Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

Wedding-dress designer Jenny Tate understands the happily ever after business, yet somehow she's still involved in her ex-husband's life. In fact Owen's new wife may - inexplicably - be Jenny's new best friend. Sensing this, well, relationship isn't helping her move on, Jenny trades the Manhattan skyline for her hometown up the Hudson, where she'll be able to bask in her sister Rachel's picture-perfect family life...and hopefully make one of her own.

It's been over a decade since Nora left her hometown of Scupper Island, Maine, and very seldom looked back. She's carved out a successful life in Boston, where no one knows her as the awkward girl with the delinquent sister and the dad who left, but a not-as-dramatic-as-it-sounds brush with death has her taking stock of her life. Inspired to reconnect with her prickly mother and snarky teenage niece, Nora returns home for the summer, where she's forced to face the people she's spent the last ten years trying to avoid.

In The Influential Mind, neuroscientist Tali Sharot takes us on a thrilling exploration of the nature of influence. We all have a duty to affect others - from the classroom to the boardroom to social media. But how skilled are we at this role, and can we become better? It turns out that many of our instincts - from relying on facts and figures to shape opinions, to insisting others are wrong or attempting to exert control - are ineffective because they are incompatible with how people's minds operate.

Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For Marley, it's coming to terms with the survivor's guilt she's carried around since her twin sister's death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it's learning to stop trying to live up to her mother's and brother's ridiculous standards and learning to accept love.

Melanie Hale is a devoted mother to her two children, a diligent caregiver to her ailing mother-in-law and a trusted neighbor in their wealthy Louisiana community. Above all, she's a loving partner to her wonderful husband, Collin. Then there are the parts of herself that Mel keeps hidden. She's exhausted, worried and unfulfilled. So much so that one night, after a writers' group meeting, Mel begins an affair with a successful local author named Luke. Suddenly she's transformed into a role she doesn't recognize—a woman who deceives with unseemly ease.

Lark Smith has always had a plan for her life: find a fantastic guy, create a marriage as blissful as her parents’, pop out a couple of kids, and build a rewarding career as an oncologist. Things aren’t going so well. For one, the guy didn’t work out. Theoretically, she’d love to find someone else, but it hasn’t happened. Two, she’s just been transferred out of Oncology for being too emotional. (Is it her fault she’s a weeper?) Three, her parents just split up. Deviating from the plan was … well, not in the plan. A potential solution comes from the foul-tempered surgeon Lorenzo Santini.

Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they're wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. As Lauren's disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future - a future without the only woman he's ever loved. He's so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren. But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him.

A kid walks into your bookstore and says to you, Guess what? I'm your son. The one you put up for adoption seventeen years ago. The one you never told anyone about. Surprise! His name is Matthew Walker, and he's come to spend the summer on the Cape with his parents. Why? Well, he wants to meet you before he heads off to college in the fall. Tiny detail—he didn't tell his adoptive parents about his plan. And while you hoped this day would come someday, you're so stunned, you actually faint.

Nyleeria has always lived in the shadow of loss, with only her childhood friend to bring light to her days. But when an ancient power is discovered within her, everything changes. Her family is torn apart by tragedy, and she is thrust into a conflict that has smoldered between humans and fae for centuries. King Thaddeus, a human ruler hardened by the endless war against the fae, seeks to protect his kingdom at any cost.

Emma London never thought she had anything in common with her grandmother Genevieve London. The regal old woman came from wealthy and bluest-blood New England stock, but that didn't protect her from life's cruelest blows. Genevieve rose from the ashes of grief and built a fashion empire that was respected the world over, even when it meant neglecting her other son. When Emma's own mother died, her father abandoned her on his mother's doorstep. Genevieve took Emma in and reluctantly raised her - until Emma got pregnant her senior year of high school.

The Frosts are a typical American family. Barb and John, married almost 50 years, are testy and bored with each other...who could blame them after all this time? At least they have their daughters - Barb's favorite, the perfect, brilliant Juliet; and John's darling, the free-spirited Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they got along, more or less. It was fine. It was enough. Until the day John had a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down. Now Sadie has to put her career as a teacher and struggling artist in New York on hold....

Does a great romance make a great marriage? Dara Willcox, up in New York for a weekend, meets Austin Clarke at an art gallery. If love at first sight can happen, it happens to them. These two vivid, ambitious people are on different trajectories—he’s British, working temporarily in New York. She’s set on law school. They don’t care. They will make their lives together happen. At their engagement dinner at Dara’s family home, her mother Lee sets a beautiful table and the family and close friends gather to celebrate.

Ainsley O'Leary is so ready to get married - she's even found the engagement ring her boyfriend has stashed away. What she doesn't anticipate is for Eric to blindside her with a tactless breakup he chronicles in a blog - which (of course) goes viral. Devastated and humiliated, Ainsley turns to her half sister, Kate, who's already struggling after the sudden loss of her new husband.

Somewhere in the Pacific, 1943. Kate Campbell is a nurse who bravely flies back and forth from the front to rescue wounded soldiers, amid long days, harsh conditions and often dangerous weather. Driven by a deep personal need to help in the war effort, she is conflicted when an injury results in her reassignment to the relative comfort of the English countryside. Love has never been part of her plan, but despite herself, she falls for an officer with three bullet wounds, startling blue eyes and a wicked sense of humor.

Dive into the mysteries of Area X, a remote and lush terrain that has inexplicably sequestered itself from civilization. Twelve expeditions have gone in, and not a single member of any of them has remained unchanged by the experience - for better or worse.

Lucy Lang isn't looking for fireworks. She's looking for a nice, decent man. Someone who'll mow the lawn, flip chicken on the barbecue, teach their future children to play soccer. But most important: someone who won't inspire the slightest stirring in her heart - or anywhere else. A young widow, Lucy can't risk that kind of loss again. But sharing her life with a cat named Fat Mikey and the Black Widows at the family bakery isn't enough either.

Maggie Beaumont's luck is about to change. Sure, she's known for her bad romantic choices-her former boyfriend broke up with her by bringing his new girlfriend home for a visit. And then there was the crush she had on a gorgeous young Irishman, who turned out to be Father Tim, the parish's new priest. But romantic salvation has arrived in the form of handsome, if surly, fisherman Malone. It turns out there's a heart of gold underneath his barnacle-clad exterior. Will this catch of the day turn into the dish of a lifetime?

Turning 30 has its ups and downs. For Callie Grey, coming to grips with her age means facing the fact that her boyfriend-slash-boss is way overdue with a marriage proposal. And that she's way off track, because Mark has suddenly announced his engagement to the company's new Miss Perfect. If that isn't bad enough, her mom decides to throw her a Big Three-Oh birthday bash - in the family funeral home.

Being one of the guys isn't all it's cracked up to be. So when journalist Chastity O'Neill returns to her hometown, she decides it's time to start working on some of those feminine wiles. Two tiny problems: one - she's five feet and 11 inches of rock-solid girl power; two - she's cursed with four alpha-male older brothers. While doing a story on local heroes, she meets a hunky doctor, and things start to look up. Now there's only one problem: Trevor Meade, her first love and the one man she's never quite gotten over....