“Aided by her protagonist’s pilot’s license, Muller keeps the action literally flying, moving from vividly detailed Bay Area neighborhoods down to a Baja fishing village and up to Ripinsky and McCone’s high desert ranch.” —Publishers Weekly
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- Someone Always Knows
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 7/05/16
Formats: cpid_11
Missing bearer bonds, a family tragedy, arson, and murder—it's all in a day's work for Sharon McCone in the new series installment from bestselling author Marcia Muller.
Settled into their new home after they lost their house in a fire and fully established in their new shared offices, private investigator Sharon McCone and her business partner husband Hy are finally starting to feel comfortable. That calm is shattered when Hy's former colleague Gage Renshaw—a shady troublemaker who they presumed dead—reappears, and it's unclear what he wants from his prosperous former associate.
Meanwhile, Sharon has a new client with a desire to get rid of the derelict house that's disturbing the local homeowners' association. However, the abandoned house holds its share of secrets, and soon Sharon is contending with more than a simple eyesore as she searches for the individual who is obsessed with destroying her life.
- Someone Always Knows
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 7/05/16
Formats: cpid_11
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- Cattle Kate
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A Poisoned Pen Press Mystery
Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 2/10/15
Formats: Digital Audy
Cattle Kate is the only woman ever lynched as a cattle rustler. History called it "range-land justice" when she was strung up in Wyoming Territory on July 20, 1889, tarring her as a dirty thief and a filthy whore.
But history was wrong. It was all a lie.
Her real name was Ella Watson. She wasn't a rustler. She wasn't a whore. And she'd never been called Cattle Kate until she was dead and they needed an excuse. She was really a twenty-nine-year-old immigrant homesteader, lynched along with her husband by her rich and powerful cattle-baron neighbors, who wanted her land and its precious water rights. Some people knew the truth from the start. Their voices were drowned out by the all-powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association. And those who dared speak out—including the eyewitnesses to the hangings—either disappeared or mysteriously died. There was no one left to testify against the vigilantes when the case eventually came to trial. Her six killers walked away scot-free. But the legend was stronger than the truth. For over a century, newspapers, magazines, books, and movies spread her ugly legacy.
Now, on the 125th anniversary of her murder, the real Ella comes alive in Cattle Kate to tell her heartbreaking story. Jana Bommersbach's debut novel bares a legend central to the western experience.
- Cattle Kate
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A Poisoned Pen Press Mystery
Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 2/10/15
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Night Searchers
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 7/01/14
Formats: cpid_11
When new clients Jay and Camilla Givens come to Sharon McCone with Camilla's stories of devil worshippers performing human sacrifices in San Francisco, the detective is skeptical, to say the least. However, when she discovers that Jay is involved with the treasure hunting group the Night Searchers, she starts looking into what exactly he and the other participants are up to after dark. As she digs deeper into the Searchers, Sharon joins their ranks in order to find out more—while someone is searching for her.
- The Night Searchers
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 7/01/14
Formats: cpid_11
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- Blackbird House
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Read by various narrators
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Release Date: 7/01/14
Formats: Digital Audy
With "incantatory prose" that "sweeps over the reader like a dream" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.
In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family's lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.
These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.
From the writer that Time has said tells "truths powerful enough to break a reader's heart" comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House.
- Blackbird House
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Read by various narrators
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Release Date: 7/01/14
Formats: Digital Audy
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- A Break with Charity
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By Ann Rinaldi
Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 5/01/13
Formats: Digital Audy
Susanna desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage. What she doesn't realize is that the leader of the group, the malicious Ann Putnam, is about to set off a torrent of false accusations leading to the imprisonment and execution of countless innocent people. When Susanna puts the pieces together, she faces a painful choice. She can keep quiet and let the witch-hunt panic continue, or she can "break charity" with the group—and risk having her family named as witches.
- A Break with Charity
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By Ann Rinaldi
Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 5/01/13
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Orphan Train Rider
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 4/01/13
Formats: Digital Audy
Between 1854 and 1930, more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children were sent west on orphan trains to find new homes. Some were adopted by loving families; others were not as fortunate. In recent years, some of the riders have begun to share their stories. Andrea Warren alternates chapters about the history of the orphan trains with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train to Texas.
- Orphan Train Rider
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 4/01/13
Formats: Digital Audy
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- There’s Something in a Sunday
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 2/01/13
Formats: Digital Audy
It's a cold Sunday in San Francisco. Sharon McCone's alone on a routine surveillance job, following a man named Frank Wilkonson through the city's lush horticultural hot spots to the sere foothills of the Diablos. But when she returns to find her kindly, old client in a pool of blood, nothing she's learned explains it. The search of answers takes her from Wilkonson's sullen brood on Burning Oak Ranch, to the eccentric havoc of a household in the Haight, to Golden Gate Park and the desperate digs of the homeless. Unraveling the threads that link a homeless man, a pair of prominent activists, a wayward rancher, and a mysterious missing beauty, Sharon is plunged into the depths of domestic mayhem … entering a realm where dreams shatter and marriage leads to bloody murder.
- There’s Something in a Sunday
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 2/01/13
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Looking for Yesterday
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 11/01/12
Formats: cpid_11
Three years ago, Caro Warrick was acquitted for the murder of her best friend Amelia Bettecourt, but the lingering doubts of everyone around Caro is adversely affecting her life. Sharon McCone is confident that she can succeed where other detectives have failed (though at times it's hard to shake her own misgivings about what happened), but when Caro is brutally beaten right at Sharon's doorstep, the investigation takes on a whole new course. How many more people remain at risk until Amelia's murderer is finally caught?
- Looking for Yesterday
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 11/01/12
Formats: cpid_11
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- Skeleton in the Closet
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/25/12
Formats: cpid_11
Sharon McCone is excited—and relieved—to move her detective agency into the perfect new office space. Unfortunately, real estate woes aren't the only headache that the new building brings into Sharon's life. Possible nineteenth-century ghosts and a shady "intra-reality organization" ensure that Sharon's new office will bring as much excitement as any of her clients.- Skeleton in the Closet
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/25/12
Formats: cpid_11
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- City of Whispers
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/26/11
Formats: cpid_11
Private eye Sharon McCone receives an email asking for help from her emotionally disturbed half-brother, Darcy Blackhawk, but he fails to reply to her response. As Sharon digs deeper, she discovers that Darcy sent his message from an Internet cafe in San Francisco, a city he's never been to before. Sensing that Darcy is in terrible danger, McCone begins a search for him throughout the city. The investigation leads her to the body of a woman at the Palace of Fine Arts, where a witness told her Darcy was headed. As her search widens, Sharon uncovers a connection to an unsolved murder of a young woman who was heiress to a multimillion dollar banking fortune. Sharon must race to solve both murders and ensure her brother's safety, despite the imminent danger that lurks within her own family.- City of Whispers
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/26/11
Formats: cpid_11
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- Leave a Message for Willie
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/11/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Amid the shifting world of San Francisco flea markets, shady vendors sell junk, precious antiques, and stolen goods side by side. Somewhere in the mix, a priceless collection of sacred Torah scrolls is gathering dust—and attracting a group of fanatical killers. When private investigator Sharon McCone helps one flea market kingpin fend off a stalker, she's drawn into the netherworld of deal-making and thievery, a dangerous milieu seldom seen by outsiders. For her client Willie Whelan, the sidewalk sales are a game: trick the customer, outsell the competition, and stay one step ahead of the cops. But Willie's enemies have something more sinister in mind—a conspiracy so heinous it threatens the religious artifacts, Willie's freedom, and McCone's life.
- Leave a Message for Willie
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/11/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- There’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rises above San Francisco’s volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city’s down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving to improve their lives. But private eye Sharon McCone believes that someone from the Tenderloins shadowy underworld is determined to drive the newcomers out. The suspects range from the colorful to the dangerous: a poetry-loving drifter, a mean-spirited preacher, a flower feller with a deadly touch, an enterprising pornographer, and a developer who’d like nothing better than to unload his worst investment—the Globe Hotel. When the All Souls Legal Cooperative is called upon to stop the pattern of intimidation, resentment explodes into murder. As McCone takes up the refugees’ cause, she is drawn into the depths of the city's most hated industry—and into the secrets of San Francisco’s buried past.- There’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Trophies and Dead Things
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
When a former sixties radical is murdered during a string of random sniper attacks, the All Souls Legal Cooperative must settle his surprisingly large estate. Then private investigator Sharon McCone comes across a new will, made just days before he died, that disinherits his two children in favor of four unknown and unconnected parties. McCone sifts through Perry Hilderly's belongings but finds little to explain this puzzling change. That is, until she uncovers a .357 with the serial number burned off. As McCone tracks down the new beneficiaries she discovers that the shootings aren't so random after all and that the dead man isn't the only one with a lurid past. To link the heirs to the killings, she must follow a treacherous trail of evidence that travels from the Vietnam years to the present. But along the way the elusive sniper waits in a homicidal rage and takes aim—this time at All Souls and Sharon McCone.- Trophies and Dead Things
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Eye of the Storm
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Appleby Island, once the magnificent home of a tycoon and planter, is a place of history and mystery in the Sacramento delta. Its story includes hints of tragedy, fueling rumors that ghosts still walk its derelict orchards. Now Patsy McCone, her new lover, and a group of investors are turning the old mansion into an elegant bed and breakfast.
Summoned by her eccentric younger sister, San Francisco's number one PI Sharon McCone arrives in the teeth of a gale, taking a busman's holiday to investigate mysterious acts of vandalism that are running the project to ruin. But when simple sabotage escalates to savage murder, she finds herself trapped on the island with a desperate killer—and flung into a raging storm of treachery, violence, and sudden death.
- Eye of the Storm
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Games to Keep the Dark Away
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Picture Salmon Bay: an isolated, run-down northern California village, home to an idle fleet of fishing boats, a deserted amusement park, and a handful of secretive, even hostile residents. When private investigator Sharon McCone arrives in search of one of the town’s wayward daughters, the trail leads to the thriving resort of Port San Marco.
McCone believes that the missing woman, a former social worker named Jane Anthony, was involved in the suspicious deaths of three terminally ill patients at an exclusive hospice. But the elusive Jane Anthony turns up all too soon—washed up beneath a rotting pier in her Salmon Bay. McCone discovers that no one—not her client, a reclusive photographer, nor Jane’s mother, nor her hospice employers—wants to find out why she died.
Then the killer strikes again, Jane’s secret life comes into focus, and McCone finds that someone wants her out of the picture—permanently.
- Games to Keep the Dark Away
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Cheshire Cat’s Eye
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
To tourists, bay-windowed Victorian mansions are quaint, peaceful symbols of old San Francisco, but on the secluded hill above Steiner Street, the gingerbread has sparked a bitter battle. Ambitious developers are pushing for restoration, and residents are fighting for their homes—until a controversial restorationist is found dead on the job, awash in garish house paint.
Private investigator Sharon McCone is called in only to discover a second bitter feud, this time between the developers and members of the city's powerful architectural community. As workmen rip through layers of drywall plaster, and wallpaper, McCone unearths an older crime: a cache of stolen antiques comes to light, and a missing one-of-a-kind Tiffany lamp emblazoned with the glowing profile of the Cheshire Cat becomes McCone's most important clue. To catch a killer, she must follow its eerie, knowing grin before its hidden eye foresees a fatal future.
- The Cheshire Cat’s Eye
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- The Shape of Dread
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
Bobby Foster, carhop at the chic Cafe Comedie, is going to the gas chamber. He’s already confessed to the murder of Tracy Kostakos, the club’s rising star. But two years after the crime, Tracy’s body is still missing and Bobby’s confession is full of holes. All Souls Legal Cooperative’s final appeal sends San Francisco’s number one PI Sharon McCone behind the footlights into the super-charged arena of anxious club owners and aspiring young hopefuls, into the fractured world of Tracy’s privileged family and the mind of a young comedienne who was not the good little girl they thought they knew, and into a labyrinth of death and deception where someone will kill to laugh last and get away with murder.
- The Shape of Dread
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Ask the Cards a Question
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 8/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
There’s trouble in Sharon McCone’s quiet San Francisco apartment building. Madame Anya, with her cards, her tamed crow, and her candles, had predicted evil for Molly Antonio. Linnea Carraway, drinking heavily and careening in the wake of a divorce, had argued with her. Now the sweet, elderly lady lies dead in her apartment. Linnea, last to see Molly alive, is the prime suspect, and if Sharon means to clear her best friend, she has to find the murderer fast. Sleuthing out the small-time secrets of her quirky neighbors leads Sharon in and around the neighborhood, and, much to her surprise, to a shocking string of big-time deals and blackmail.
Suddenly death is in the cards, threatening Sharon’s oldest friendship, her professional credibility—and her life.
- Ask the Cards a Question
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 8/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Edwin of the Iron Shoes
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 7/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
It's Sharon McCone's first case as staff investigator for All Souls Legal Cooperative. She knows nothing about antiques, yet she has an affection for Salem Street with its charming mix of antique and curio shops. Now elderly dealer Joan Albritton has been found dead, stabbed with an antique dagger. Her neighbors are shocked. Recurring vandalism has them frightened. Ferreting out the facts will take Sharon from the chaotic jumble of the junk dealer's establishment to a museum where San Francisco's most elegant socialites gather.- Edwin of the Iron Shoes
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 7/01/11
Formats: Digital Audy
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- Burn Out
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/08
Formats: cpid_11
Traumatized by a recent life-or-death investigation, Sharon McCone flees to her ranch in California’s high desert country to contemplate her future. Deep depression shadows her days and nights, and a chance encounter with a troubled, highly secretive Native American woman begins to haunt her dreams. Even though she is determined not to investigate anything during her stay, McCone is drawn into the plight of the young woman and her dysfunctional family. A murder and traces of violence at a deserted resort lead her across the desert and into Nevada, and finally to a remote and isolated ranch, where danger lies closer than she expects...- Burn Out
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 10/01/08
Formats: cpid_11
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- The Star Garden
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 9/04/07
Formats: Digital Audy
From the bestselling author of These Is My Words comes an exhilarating followup to the beloved Sarah’s Quilt. In the latest diary entries of pioneer woman Sarah Agnes Prine, Nancy E. Turner continues Sarah’s extraordinary story as she struggles to make a home in the Arizona Territory.
Winter 1906. Nearing bankruptcy after surviving drought, storms, and the rustling of her cattle, Sarah remains a stalwart pillar to her extended family. Then a stagecoach accident puts in her path three strangers who will change her life.
In sickness and in health, neighbor Udell Hanna remains a trusted friend, pressing for Sarah to marry. When he reveals a plan to grant Sarah her dearest wish, she is overwhelmed with passion and excitement. She soon discovers, however, that there is more to a formal education than she bargained for.
Behind the scenes, Sarah’s old friend Maldonado has struck a deal with the very men who will become linchpins of the Mexican Revolution. Maldonado plots to coerce Sarah into partnership, but when she refuses, he devises a murderous plan to gain her land for building a railroad straight to Mexico. When Sarah’s son Charlie unexpectedly returns from town with a new bride, the plot turns into an all-out range war between the two families.
Finally putting an end to Udell’s constant kindnesses, Sarah describes herself as “an iron-boned woman.” She wants more than to be merely a comfortable fill-in for his dead wife. It is only through a chance encounter that she discovers his true feelings, and only then can she believe that a selfless love has at last reached out to her.
- The Star Garden
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Read by Laura Hicks
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Release Date: 9/04/07
Formats: Digital Audy