Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Tribute
    Tribute
    Tribute
    Audiobook14 hours

    Tribute

    Written by Nora Roberts

    Narrated by Jennifer Van Dyck

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A young woman gets caught up in the secrets and shadows of a big-screen legend and a small-town scandal in this #1 New York Times bestseller from Nora Roberts.

    Cilla McGowan, a former child star, has found a more satisfying life restoring homes. So she comes to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to save the dilapidated farmhouse of her grandmother—a legendary actress who died of an overdose there more than thirty years ago.

    Plunging into the project with gusto, Cilla’s almost too busy and exhausted to notice her neighbor, graphic novelist Ford Sawyer. Determined not to carry on the family tradition of ill-fated romances, Cilla steels herself against Ford’s quirky charm, though she can’t help indulging in a little fantasy.   

    But it’s reality that holds its share of dangers for Cilla. A cache of unsigned letters found in the attic points to a mysterious romance in her grandmother’s life, and may be what sparks a frightening, violent assault. Now, if Cilla and Ford are unable to sort out who is targeting her and why, she may, just like her world-famous grandmother, be cut down in the prime of her life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 8, 2008
    ISBN9781423347200
    Tribute
    Author

    Nora Roberts

    Nora Roberts is the bestselling author of more than two hundred romance novels. She was the first author to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Since her first bestseller in 1991, Nora’s books have spent more than two hundred weeks in the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list. There are more than five hundred million copies of her books in print, published in over thirty-four countries.

    Related to Tribute

    Related audiobooks

    Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Vagaries

      Mar 1, 2024

      Vagaries
      8 min read

    • Article

      My Dinner with Denis Johnson

      Jun 25, 2018

      My Dinner with Denis Johnson
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Christmas Memory

      Nov 1, 2018

      A Christmas Memory
      18 min read

    • Article

      ‘A Children’s Bible’: Featured Fiction from Lydia Millet

      May 12, 2020

      "My phone had ceased to interest me since the news started repeating, bringing a wash of grimness whenever I looked. I solved the problem by ignoring it." The post ‘A Children’s Bible’: Featured Fiction from Lydia Millet appeared first on The Million

      4 min read

    • Article

      Give Me Shelter

      Oct 30, 2019

      Give Me Shelter
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Only Rule

      Jul 13, 2020

      There is only one rule in polite English society, but it is iron clad. Of course, polite English society is a fiction. For one thing, its members are rarely polite. Politeness is for the middle classes rather than those who live off ancestral acres o

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Witch Finders

      Jul 16, 2020

      Beth pulled her cloak tightly around her. It was the very last day of October and the air was damp and chill. Dead autumn leaves lay in deep piles in the woods and smoke curled into the night air from her cottage. Not far to go now. She bent her head

      4 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Girls Like You

      Sep 5, 2023

      Girls Like You
      17 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      Light delimits the darkness as snowgives shape to the silence of winter trees.Above a rooftop, the shadow of illness hoversindistinguishable from the wraithsof common chimney smoke.Strip skin from flesh, flesh from boneto behold the comical, adumbrat

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Walled Garden

      Apr 30, 2020

      The Walled Garden
      4 min read

    • Article

      Echoes

      Jun 22, 2022

      Echoes
      9 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Come Stay

      Jan 16, 2024

      Come Stay
      23 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Plain Little House

      Apr 8, 2019

      The house is real, not imaginary. But it is also a place lodged deep in the imagination, a dream place whose actual coordinates have been forgotten. In the last years of her very long life, my mother’s memory, eroded by time and general anaesthetics,

      3 min read

    • Article

      All I Want For Christmas

      Dec 16, 2020

      IT was more than an icicle. More like an icy boulder, oversized and murkily white, faceted like a cartoon jewel and, shortly, dripping. It had lurked beneath a low stone bridge at the bottom of the wood, where sycamore thickets bald for winter gave w

      18 min read

    • Article

      STEPPING Out

      Feb 12, 2020

      STEPPING Out
      9 min read

    • Article

      Howl Palace

      Sep 15, 2019

      Last week, I finally had to put Howl Palace up for sale. Years of poor financial planning had led to this decision, and I tried to take some comfort in my agent’s belief in a buyer who might show up with an all-cash offer. My agent is a highly organi

      25 min read

    • Article

      A Lost Prayer

      Feb 2, 2023

      A Lost Prayer
      10 min read

    • Article

      Changing ROOMS

      Sep 14, 2022

      Changing ROOMS
      6 min read

    • Article

      Beyond the Mangrove Trees

      Aug 6, 2020

      No one expects their house to float away. Ethel certainly hadn’t. Our story begins in the sleepy village of Greenwood, where Ethel had spent her entire life. It was an overcast Sunday afternoon and Ethel watched the rain lash against the window from

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Tribute

    4/5

    595 ratings38 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Nice read, but NR has so many great books that I found this one average. Especially Cilla's character seemed to be a bit flat - I couldn't warm up to her. For my taste, there could have been more a few more sex scenes. As always, the hero is memorable. NR writes her hero's so well, especially the beta-types like Sawyer. His dog is equally adorable and not at all too fantastic - if you have ever been the proud owner of an equally weird dog.
      Grade B

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The restoring the house and not knowing who did it before the end
    • 3/5
      I thought the narration was okay but the story was very mediocre for Nora Roberts I am uSually a great fan but this story let me down
    • 5/5
      Another good book by Ms. Roberts. Never disappoints. Characters and storyline excellent even the dog!!
    • 3/5
      The male voices were shocking - didn’t enjoy as much as other Nora books
    • 5/5
      Cilla McGowen has returned to her grandmother's delapidated farmhouse. She wants to start a new life and hopes to find peace in Virginia. After finding a bundle of love letters Cillia finds hersrlf in danger as she tries to unravel the mystery surrounding her legendary grandmother's death from an overdose of pills.
    • 4/5
      A particularly good effort from Ms. Nora. I really liked both the hero and heroine in this one. Characters were well drawn, even the more minor ones. Sense of place was great. This is one author whose quality never seems to head downhill, no matter how fast she writes. Wish I had her combination of imagination, talent, and speed.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the book. Calla was a strong character, stronger than she realized. At least Ford saw that.
    • 3/5
      Tribute is an interesting story where the past comes to the present, and shows how one little mistake can lead to an uncertain future that may not be escaped. Although easy to get into, the ending is lacking, and leaves the reader wanting more as to what happened at the most critical part of the story.
    • 3/5
      The characters did not grab me as much as Nora Roberts' others seem to. I did not like the dream/memory aspects of the buildup of the mystery and the villain was predictable.
    • 5/5
      This one was a gorgeous reading. I liked the setting in the rural Virginia with all those family clans which are going a long way back, their gossips and their secrets. I loved the main charater's capability the renovate her grandma's house and her familiarity to work with all those tools. Also the romance wasn't to miss out but it was also not so overloaded. It was very gripping and I was guessing until the very last page who was doing such harm to Cilla.
    • 3/5
      I'm a Nora Roberts fan, and I've read a lot of her books - this just wasn't one of my favorites.

      Cilla McGowan, a former child star, has left her Hollywood life behind for a new start in Virginia, where her deceased grandmother, major movie star Janet Hardy, owned a farm. Cilla purchases the long-neglected farm from her mother and begins renovating it, in hopes of settling there. Along the way, she meets and befriends her neighbor, Ford, a character I thoroughly enjoyed. Ms. Roberts excels in writing her "leading men". Cilla begins to receive threats, and bad things start happening to her shortly after her arrival, so she ultimately must decide if she should stay in Virginia. Her grandmother left bad blood behind in the small Virginia town, and Cilla's paying for it. She has decisions to make: is love worth it? The work she's putting into the house? Honoring her grandmother's legacy?

      While I did enjoy the book, I found myself bored by the seemingly endless descriptions of house renovation. I just didn't care about that, and Ms. Roberts went into entirely too much detail. The love story was sweet, and I enjoyed the elements of danger, but overall, this isn't one of Nora's best. I'd recommend it for an easy, light read.
    • 4/5
      Not the same cover I have... but oh well. What a tremendous book! I was a little unsure at first, but this is truly Nora at her finest. No one does romantic suspense as well as her, and "Tribute" does not disappoint .
    • 4/5
      Former child star Cilla McGowan came back to the Little Farm because she's hoping to start a new career - becoming a contractor and flipping houses - and because she's curious about what really happened to her grandmother, the famous actress Janet Hardy, who committed suicide in the pond. Graphic novelist and neighbor Ford Sawyer and his bulgy-eyed dog Spock are just icing on the cake. And then things start to get interesting. Malicious pranks, midnight attacks, and threatening messages... it seems that someone doesn't want the Little Farm restored. But who?Solid romance, solid characters, and Spock is wonderful in his own right.
    • 5/5
      It warmed my heart the way the main character mad a tribute to her Grandmother by restoring the house she owned. Plus she found the person that killed her grandmother and fell in love with the man and dog next door.
    • 3/5
      First time reading her novels, it was a good start. The characters were a little too squeaky clean, which annoys me a little in novels, but you are dying to know more of the lead character's grandmother and why she died.
    • 4/5
      The story is of former child star, Cilla, who is rehabbing her famous grandmother Janet's farmhouse. Of course, a handsome graphic artist lives across the road and a romance sparks into life. Then someone cuts down some newly planted trees and leaves a cruel message painted on the stone wall nearby. The vandalism begins to escalate and it seems as if perpetrator is making Cilla the target of his hatred for Janet, who died thirty years before. It was a good read after I had started and discarded several books for being too dark. I enjoyed picturing the changes to the farmhouse.
    • 4/5
      Nora Roberts is one of my favorite authors and this book doesnt disappoint. With the ghost of Cilla's Grandmother haunting her and someone from town trying to kill her Cilla's life is way more exciting than when she was in hollywood. But with the help of her handsome next door neighbor and her estranged father she starts to build the life that she has always wanted. This book was interesting all the way through and to me, for someone who finds books predictable a lot of the time, I found the end very surprising.
    • 3/5
      Roberts is always such an engaging read, some might compare to popcorn. When I do so, you have to understand, I *love* popcorn. The suspense was good in this one, and did keep me guessing.
    • 4/5
      Sometimes you just need a good, not too challenging read. I find that Nora Roberts is very consistent in delivering these.Tribute is the story of Cilla (a former child star, descended from a line of celebrities), who has retired from show business to rebuild her grandmother's house. Across the street is Ford Sawyer, famous graphic novelist. They meet. They become friends. Bad things happen to Cilla. They deal with them together. They fall in love. I wouldn't want to give away the ending!More seriously, it is the story of a woman coming to terms with her past. There are parts that many people would envy-- she is still a celebrity, as is her mother. She is reasonably well off from her childhood work and her ongoing small projects. She also has things working against her-- a distant relationship with her father, a highly dysfunctional one with her mother. She knows she wants out of Hollywood, but isn't sure what she does want to do, or where she belongs. And beyond that, someone is trying to scare her, maybe even kill her.I think there are two things that make Nora Roberts books work for me, both of which came through in this novel.First are the lead characters. I always find them interesting, even if requiring of some suspension of disbelief. I enjoyed being part of Cilla's mental journey, coming to terms with her past, her relationships with her parents, and deciding on what direction she wants to go. Ford is of course a little too perfect, but he's fun that way. They actually develop a friendship, and at no point are the words "I can't live without you" spoken. Second is the writing itself. Most of the time I don't notice it, which I find an advantage. Occasionally there is a description that I really enjoy. I like the small moments-- the cartoons that Ford draws for Cilla, the dog that chases invisible cats.The aspect of this book that I'd nitpick is the plethora of supporting characters. I realize there are two reasons for having so many. One is to show an entire town accepting Cilla as one of them. The other is to camouflage the bad guy. Unfortunately, it kept me from getting to know any of them.I wasn't sure whether to put this book as straight romance or romantic suspense, since the suspense elements don't dominate the book. The four stars were fairly easy to decide on-- I enjoyed the read, and it worked well within my expectations of a romance novel.
    • 5/5
      Tribute, by Nora Roberts, is another solid book by the author. The characters are enjoyable, the plot interesting, and overall it's a satisfying read. I'm a huge fan of Nora Roberts so I've read nearly all of her novels. I'm rarely disappointed.Cilla is a former child star and granddaughter of one of the most famous actresses of all time. Janet Hardy is one of those actresses that after death became a legend but before her death was beloved. Cilla never met her grandmother but feels very close to her after moving to her "Little Farm" and renovating the neglected home. Add a charming neighbor with his charming dog and the stage is set for a romance.Romance is only part of the story however, as someone really doesn't want Cilla to live in that house. She is threatened, run off the road, and terrorized by someone. With a mystery to solve, Cilla and Ford delve into her grandmother's past and try to figure out who may blame Cilla for her grandmother's sins.If you are a fan of Nora Roberts, you've probably read this, but if not you should. I loved the character of Ford because he's a nerd and I can relate! If I have any complaint at all it is that I feel I have met the character of Cilla in other books. Ms. Roberts enjoys writing strong women but maybe they are all too strong? Maybe too similar? It seems that the men take on distinct personalities but the women are all the same. It's not a big complaint because I enjoyed the story but I just didn't feel there was anything new about the female lead.
    • 4/5
      Roberts is a very consistent author and her skill is evident in this book and I really enjoyed it quite a bit. A lot of her recent books have had paranormal elements with ghosts and whatever but this one had none of that and I was so glad. I think she should stick to straight contemporary because ghosts just don't do it for me.Cilla McGowan is a former child star with a lot of baggage. She returns to her famous grandmother's old neglected house in Virginia and decides to renovate it. Cilla is a pro at remodeling houses and I was fascinated by all the details of turning a run down disaster into a beautiful home. Roberts definitely did her homework in that area but if house renovation is not your thing, you should probably skip this book because while the story was good, it wasn't all that gripping. Ford Sawyer lives across the street and writes graphic novels. The story hinges around a mystery involving the death of Cilla's grandmother many years ago and was pretty tame but was so well written I enjoyed it anyway. Cilla is a very strong, smart woman and very likeable. Ford is what I would call a beta hero but yummy in his own way. A pretty good read all around. (GRADE: B)
    • 2/5
      I found this book took a LONG time to get into. I only persisted on reading it because someone whom I trust their taste in books referred me to it. But again, it took well over 60 pages to get into it. It was thus, quite tedious to read at first and confusing to follow what was going on in the style in which Nora wrote it.Not her best work. Ended up turning into a good book once I got my head around what was happening and how and to whom and the storyline was well underway.Not going to recommend this book because it's just so hard to get into, most people won't persist as long as I did to see what happens. I also found the ending kinda rough. It's like it climaxed and then boom it was wrapped up super fast. Almost like she was tired of writing. Which was disappointing. I really dislike when authors rush the ending when the good stuff starts to happen. Good being a relative term, more, the action taking place.
    • 5/5
      Tribute was a pleasing read, that kept me spellbound from page one. Cilla's struggles and triumphs were easy to imagine and I found myself wanting to know more, wanting to experience more of her little world in the Shenandoah Valley. Nora Roberts delivers another top notch novel that just begs to read time and time again.
    • 4/5
      Former child actress Cilla McGowan moves to the house her famous grandmother owned in rural Virginia in attempt to reconnect with her roots and put down some of her own. While she is refurbishing the house and studying for her contractor's license, she discover old hatreds and a new love.Not one of Roberts's best, but even her lesser efforts are better than 80% of the romances out there.
    • 4/5
      This was a mixed-bag for me. The romance part was great… Nora Roberts still knows what she’s doing there. I liked Cilla, and I liked Ford, and I really liked them together. But some parts of the book were lackluster. I didn’t particularly care for Cilla’s dream visits with her grandmother, and I thought the harassment could have been a little more creative. How many different ways can a “Katie” doll be defiled? But, though I did figure out who Janet was having an affair with pretty early in the story, the big bad guy was a big bad surprise.
    • 3/5
      Cilla is a third generation actress that comes from a normal or disfunctional family depending on how you look at it. She considers herself a washed up child actress and pretty much a failure at everything she tries to accomplish. She has never met her deceased grandmother but she feels connected to her and so she buys her old farm from her mother ,using bribes and heavy persuasion. Cilla fell in love with the place on her first visit just as her grandmother had 30 years before. Now neglected and overgrown with weeds, Cilla sees what the place could be or rather what it had been when her grandmother had lived there....Cilla takes the challenge of fixing up the place very seriously. It's personal to her. In rebuilding her grandmother's old farm , she hopes to pay respect to her memory and somewhere along the line she hopes to find herself as well. Even though Cilla was up for the challenge, she had no idea what she was about to discover in that old dusty attic that would change history for her and her family.This was my first Nora Roberts and i must admit i enjoyed it alot. It was a "modern day, romance/mystery, who done it" that had me guessing for a long time. I did figure out who the mystery lover was in the middle of the novel but the other villian really had me stumped....I was surprised...Very good ending!!
    • 4/5
      Very good book by Nora Roberts. Hero, slightly nerdy, was a step out f the ordinary for her heroes. Heroine, Cilla, less unique was admirable. Good plot. Evildoers were not obvious at all.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this book a lot. I like Nora Roberts when she does books like this where the people are based in reality as are their situations. This is a story that could happen unlike some of hers with vampires that really stretch the imagination. I read all Nora Roberts book and haven't found any that I really didn't like-a fluff as they may be to more serious readers. I read for fun, entertainment and to escape my real life and go into someone else's for awhile. This one worked well for that.
    • 3/5
      Not my favorite Roberts. A family mystery and a romance..predictable ending.