Showing results by narrator "Gayle Hendrix" in All Categories

Since the birth of her six-month-old daughter, Laura Fleming has wanted to do nothing but camp out in her Boston apartment and dream of having one good night's sleep. But then her Aunt Nora calls to say there's trouble brewing back home in Byerly, North Carolina. It seems Aunt Maggie has gone and married Big Bill Walters - and now someone's trying to kill the old coot. That's enough to get Laura packing the diaper bag.

Interior designer Deva Dunne just may have hit the jackpot. Sure, her new client Francesco Grandese talks tough and has shady friends, but he has the eye of a connoisseur, and a huge, empty mansion he wants her to decorate. Deva's boyfriend, police lieutenant Victor Rossi, has misgivings about her promising job - especially when he accompanies her to one of Francesco's dinner parties. After Francesco returns a dish to the kitchen untasted, the chauffeur promptly scarfs it down and drops dead from cyanide poisoning. Has the killer made a terrible mistake and murdered the wrong person? Or was the dead man the intended victim?

Now, in a delightful new tale of buried Southern secrets, Laura Fleming returns once again to her hometown of Byerly, North Carolina. To the folks of Byerly, carpetbaggers rank right up there in popularity with death and taxes. So when Northerners Marshall and Grace Saunders try to buy out the town's largest mill, it's no shock the proposed sale nearly causes a second Civil War. But Laura is surprised when the mill's president, Butt Walters, confidentially asks her to muckrake through the Saunders' backgrounds, even though Big Bill Walters, Burt's dad, the controlling owner of the mill, wants to sell.

As Christmas approaches, Laura plans to curl up in her Boston apartment with her English professor husband, Richard, to await the birth of their first child. But when her cousin asks Richard to direct A Christmas Carol, Laura heads back home to unpleasant surprises. First, running a play transforms mild-mannered Richard into a backstage tyrant. Next, Seth, the play's Scrooge, is a washout as an actor. And the worst surprise of all - grimmer than the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come - Seth is brutally murdered.

With her husband off in England, snowbound Laura Fleming is looking forward to spending a quiet weekend alone, until a wicked winter squall sweeps the Boston police to her front door. The body of her old college boyfriend, Philip Dennis, has been found frozen in the alley behind her Back Bay apartment. To make matters worse, he'd arrived at Laura's only hours before looking for a place to stay.

Laura Fleming, savvy sleuth of Dead Ringer and Down Home Murder, returns to her North Carolina home town to attend her aunt's second wedding to her third husband - but murder and mayhem soon disrupt the plans.

Back home in North Carolina for a family reunion, Laura Fleming and her husband, Richard, instead encounter a mysterious corpse, and the ensuing investigation uncovers some family skeletons.

The Tight as a Tick Flea Market is one of Byerly's most popular attractions. But insiders know it as a hornet's nest of greed, envy, and ruthless competition. When dealer Carny Alexander is found carved up with one of his own collectible knives, Laura Fleming discovers that the flea market is swarming with suspects.

When a tragic family accident brings Laura Fleming back home to Byerly, North Carolina, the sleuth discovers that her beloved grampaw's fatal fall from a ladder in the old mill was not an accident.

When artist James Wesley realizes Evie Reed is dying, he is so moved by the beautiful reporter's determination to live that he makes her immortal—a vampire, like him. She's the woman he's been waiting over 150 years for. Though initially shocked by the change, Evie quickly embraces her second chance at life, and love. But just as James and Evie begin to define eternity together, a zealot breaks an ancient treaty, threatening a peace between humans and vampires that has stood for a thousand years.

Interior decorator Deva Dunne never dreamed she'd see a Monet hanging on someone's dining room wall. Then she snags a client with two Monet seascapes. Her thrill lasts until she finds one of the paintings missing, cut from its frame, and the cook shot dead. Rough-around-the edges, but gorgeous all-around police lieutenant Victor Rossi insists Deva leave the sleuthing to the police. But what could it hurt to come up with a list of suspects that doesn't include her? Then Deva finds another victim....

Casey Lord needs a break. Her great-on-paper boyfriend, Reed, is pressuring her to marry him but she’s not sure if he sees her merely as an asset to help his political career. A river-rafting trip in the remote wilderness provides the perfect opportunity to clear her head... until a flash flood sweeps Casey away from her group—and straight into the arms of Jack, a mysterious man also stranded by the flooding river.

During a hostile situation at the American embassy in Angola, Special Forces officer Cole Scalini is ordered to take out a suicide bomber and rescue a hostage. Simple enough for a sniper with his training, until he realizes that the woman in danger is neither a random nor a typical victim. She's pregnant. Callie Nascimento is carrying her sister's baby as a surrogate when she discovers her sister was killed under suspicious circumstances. Now Callie's become a target. Her only hope for survival is a rebel of another kind, a handsome loner of a military man who's risking his life to save her.

Interior designer Deva Dunne's latest project comes to a screeching halt when blood on the carpet leads her to the body of her client, an exotic dancer with a mysterious past. But the murdered woman is not the only resident of the posh beachfront condominium with secrets, and investigating officer Lieutenant Victor Rossi considers them all suspects.

Rookie patrol officer Trish Robinson isn't expecting to see any action during another routine night on the job. But when she and her training officer answer a prowler call at a remote estate, the two cops walk into an ambush laid by a crew of ruthless criminals. Disarmed, cut off from help, and outnumbered five to one, the young rookie must draw on inner resources she never knew she possessed as she plays a game of cat and mouse with hardened killers in a desperate battle to survive.

He's had a wild ride, and now sex club owner Josh Scott is looking for a change of scene. But first, he's determined to bring two friends together, and he's willing to be a third wheel to move things along.... Beth Norris is eager to be set up with hot bartender Oliver Stephenson, but she's equally attracted to matchmaker Josh. Soon she's fantasizing about both men at once - and about being the one to call the shots in the encounter.... Ready to move on with his life post-divorce, Oliver is conflicted....