Showing results by narrator "Amanda Dolan" in All Categories

After an injury forces Ria off the diving team, an unexpected friendship with Cotton, a guy on the autism spectrum, helps her come to terms with the abusive relationship she’s been in with her former coach.

In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image wins acclaim and prizes, becoming an icon for millions - and a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer's best friend, who has suffered a devastating tragedy of her own. As the writer plunges into a suicidal depression, her filmmaker husband enlists several friends to save her by rescuing the unknown girl and bringing her to the United States.

When eighteen-year-old Dylan wakes up, she’s in an apartment she doesn’t recognize. The other people there seem to know her, but she doesn't know them—not even the pretty, chiseled boy who tells her his name is Connor. A voice inside her head keeps saying that everything is okay, but Dylan can’t help but freak out. Especially when she borrows Connor’s phone to call home and realizes she’s been missing for three days. Dylan has lost time before, but never like this.

As soon as Gail and Jon Durbin bring home their adopted baby Maya, she becomes the glue that mends their fractured marriage. But the Durbin’s social worker, Paige, can’t find the teenage birth mother to sign the consent forms. By law, Carli has seventy-two hours to change her mind. Without her signature, the adoption will unravel.

As a child, horses consumed Halimah Marcus' imagination. When she wasn't around horses she was pretending to be one, cantering on two legs, hands poised to hold invisible reigns. To her classmates, girls like Halimah were known as "horse girls," weird and overzealous. Decades later, when memes about "horse girl energy" began appearing across social media, Halimah reluctantly recognized herself. The stereotypical horse girl is also white, thin, rich, and straight, a daughter of privilege. Yet so many riders don't fit this narrow, damaging ideal.

Quinn LaPointe grew up on beautiful Butternut Lake, but after a high school tragedy, she left for college and never looked back. Becoming a successful writer in Chicago, she worked to keep out the dark memories of an accident that upended her life. After 10 years, she’s finally returned home. Butternut is the same, and yet everything is changed. Everyone, it seems, has a secret. Quinn begins writing down her memories of the year before the accident. Her journey though the past leads her to some surprising discoveries about the present.

When eight-year-old Vinni Stewart disappears from a Jersey shore town, Maddy, her distraught single mother, begins a desperate search for her daughter. Maddy’s five-year journey leads her to a bakery in Brooklyn, where she stumbles upon something terrifying. Detective John D’Orfini sees more than a kidnapping in the plot-thickening twists of chance surrounding Vinni’s disappearance, but his warnings to stay away from the investigation do not deter Maddy, even when her search puts her in danger.

Who can you trust when everyone has the face of an Angel? Angels, Demons, Guardians, brooding guys with green eyes - 18-year-old Grace is sick of the lot of them. All she wants is a normal life, but when tragedy strikes, Grace and her foster family are hurled head-first into a world of magic, intrigue, and deceit. As the threads of her life begin to unravel, Grace finds herself at the epicenter of a battle to save those she loves.

Sixteen-year-old Ariadne’s whole life is curated and shared with the world. Her royal family’s entertainment empire is beloved by the tabloids, all over social media, and the hottest thing on television. The biggest moneymaker? The Labyrinth Contest, a TV extravaganza in which Ariadne leads 14 teens into a maze to kill a monster. To win means endless glory; to lose means death. In 10 seasons, no one has ever won.

Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. So when they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her evening tea so she’d never be able to hurt Raven again. But someone got cold feet, the plot faded to a secret of the past, and the group fell apart.

Everyone in Phoebe Ferris' life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, ex-rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story - the postfame calm that Phoebe's always known. Her sister, Luna, indie rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn't like. And her father, Kieran, the cofounder of Meg's beloved band, hasn't said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago.

Kara Hart is on track with turning the old mansion her father left her into a creative retreat and event space, but after a successful holiday season that included hosting the Ladies' Auxiliary Open House and an amazingly joyous Christmas celebration with her friends and family, now winter has settled in. The brightest spot in the shorter darker days is the man she’s fallen in love with. But she’s worried. Suppose it isn’t meant to be? She's failed at marriage before and love doesn't guarantee anything.

It’s the brightest light that casts the deepest shadows...Magic, blood, and politics hide an enemy the pack never saw coming. One with more power than anyone understands. Enemies are closing in on all sides, but they’re nothing more than a distraction to hide the real threat. It isn’t just the pack at risk - not anymore. Magic itself is being threatened. Amber and her pack are trapped in the middle of a centuries long war, and the time has come to pick a side. But it’s a choice she won’t be able to take back.

Sophie Stark begins her filmmaking career by creating a documentary about her obsession, Daniel - a college basketball star. But when she becomes too invasive, she finds herself the victim of a cruel retribution. The humiliation doesn't stop her. Visionary and unapologetic, Sophie begins to use stories from the lives of those around her to create movies. And as she gains critical recognition and acclaim, she risks betraying the one she loves most.

Kara is looking forward to a quiet holiday, just like the ones she’s always had. This year, instead of celebrating the holidays with her father in the city, she’s at Wildflower House, and she’s alone. Kara is okay with a low-key Christmas, because after hosting the hectic first official event at Wildflower House, she’s ready to enjoy some rest and relaxation before January arrives and the final renovations begin. But fate - with an extra dose of Christmas spirit - intervenes as the people now in Kara’s life show up.

Sixteen-year-old Devon Mackintosh has always felt like an outsider at Keaton, the prestigious California boarding school perched above the Pacific. As long as she's not fitting in, Devon figures she might as well pad her application to Stanford's psych program. So junior year, she decides to become a peer counselor, a de facto therapist for students in crisis. At first, it seems like it will be an easy fly-on-the-wall gig, but her expectations are turned upside down when Jason Hutchins commits suicide.

Franny Doyle is having the worst day. She’s been sacked, the subway doors ripped her favorite dress to ruins, and now she’s flashed her unmentionables to half of lower Manhattan. On the plus side, a dashing stranger came to her rescue with his (Gucci!) suit jacket. On the down side, he can’t get away from her fast enough. Worse yet? Someone posted their (entirely not) meet-cute online. Suddenly Franny and her rescuer, Hayes Montgomery, are the newest social media sensation, and all of New York is shipping #SubwayQTs.

The magical world calls to me but I want nothing more than to heal. Working in the ER gives me a chance to help people while hiding from the magical world. It’s a place where few magical folk ever visit, and never by choice. When a patient comes into the ER with a magical injury, I’m forced to use my magic to heal, but doing so draws the wrong kind of attention to me. This time, I doubt Aron can help, especially since I know my type of magic isn’t dark magic at all. It’s worse. Much worse.

If there's one thing Mare Barrow knows, it's that she's different. Mare's blood is red - the colour of common folk - but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from the prince and friend who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

The entertaining style and solid research of the Lives of…. series of biographies have made it a favorite with families and educators for twenty years. This new volume takes readers through the centuries and across the globe, profiling the men and women whose curiosity and courage have led them to discover our world.