet voice and her world shifts again. Since finishing a military tour, J.D. Wyatt has struggled both financially and emotionally. When Leah's parents hire him to act as her bodyguard, he seizes the opportunity.

Love is an extravagance Darcy Williams can't afford. She prefers the simple life, which includes waitressing at The Love Shack and avoiding temptation. But when a forbidden part of her past steps off the ferry, her safe, guarded existence is turned upside down. Kincaid Foster has never gotten over his first love. When he sees the wild, beautiful blonde again, dancing her way around The Love Shack, the memories of Darcy's soft skin, gentle touch, and heated kisses come rushing back.

A struggling single mother. Rianna Cutter strips to survive. It's the best paying gig for a young woman with little education and puts a roof over her child's head and food on the table. Working toward a better life for her son, she has no time or energy for love. A tough criminal businessman. Jonah Wyatt is ready to make a big change, moving away from his successful pot growing business into a legitimate enterprise. He's all business all the time and has no interest in finding love he doubts even exists.

Corinne Cartright has an agenda: to snap up the office hottie before someone else does. She and her buddy Seth make a pact to each try to land their current crushes and failing that, to set each other up with the perfect match. But learning more about her friends' romantic choices causes Corinne to rethink what she wants from a relationship. Is it possible that the man of her dreams has been right in front of her all this time? Can she find love where she least expected it?

Prudence Landon has always done exactly as she should. She's obeyed her parents' every word, lived by society's every dictate, and even agreed to marry a man more than twice her age simply because it was expected of her. In the fortnight before her wedding, she decides it's high time to bend a few rules before life as she knows it is over. Viscount Ashby leads a charmed life. Betrothed since the age of seven, he is perfectly content to allow his off-the-market status to keep the marriage-minded mamas at bay.

Bree's wedding to Tony, the man she truly loves, has almost arrived. But first it's time for a bachelorette weekend with the best friends from her youth, Graci, Tara, Corinne, and Adya. Considered the wild one of the group back in the day, Bree hardly seems a candidate to be first down the aisle. As the weekend progresses, she begins to panic about making her wedding vows. It takes the support of her friends to set Bree back on the course to love.