Showing results by narrator "XE Sands" in All Categories

If misfortune hadn’t gotten in the way, Sandra Sanborn would be where she belongs - among the rich and privileged instead of standing outside a Hollywood studio wearing a sandwich board in the hope of someone discovering her. It’s tough breaking into the movies during the Great Depression, but Sandra knows that she’s destined for greatness. After all, her grandmother Vira crossed the country during the Gold Rush and established the Sanborns as one of San Francisco’s most prominent families, and her mother Mabel grew up in a lavish mansion.

From the author of the National Book Award longlisted epic The Great Offshore Grounds, here is the debut novel that launched her career - a story of activism, police violence, and white guilt in a not so distant dystopian America.

In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life.

A year after her death in a burning barn, Dancy Flammarion now finds herself in a Hell of her own creation. A new evil haunts the sun-scorched back roads and ghost towns of the American South - murderous twins who command a legion of ghouls. Once again, Dancy must face down demons, those who walk the world unchallenged and those in her own shattered mind.

Why would a father abduct his own child? A wedding is planned in Jane Ryland's family, but there's a disaster instead. Nine-year-old Gracie - supposed to be the flower girl - has been taken by her stepdad. Where are they? Is the girl in danger? Reporter Jane Ryland learns there's a limit to the bonds of family - and learns to her peril what happens when loved ones are pushed too far. Meanwhile, Detective Jake Brogan's got a doozy of a case.

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 14th collection of short fiction, comprising 28 uncollected and impossible-to-find stories. Here are 28 tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.

Private detectives Luke, Lyle, and Debbie have seen the worst of the worst, but nothing will prepare them for the new danger they must face. After uncovering the corruption of former State Governor, Marva DeLonghi, and sending her to prison, the trio thought their work was done. But when Marva escapes and powerful crime lord Philipe Ruskov demands a favor, they are thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Makenna Rye Conroy was living the dream—with an amazing husband and a beautiful new baby daughter—when one night changed everything. Almost six years after Adam’s death, Makenna and her daughter Paige have built a solid, happy life together. Makenna manages her brother’s trendy restaurant, The Yard, and helps out at Ryeland Farms, the family business, all while navigating the world of private school parenting.

In her 20s, Kara Malendar found herself at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris, thousands of miles away from the harsh media coverage of her political family. But Paris ended abruptly when she was summoned home to Los Angeles and expected to stand in again as the senator’s perfect daughter.

In Anna Clark's full account of this American tragedy, The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail - and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.

When Lynn and her husband set out for a weekend retreat to repair their rocky marriage, icy roads lead to a fatal collision that ends Lynn's life. Stranded between the physical world and the afterlife, Lynn experiences the grief of her loved ones as they process her death. Lynn's lifelong friends are tortured by not only loss but also unspoken wounds in their friendship. With clever influences from above, Lynn coaxes them to reunite at a beachside cottage on the one-year anniversary of her death.

Rette was born on a small dairy farm in southern Wisconsin—land with wide pastures bordering on forest and a cold, clear trout stream rimming its edge. From the beginning her parents could see that she was odd, different from other children in the way that she was always listening, often with her ear pressed to a tree or flat to the ground, hearing the sounds of roots at work in the earth, listening to the thoughts of the animals.

In 1975 Paul and Roz Mellow wrote a best-selling Joy of Sex-type book that mortified their four school-aged children and ultimately changed the shape of the family forever. Thirty years later, as the now dispersed family members argue over whether to reissue the book, we follow the complicated lives of each of the grown children and their conflicts in love, work, marriage, parenting, and, of course, sex - all shadowed by the indelible specter of their highly sexualized parents.

For nine months in Auschwitz, eighteen-year-old Eva Fleiss clung to sanity by playing piano on imaginary keyboards. After liberation, Eva and the five remaining Jews of Laszlo, Hungary, journey home, seeking to restart their lives. Yet the town that deported them is not ready to embrace their return. Their former neighbors and friends resist relinquishing their newfound status and property, and they struggle with their roles as perpetrators, enablers, and bystanders during the Holocaust.

Instead of thinking about social justice as a process that starts with changing people's minds, Embodied Activism understands our bodies—how we feel in them and relate to others through them—as the sites of transformation.

The Prophet is dead. The eyes of the Gods have turned to his daughter. But she isn't ready. Not for the whispers in her ear, for the divinations...for the blood. Her people's history and their future, carved by ancients into the bones of long dead behemoths, are now her burden. Only she can read them, interpret the instructions, and guide them to the Promised Land. The Prophet is dead. Long live the Prophetess.

Crash and burn pretty much describes Lindsey Gerber’s last six months at her law firm, where she hoped to make partner. Now, every goal she’s made is suddenly out the window. She moves to Pine Valley, looking for a new start. On day one, she meets pro-hockey player Tyler Nelson, who’s recovering from an injury and in a physical therapy program that includes things like hiking the ski resort, which he hates, and makes no secret of. He also makes no secret of his interest in Lindsey.

Jillian Marsh is a survivor. She escaped her toxic upbringing at the hands of her religious zealot mother as a teenager, and after hitting rock bottom due to alcoholism in her 20s, she not only got sober, she built a successful marriage and medical career, even if she wasn’t able to make amends for all the mistakes she made during her drinking days. But nearly a decade later, things are once again going downhill for Jillian.

In The Lightkeepers, we follow Miranda, a nature photographer who travels to the Farallon Islands, an exotic and dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one-year residency capturing the landscape. Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions; they document the fish populations around the island, the bold trio of sharks called the Sisters that hunt the surrounding waters, and the overwhelming bird population....

A cutting-edge, research-based inquiry into how we influence those around us and how understanding the brain can help us change minds for the better. Part of our daily job as humans is to influence others; we teach our children, guide our patients, advise our clients, help our friends and inform our online followers. We do this because we each have unique experiences and knowledge that others may not. But how good are we at this role?