Showing results by narrator "XE Sands" in All Categories

Cutting Teeth is about the complex dilemmas of early midlife-the vicissitudes of friendship, of romantic and familial love, and of sex. It's about class tension, status hunger, and the unease of being in possession of life's greatest bounty while still wondering, is this as good as it gets?

Five years ago, they walked across America to a destination only they knew. The sleepwalkers, as the rest of the country named them, were followed by their shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them. They finally stopped in Ouray, a small town of Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of human civilisation. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was just the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the world - and the birth of a new one. The shepherds and the sleepwalkers, now awake, strive to rebuild the world that was taken from them.

Agatha “Aggy” Grae was only 10 years old the night a witch of the Umbra Coven killed her mother and burned her home. Injured, she received a transfusion of blood tainted by witchcraft, and immediately her eyes were opened to the truths hidden from mundane eyes. She saw a new world, a hidden world, one filled with darkness and secrets. And that new world was now aware of her.

In Brooklyn Bones, a crime of the past comes much too close to home when Erica Donato’s teenage daughter, Chris, finds a skeleton behind a wall in their crumbling Park Slope home. Erica - a young widow, overage history PhD candidate, and product of blue-collar Brooklyn - is drawn into the mystery when she learns that the skeleton is of an unknown teenage girl and that it was hidden there within living memory. Erica and Chris are both touched and disturbed by the mysterious tragedy in their own home.

The highly anticipated third volume of the haunting, disturbing, and evocative Southern Reach trilogy.It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown, navigating new terrain and new challenges, the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting. In this last instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may have been solved.

It's autumn in Harrow, but something is changing in the town besides the season. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard grows a new sort of apple: strange and beautiful, with skin so red it's nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples and you will you will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But soon your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing - and become darker.

Tomorrow night, just before you go to bed, creep into the kitchen very, very quietly. Go up to the fridge, and don't make a sound. Once you meet Chilly Billy and hear of his adventures inside the refrigerator, you'll never open the fridge door in quite the same way again. Chilly Billy is a fun and lovable character you won't soon forget.

Three years after Rory Riordan foiled her own murder, she still trusts no one. Not Dr. Z, the eccentric college professor who has taken her under his wing, not Benji, the endearing, attractive classmate who insists on following her around, and certainly not Cy, the beautifully dark and mysterious boy who sits on the first row in Dr. Z’s Astrobiology class and asks far too many questions.

That rat bastard Michael Wallace is back. The last person Olivia Parker expects to walk into her lingerie shop is her high school sweetheart. She's so over him. Mostly. Except that he's hotter than ever and still knows her better than she knows herself. But how can she risk her heart when she knows he's just going to leave again?

Drawing on her work at a shelter, her experiences living with two rescue dogs of her own, and years of research, best-selling author and Boston Globe columnist Amy Sutherland takes us on an unforgettable journey into the special world of rescue and shelter dogs - and the growing number of dedicated people who are deeply invested in saving these precious lives.

Aside from her father wearing makeup and her mother not feeling well (a lot), Kim Korson's 1970s suburban upbringing was typical. Sometimes she wished that her brother were an arsonist just so she'd have a valid excuse to be unhappy. And when life moves along pretty decently - she breaks into show business, gets engaged in the secluded jungles of Mexico, and moves her family from Brooklyn to dreamy rural Vermont - the real despondency sets in.

Finding Mrs. Warnecke tells the inspiring story of Cindi Rigsbee, a three-time Teacher of the Year, and Barbara Warnecke, the first-grade teacher who had a profound and lasting impact on Cindi's life. Cindi, an insecure child who craved positive attention, started her first-grade year with a teacher who was emotionally abusive and played favorites in the classroom. Two months into the school year, her principal came into the classroom and announced that half the students were being moved to another classroom.

Jules Bartlett stopped believing in fairy tales the day Prince Charming got caught banging her friend on their expensive countertops. Now, having returned to her seaside hometown—sans prince—the only men in Jules’ life are her crew of 12 smartass fisherman who pose no romantic threat and endlessly dote on her daughter. Perfection.

Favorite daughter Elizabeth wants to do the right thing when faced with a family emergency. Her beloved mother Janice receives a deadly Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and her siblings at odds tailspin toward their last resort with disastrous fallout. Elizabeth soon exposes her mother's long-held secret, which lies at the root of her family's problems.

As a child, Susan Silverman was surrounded by a loving family; although her parents weren't happily married, they were devoted to their kids. In a vibrant, funny, imminently relatable voice (think Anne Lamott meets Katrina Kenison), Silverman tells of a family's evolution - from her parents' devastating loss of their infant son to raising bright and wildly unique daughters. It's also the creation story of her own family - raising her own bright and wildly unique daughters and taking a journey to adopt two boys from Ethiopia.

This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation - Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five - while bringing together some of the finest voices of today's Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique.

Famed Broadway producer Milo Short steps out of his Upper West Side brownstone on one exceptionally hot morning, he's not expecting to see the impossible: a woman from his life 60 years ago, winking at him on a New York sidewalk. The sight causes him to suffer a stroke. And when he comes to, the renowned lyricist discovers he has lost the ability to communicate. Milo believes he must unravel his complicated history with Vivian Adair in order to win back his words

Sissie Klein barely remembers the night that tore her from the carefree life she knew. Not long after the shocked teen is pushed into marriage, she's rushed to the hospital, where a catastrophic delivery seals her destiny. Sissie may not have been ready for motherhood, but she loves her daughter fiercely, and she's determined to give her the opportunities she forfeited. Some fates, however, can't be avoided. When Meg is a young woman, tragedy steals her father, leaving behind a legacy of deceit—and a toddler.

For her previous novels (Things We Didn’t Say, The Life You’ve Imagined, Real Life & Liars), author Kristina Riggle has garnered fabulous reviews and established herself as a rapidly rising star of contemporary women’s fiction. In Keepsake, she explores that most complicated of relationships, as two sisters raised by a hoarder deal with old hurts and resentments, and the very different paths their lives have taken. As always, Riggle approaches important topics poignantly and honestly—including hoarding and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in her remarkable Keepsake—while writing with real emotional power and compassion about families and their baggage. For readers of Katrina Kittle and Elin Hildenbrand, Kristina Riggle’s Keepsake is a treasure.

A prominent sociologist, lecturer, and writer of the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's unorthodox concepts and lifestyle helped shape future generations of feminists. This audiobook includes her most enduring work, The Yellow Wallpaper as well as her 1913 article, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper." The Yellow Wallpaper told as a series of secret diary entries, the story is about a young woman, confined to her room and denied all creative outlets, who gradually suffers a mental breakdown.