Narielle Living

The holiday season generates so many emotions, from trepidation about facing the holidays alone to sheer delight at rediscovering the love of family. Join the Chesapeake Bay Writers as they bring you a collection of short stories that all take place in and around the Tidewater region of Virginia, including: A Corduroy Christmas: Will a new boyfriend unite the family or destroy the relationship between sisters?Christmas Eve Deer: When life becomes difficult, the embrace of home is always welcome.Christmas Mermaid: A misnamed bookstore and a Christmas to remember.The Curious Case of the Christmas K9: A search & rescue tale with two dogs. Dancing on DoG Street: Was it too much to ask for a partner who would dance with her?Holiday Haircuts: This holiday haircut was for a very special customer.Safe at Home: For Angela, being in law enforcement meant more than a job, it meant taking care of people.Snowflakes: One small kindness at Christmas stays with Katie for a lifetime.The Greatest Gift: Santa's job really is the best job.The Homecoming: Can these siblings find their way back to being a family?The Stocking: What was the true message that her grandmother wanted her to know?Will and Trussy: A holiday season shared with a very special visitor.

What do shamans, birds, and missing people have in common? Ava has no idea, but she's about to embark on a journey to find the truth.Ava Maria Sophia Cecilia O'Dell would like to crawl into a safe cocoon after the disaster of visiting her boyfriend's family. But there is no time to hide at home because her brother needs a favor. Fortunately, that favor does not involve joining him on his latest ghost hunt. Instead, she can stay behind at the store and play host for a shamanic workshop. How hard could that be? But soon all her ideas of sitting in the back office and taking care of paperwork (or scrolling through social media on her phone) are tossed aside. She might not know how to do a shamanic journey or why her nemesis, Debbee, has returned, but she knows a dead body when she sees one.Soon the body count piles up, and she works to figure things out. Why did a shamanic workshop result in a killing? Why did the shaman disappear, and where is he? What does the birding conference have to do with anything? In the midst of playing detective, she desperately tries to avoid a toxic family situation and determine what, and who, is in her future. Birding in Brewster Square is the second in the Brewster Square series about a delightful Connecticut shoreline town.

Ella Giancetti thought certain things had ended in the South, like segregation and signs announcing 'Whites Only'. When she moves to Paterson, Virginia, though, she quickly discovers that, though the signs might be gone, some of the attitudes remain... Accepting her first job as a college professor in a different state is supposed to be the start of a new life as Ella heals from the death of her mother. Trying to balance preparations for the new semester with incessant phone calls from her abrasive sister Lisa is difficult enough before complications appear. Someone already hates her enough to vandalize her house, and there's a constant supply of unannounced visitors, like her enigmatic landlord, her eccentric older neighbor, a handsome police officer, and a ghost. Of the three, the ghost is the real problem. It appears in her dreams, it appears in person. It makes a mess. Ella needs to know how this young Black woman became a ghost if she ever wants to have a peaceful night in her new home. Working to find out who is threatening her and why, she can't help wondering about the irony of seeing other people's ghosts - but not her own mother, whom she desperately misses. As the history of the town of Paterson and the house she lives in is uncovered, Ella wonders if the past is truly the past and questions what will happen once she finds the truth about the events of 1960.

Ava Maria Sophia Cecilia has been conned into her into helping her brother, Giuseppe, with one of his paranormal investigations. She really hates it when she gets dragged into his ghost-hunting gigs, especially since she probably doesn't believe in ghosts.But on the night they investigate the old McAllister place, the one house Ava is convinced is truly haunted, a dead body turns up in the basement.Ava is determined to investigate the death, even when it means she cannot avoid the new detective in town, the mayor, assorted ghost-hunters, and a crazy animal rehabber. As the investigation unfolds, she starts to wonder: has everyone in Brewster Square gone mad?

A Life for Christmas: An undercover detective... As an undercover narcotics detective, Cade knew about the dark side of humanity. He'd seen the worst of the worst, and thought he was immune to almost everything. But nothing could have prepared him for what came this Christmas. A female informant... Cade had been working hard to put away Thaddeus Bruneux, a notorious drug dealer and pimp. But Thaddeus knew the clock was ticking and had a whole different plan for Cade, a plan that involved the one woman Cade just happened to love. A whole new assignment... When Cade gets a reassignment by the very high-up management team just in time for Christmas, he doesn't know if he can get the job done. Adjusting to the new job means adjusting to a new partner, a graying man that Cade isn't even sure is sane, much less partner material. But all that matters now is that he figures out what he is really supposed to do this Christmas to complete his assignment. Hopefully his partner, Percy, can help him find the way. A Nice Jewish Boy: All of the characters are back from "Tea with a Hussy". It's 1965 and Mary Liz is determined to spend Christmas with her boyfriend at Wo Fat's Chinese Emporium. But Grandmother has other plans. Will Mary Liz prevail? Will Corrine Davis, the chinwag of Deltaville, strike again? Family secrets are revealed in this sequel to Volume I's "Tea with a Hussy".