Showing results by narrator "Jill Smith" in All Categories

I'm the coach's daughter, watching from the shadows as my father's best friend and star player wins the World Series for his team. Trick Lowry is almost twice my age and a bonafide celebrity, and I love him with my entire heart. It's the kind of secret, off-limits crush that feeds wild fantasies and reckless ideas—like sneaking into his hotel room while he's celebrating, just to have a little slice of him to myself. I innocently surround myself with his smell, thinking he doesn't have to know.

Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, emerges from a wretched night’s sleep to discover him embracing the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. His former mistress! It is shocking, yes, but not so very alarming, for Penelope Taylor is actually there to see Bea. Her dearest friend has been brutally slain, and as Millicent Lloyd happened to be sleeping in the courtesan’s bed at the time, Mrs. Taylor is the only suspect. The magistrate is impatient to cart her off to Newgate and refuses to acknowledge the truth that is glaringly obvious to her: She was the intended victim.

Do you get up every morning, spend close to an hour or more getting ready, pick out the perfect outfit, make sure your makeup is suitable, then style your hair just so? Do you slip your feet into your favorite heels, lock your modest one-bedroom apartment, climb into your practical car? Do you drive 20 minutes to downtown, find a spot in the company parking garage? If you do, then you're very much like me. However, I think our stories will differ significantly once you get to your office and I get to mine.

Ilsa Lynn has made it her life's goal to avoid the curse that binds her family to serve the Summer Court of Faerie. With her magically talented twin sister given the role of Gatekeeper, Ilsa is content to hide under the radar amongst the regular humans. At least until a mysterious spell book falls into her possession, granting Ilsa with a sudden and inconvenient affinity with the dead, and dangerous magic that paints a neon target on her head.

He's powerful, gorgeous, twice my age… and obsessed with me? I might be an innocent runaway, but I’m at my friend’s funeral to avenge her murder by the mafia boss: King. He has other ideas. I should have guessed he’d retaliate with kidnap. Now I'm under his control, still intent on his demise, and honestly so turned on I could cry. When he offers me pleasure, I can't refuse.

The Art of Change Leadership represents a major milestone in the study of change leadership. An approachable yet thorough guide for leaders and team members that illustrates how to increase speed and agility during times of intense technological innovation and fast change, this resource focuses on the ways in which you, as an individual, can harness your unique abilities to lead cultural change and personal leadership in a positive and proactive way.

He was given another chance at life and from the infinite possibilities available he chose to come back as a mechanical man, a Metalman, named Repair. In book oone, Repair explored a new world, defeated deadly mutated dungeon monsters, overcame the opposition of the gnomes that revived him, and foiled the scheme to kill his best friend, a goblin named Greebo. Now, the Metalman will have to prove himself worthy of becoming the Gnome Research Institute’s champion, or he’ll spend the next decade as a virtual slave to them.

After the death of a childhood loved one, five best friends reunite in the small coastal town of Five Island Cove. One doesn't expect to find love with a high school crush. Another isn't prepared to find the strength she needs to take control of her life. And none of them are ready for the secrets they'll uncover at the lighthouse.

Since the new Duchess of Kesgrave cannot be swayed from her unfortunate interest in dead bodies, Lady Abercrombie decides to confront the matter head-on by hosting a murder mystery dinner party. Gathering together several of society’s most influential members, she concocts an amusing puzzle-play, assigns roles, and stands back to allow Bea to impress them all with her ingenuity.

Despite suffering a few initial setbacks, the former Beatrice Hyde-Clare has settled into her new position nicely. Thanks to Lady Abercrombie’s machinations, she has secured the admiration of society and finally earned the respect of her staff. Even the lessons in defending herself, which her husband, the Duke of Kesgrave, insists she take if she wants to continue in her dangerous avocation, are going well. But then she learns from a most unlikely source that Kesgrave’s malevolent uncle is scheming to destroy her happiness.

It’s been two months. Two months since Gabrielle survived the horror that was Samhain. Two months since she slipped from the devil’s clutches. Two months since she learned that she might have to face him again. Her nights are plagued by dreams of him, and she wakes to find that she’s creeping closer to that unholy reunion. So when a ritualistic murder occurs on a ley line in Romania and Gabrielle is called in to investigate, it seems like a harbinger of things to come.

When Joel Shields dies, Robin Grover's only goal is to get her four best friends back to Five Island Cove to celebrate the life of Kristen's husband. She alone has stayed in the cove while everyone else couldn't wait to get away. Alice Keller comes instantly, because her mansion in the Hamptons and her husband's infidelity is smothering her. Not only that, but Kristen has always been like a mother to her, and she wants to support her.

Why, yes, the former Beatrice Hyde-Clare is distracted. Having settled comfortably into marriage to the duke of Kesgrave, she is nevertheless surprised to find herself in an interesting condition. And it has to be that—the unsettling prospect of motherhood—that causes her to overlook the obvious clue that Roger Dugmore had indeed been killed in his sleep.

When a body shows up near Peel Academy, all signs indicate the killer is a vampire. Ravaged throat, body drained of blood. At least that’s all it appears to be when the Politia, the supernatural police force, assigns Gabrielle to the case. Now it’s Gabrielle’s job to figure out who did it. But after a second body turns up with the same lethal wounds, it’s clear that a serial killer is stalking the island.

Once a sought-after assassin, a single error in judgment landed me in servitude to House August, the most powerful vampire family in North America. Now I use my special brand of magic as a member of their security team, fighting monsters in the city and keeping the royal family’s many enemies at bay.

My one night stand? He’s sitting behind the headmaster’s desk. We met at a truck stop. The chemistry was immediate, and we both do something out of character: one night, no explanations. The next day, I arrive at my new private school. Now I’m the off-limits forbidden temptation Sebastian Craig can’t forget, and we both try our best to behave. It works for a few weeks… until our secret cravings come tumbling out in the library after hours. How will we keep our private connection hidden until the end of the term?

Stormy Morgan has accepted her life as a witch and is even looking forward to the future. That means training with the most powerful witches in the Midwest. She’s determined to follow through on her destiny. Despite her best intentions though, not everything is going to be as easy as she hoped. When Stormy steps in and uses her magic following a bus accident, she’s almost killed in the process. Worse than that, it seems the child she risked her life to save might be an ongoing target.

He was given another chance at life, and from the infinite possibilities available, he chose to come back as a mechanical man, a Metalman, named Repair. Repair has risked life and mechanical limb traveling through dungeon levels, fighting grotesque monsters, and even lost friends along the way. All to secure a chance to be a free citizen in this RPG fantasy world. Now, he has to train with strangers, and unless he can whip them into shape and develop magical technology, he'll have to endure a lifetime as someone else's property.

I have seventeen dollars to my name and a one-way bus ticket to my new college town—two months early. Oh, and the name of a man I’ve never met scrawled on a piece of paper. Henry Wilde, my mom's long-ago high school boyfriend. But when I show up on his doorstep, he has no idea that my mom said I could stay with him. And he only has one bed.

Hilarious and colorful episodes in the lives of families, many depicted from a kid's-eye-view, are the theme for this compilation. Being part of a family is often trying, and stranger than any fiction, but never dull and always worth it in the end. Join these very different families as they face the shrinking of parents, the pre-emptive guilt of First Confession, the secret worlds of children, and more!