Showing results by narrator "Natalie" in All Categories

Victor Morgan’s entire life has been in the limelight. Groomed by his fierce mother as a piano prodigy, intent on using him to build a legacy for the Morgan name. But legacies require the utmost in care. Any little disaster can cause a mountain of problems.

Roanna Davenport grew up a wealthy orphan on her grandmother’s magnificent estate, Davencourt. There, she wanted for nothing - except to be loved by her cousin Webb. When he marries another, Roanna is devastated, but life at Davencourt takes an even darker turn when Webb’s new wife is found bludgeoned to death. After the shocking murder, Webb leaves for Arizona, abandoning the privileged life that he had once believed was all he wanted. Years later, a grown-up Roanna walks back into his life to bring him home.

School teacher Marceline Bellini gave up everything - men, sex, anything resembling a social life - to raise her young daughter. To be the perfect parent. But when she attends an engagement party in her standard stick-in-the-mud mode, her friends begin plying Marcy with shots. Just enough to convince her that a little fun doesn't sound like a bad idea...and having some naughty fun is an even better one.

In Elixir, in a wild river valley and amid the three mountains that define it, Kapka Kassabova seeks out the deep connection between people, plants, and place. The Mesta is one of the oldest rivers in Europe and the surrounding forests and mountains of the southern Balkans are an extraordinarily rich nexus for plant gatherers.

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty plain, a seer shows two children their fates. For a family’s eighth-born son, there’s greatness. For the second daughter, nothing. In 1345, China lies restless under harsh Mongol rule. And when a bandit raid wipes out their home, the two children must somehow survive. Zhu Chongba despairs and gives in. But the girl resolves to overcome her destiny. So she takes her dead brother's identity and begins her journey. Can Zhu escape what’s written in the stars, as rebellion sweeps the land?

Amy Chambers: restaurant owner, micromanager, control freak. Amy will do anything to revive her ailing restaurant, including hiring a former reality-show finalist with good connections and a lot to prove. But her hopes that Sophie’s skills and celebrity status would bring her restaurant back from the brink of failure are beginning to wane… Sophie Brunet: grump in the kitchen/sunshine in the streets, took thirty years to figure out she was queer.

Playboy Mason Thorne is nothing short of complicated. Though he was a movie star at a young age, his life took a downward spiral when he turned to drugs after losing his mother. He cleaned up his act and became a senator but still keeps his distance from most everyone - including his own father. There are plenty of women around, but most are gone by morning.

After thwarting the man behind the gruesome ironborn murders—and breaking several fae laws to do so—all Arlo wants is a quiet summer. As the deity of luck’s Hollow Star, capable of bringing about endless possibilities, this shouldn’t be too much to ask, right? But someone is still trying to summon the mythical Seven Deadly Sins. All signs point to immortal meddling, and if this is the gods’ attempt at returning to the Mortal Realm, it’s Arlo they’re going to use to do it.

The telegram Samantha Sawyer Rodriguez holds is her key to freedom: her late uncle, Ezra, has left her his ranch in Sweetwater Springs, Montana. At last, she and her young son will have a true home, and she can finally pursue her dreams of raising her prized miniature horses and building a sanctuary for wayward orphans. Prosperous rancher Wyatt Thompson has long coveted that river property. It’s bad enough that Ezra’s niece refuses to sell it, but worse by far that she’s stubborn, proud, and beautiful.

Twenty years ago, Liz left Easthaven to escape the memory of one tragic night at Lakewell Manor. Only she and her best friend Tamsin saw what really happened, and in the aftermath they drifted apart. Now she’s forced back after a nasty divorce, with two daughters in tow, the shadows of that terrible night lurking on every corner. With a custody battle looming, she’s one wrong move away from her life falling apart completely.

Everyone wants a piece of the magical disaster zone for their own agendas, and some will stop at nothing to destroy the border and bring catastrophe down on the world. It's up to Miyara to host a summit, bringing all the players to one place so she can find out what's going on and forge the connections necessary to stop it before it's too late for everyone.

They injected me with a VR chip, a GPS tracker, and my first Seed. They gave me unbelievable powers. Then, they sent me to fight. The monsters here are alien and vicious. There is a second moon in the sky. I watched a tree start moving and kill someone. And the other players...? They're even worse. I’m alone. I’m weak. And I’m scared. But I will cling to life by the tips of my bloody fingernails. Who is behind this twisted game? Where are they sending us? Is there anyone I can trust? If I want to survive, I have to get stronger. But can I do it before the game kills me?

We've seen the negative impact of self-serving leaders in every sector of our society. Not infrequently, they end up bringing down their entire organization. But there is another way. Servant leaders lead by serving their people, not by exalting themselves. In this collection, edited by legendary business author and lifelong servant leader Ken Blanchard and his longtime editor Renee Broadwell, leading businesspeople, best-selling authors, and spiritual leaders offer tools for implementing this proven - but for some, still radical - leadership model.

In To Name the Bigger Lie, Sarah Viren “has pulled off a magic trick of fantastic proportion” (The Washington Post), telling the story of an all-too-real investigation into her personal and professional life that she expands into a profound exploration of the nature of truth. The memoir begins as Viren is researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—eventually, even the reality of historical atrocities.

The alien queen holds a grudge against Eve and her teammates. To avoid having their throats slit while they sleep, they escape the palace and set out to stop the real cause of the war, which is also slowly killing half her teammates - the incurable alien plague that NIX unknowingly weaponized. To save the people she cares about (and everyone else who happens to live on either world), Eve will have to fulfill an ancient prophecy.

In only a few weeks, Luna's life has changed more than she ever imagined it could. But she's about to learn that the transition has only started to affect her life...and world.

A masked vigilante known only as ""X"" dispenses justice without mercy to the criminals who rule the decaying city of Arcadia. When muckraking blogger Leigh Ferguson snoops down the wrong alley, she gets swept into X's bloody war with a politically powerful crime lord.

Spanning from a mediocre spa in Florida, to New York’s gritty East Village, to death row in Alabama, this collection reveals boundless suspense in small, quiet moments, offering startling twists in the least likely of places. From a powerful response to hateful bullying, to a fight for health care, to a gripping desperation to vote, these stories are equal parts shocking, devastating, and enthralling, revealing the tension pulsing through our everyday lives and affirming that mystery and suspense writing is better than ever before.

On the island of Kavekana, Priestess Kai builds gods to order - sort of. Kai's creations are perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the Old World. For beyond the ocean, true deities still thrive, untouched by the God Wars that transformed the city-states of Alt Coulumb and Dresediel Lex. When Kai tries to save a friend's dying idol, she's gravely injured - then sidelined from the business, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability.

Bones is a man I despise. He gives bad blood a whole new definition. But he's not exactly who I thought he was. Maybe men can change. But it doesn't matter how I feel about him. My father would never approve. He'd never let me love a man like him.