Showing results by narrator "Alyssa Bresnahan" in All Categories

Rae's life falls apart when her father dies of cancer and her mother joins a religious cult. The only person who understands Rae is local bad girl Didi, who is experiencing a similar loss. Both girls fall in love with handsome flamenco guitarist Tomás Montenegro, whose aunt teaches at the university's flamenco academy. Rae and Didi take the class and become obsessed with the dance.

Maggie Messina knows that knitting is not only enjoyable, it also calms both the mind and soul. She's happy to visit two sisters, Holly and Rose Piper, and teach them some simple stitches, while the rest of the Black Sheep knitters tag along. Dana Haeger has known the young women since they were children and is the closest thing to family the Pipers now have. Dana is especially concerned about Rose, who has been easily overwhelmed ever since a car accident many years ago.

Award-winning author Helen Frost takes us into the breathtaking Alaskan winter landscape in this thrilling adventure with a touch of fantasy. Twelve-year-old Willow - whose heritage is both Athabascan Indian and European - wants nothing more than to mush the sled dogs to her grandparents’ home. After pressing her parents for some time, she is finally allowed to go alone. But when she commits a critical mistake, Willow wonders how she’ll ever make things right again.

A Simple Tale is the moving account of Maria Poniatowski, an aging Ukrainian woman who was taken by the Germans for slave labor and eventually relocated to Canada as a displaced person. She struggles to provide her son, Radek, with every opportunity, but his eventual success increases the gulf between him and his mother. The Hunters, the second novella, is narrated by an American academic spending a summer in London who grows obsessed with the neighbors downstairs. 

Winner of the Newbery Medal, Cynthia Rylant has also received the Caldecott Award and numerous other honors. In The Beautiful Stories of Life, Rylant vividly retells the Greek myths of Pandora, Pygmalion, Narcissus, Perse­phone, Orpheus, and Psyche. Exploring classic themes of love, destruction, vanity, and redemption, these tales will introduce young listeners to the exciting world of Greek mythology.

Kate Martinelli has seen her share of peculiar things as a San Francisco cop but never anything quite like this: an ornate Victorian sitting room straight out of a Sherlock Holmes story - complete with violin, tobacco-filled Persian slipper, and gunshots in the wallpaper that spell out the initials of the late queen.

Carol Wiley Cassella burst onto the literary scene with her debut novel Oxygen, which became a national best-seller and won reams of critical praise. In this engaging follow-up, a Seattle physician has to reevaluate life and career when her husband’s business crashes. Through this tale of love and medical wonder, Cassella uses her 25 years of experience in the medical industry to inform a work of emotional distinction and penetrating insight.

Carly Chambers leads an unusual life. She moves frequently and has to run mysterious packages to her father’s clients. Now living in Oceanside, New Jersey, Carly finds excitement by sneaking out at night to the town’s bustling boardwalk. More and more Carly finds herself hoping to spend time with Nick, one of the few kids who doesn’t outright ignore her. But then her life is thrown into further disarray when she realizes she’s being followed, and Carly suspects that the menacing stranger shadowing her has something to do with her father’s business....

Catherine hopes visiting her beloved grandmother will help ease the pain she feels over the death of her best friend. Instead, an encounter with a young, handsome stranger presents her with a dangerous dilemma. Award-winning author Eve Bunting has also written The Hideout and Jumping the Nail.

Moving deftly between present and past, the novel follows Lena's day-long escape from her residential home with her troubled 12-year-old niece. While this odd couple takes refuge on a honky-tonk southern California beach, Lena's widowed mother, Ella, goes in search of them. In the process, Ella relives her own life's dreams and disappointments: her marriage to a sweet, loving shoe salesman; her discovery of Lena's handicap and her aching attempts to give her daughter a "normal" childhood.

Living in a quiet suburb of Washington, D.C., Marsha is nine years old in the summer of 1973. While the nation’s attention is focused on the breaking Watergate scandal, her quiet neighborhood is going through its own upheaval. Looking back as an adult, she remembers it as a time when her father’s abandonment of his family becomes entwined with the arrival of a new neighbor and the death of a boy who lives down the street. Deeply disillusioned by the changes in her life, Marsha takes it upon herself to find the boy’s murderer, which sets off a chain of tragic events.

Plants are a sacred offering from Mother Earth. And witches have always known and understood their healing and magickal powers. Plants hold sustenance, medicine, and wisdom. They gift us with the essentials we need to live and thrive. In return, they ask to be used for the highest good. This is the path of the green witch. With Green Witch Magick, learn how to reconnect with this sacred knowledge. Noted green witch and herbalist Susan Ilka Tuttle, creator of @whisper_in_the_wood, shows you how to forage, grow, and work with the plants integral to your green witchcraft practice.

She is on something of a vision quest, looking for family, for home, for understanding. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns - Jesse from The Beachcombers - because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Birdie heads for Molly's Reach to find answers, but they are not the ones she expected. With the arrival in Gibsons of her Auntie Val and her cousin Skinny Freda, Birdie begins to draw from her dreams the lessons she was never fully taught in life.

When Harper and Tolliver are hired to find a missing grandson, they learn that several teenage boys have disappeared from Doraville. Harper soon finds the eight bodies buried in the half-frozen ground, but as she becomes part of the investigation, she learns more than she cares to about the dark mysteries and long-hidden secrets of Doraville: knowledge that could make her the next victim to end up in an ice-cold grave.

The moment Ivan stumbled upon a clearing in the dense Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed: atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, the beautiful princess Katerina lay still as death. But beneath the foliage a malevolent presence stirred, sending the 10-year-old scrambling for the safety of Cousin Marek's farm. Now years later, Ivan is an American graduate students engaged to be married.

A college class gets more than it bargained for when Harper gives a demonstration of her uncanny talent. Instead of just finding one body in an old grave, she finds two: the original occupant and a recently deceased girl whom Harper had tried, and failed, to find two years previously. To dispel suspicions about her innocence, Harper sets out to find the killer - only to find yet another body in the same grave.

A stunning fictional debut by an award-winning poet, Catherine Temma Davidson deftly blends memories, family stories, recipes, and Greek myths in this intricate and sensuous first-person narrative. During a year-long visit to her ancestral homeland, a young Greek-American woman discovers herself through stories from the past. As she comes of age, she finds her own meaning in the tales of Persephone, Athena, and other mythic figures.

A Laurel Wreath and Aspen Gold Award winner, CBA best-selling author Delia Parr is acclaimed for her enthralling historical romances. In Love’s First Bloom, Ruth Livingston’s life changes drastically in 1835. When her father—a New York City pastor—is accused of murdering prostitute Rosalie Peale, Ruth flees with Rosalie’s daughter to a New Jersey village. There Ruth lives quietly as Widow Malloy. But when brash newspaper reporter Asher Tripp arrives, Ruth fears the newsman may discover her secret.

Mario Alfieri, the world's most famous tenor, is preparing to make his debut at the Met. As he rents a house facing Gramercy Park, he discovers a pale young woman hiding in its music room. Her love and secrets soon mesmerize the great man. Set in turn-of-the-century New York, this is a tale of passion, intrigue, and murder.

Billboard magazine had this to say about The World's Shortest Stories Vol. 1, "What is most impressive in this collection of great stories is the sheer variety. Let's hope a second volume of these tiny gems will not be long in coming!"