Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

In The Influential Mind, neuroscientist Tali Sharot takes us on a thrilling exploration of the nature of influence. We all have a duty to affect others - from the classroom to the boardroom to social media. But how skilled are we at this role, and can we become better? It turns out that many of our instincts - from relying on facts and figures to shape opinions, to insisting others are wrong or attempting to exert control - are ineffective because they are incompatible with how people's minds operate.

After years of city life, Orla and Shaw Bennett are ready for the quiet of New York's Adirondack mountains — or at least, they think they are. Settling into the perfect farmhouse with their two children, they are both charmed and unsettled by the expanse of their land, the privacy of their individual bedrooms, and the isolation of life a mile from any neighbor.

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.

Paul Tremblay has won widespread acclaim for illuminating the dark horrors of the mind in novels and stories that push the boundaries of storytelling itself. The fifteen pieces in this brilliant collection, The Beast You Are, are all monsters of a kind, ready to loudly (and lovingly) smash through your head and into your heart.

Up-and-coming artist Lisbeth Parker finally has a chance to show the folks back home what it means to leave Cannonball Island and make something of yourself. As a native whose stubborn father forbade her from befriending townies, Lis always felt like an outsider in St. Dennis. So while her work is on display in the local art gallery, she records her ailing centenarian great-grandmother's stories of the island's rich history and spearheads a fight for its survival.

Tina Chen just wants a degree and a job, so her parents never have to worry about making rent again. She has no time for Blake Reynolds, the sexy billionaire who stands to inherit Cyclone Systems. But when he makes an offhand comment about what it means to be poor, she loses her cool and tells him he couldn't last a month living her life.

Somewhere in the Pacific, 1943. Kate Campbell is a nurse who bravely flies back and forth from the front to rescue wounded soldiers, amid long days, harsh conditions and often dangerous weather. Driven by a deep personal need to help in the war effort, she is conflicted when an injury results in her reassignment to the relative comfort of the English countryside. Love has never been part of her plan, but despite herself, she falls for an officer with three bullet wounds, startling blue eyes and a wicked sense of humor.

Logan West finally has the one thing he believed was unattainable: the fiery woman who challenges, protects, and adores him just as much as she does his young son Oliver. After having her world shaken yet again, Cassandra Clarke is ready to move forward, eagerly embracing the beautiful man who has laid claim to her heart. With secrets revealed at every turn, she refuses to lose the only man she's ever loved. Not every battle is hers to fight, but she's never been one to back down.

Hollywood stars have always furthered fashion's cause of seducing the masses into buying designers' clothes by acting as living billboards. Now, red carpet celebrities are no longer content to just advertise and are putting their names on labels that reflect the image they - or their stylists - created.

In 1925 Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child.

In the latest entry in Anne Stuart's exciting Ice series, when Finn MacGowan escapes from captivity in Latin America, taking with him feisty American heiress Elizabeth Pennington, the pair encounters even more trouble as they try to make their way toward safety.

Joy McCullough's bold novel in verse is a portrait of an artist as a young woman, filled with the soaring highs of creative inspiration and the devastating setbacks of a system built to break her. McCullough weaves Artemisia's heartbreaking story with the stories of the ancient heroines, Susanna and Judith, who become not only the subjects of two of Artemisia's most famous paintings but sources of strength as she battles to paint a woman's timeless truth in the face of unspeakable and all-too-familiar violence.

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

Felicity Miner is not normally an anxious person, and she’s been on her own since high school. But after a shoplifter steals from her bookshop, she calls the cops. When Officer Leo Russo shows up, Felicity has to tell herself that just because the romance novel she’s been reading has a hero police officer doesn’t mean she needs to project her imagination onto the real man. Yes, Officer Russo is unexpectedly generous, and he helps make Felicity’s home more secure when her worries won’t settle down.

In an empowering, accessible, and inclusive guide, herbalist Marie White shows listeners of all genders how to enhance sexual and reproductive health through plant medicine. A must-have for those looking to revitalize intimacy with the special touch of medicinal herbs—and a few selected seaweed and fungi—The Intimate Herbal includes tried-and-tested protocols rooted in an intersectional, non-binary approach to holistic health, herbal healing, and supporting the body through physical stress.

Some secrets are meant to be revealed...or so you'll discover in three sexy, unforgettable Valentine's Day stories from New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Jennifer Ryan and contemporary romance stars Candis Terry and Jennifer Seasons.

These seventeen tales take listeners into the uniquely twisted mind of “one of Canada’s most promising new horror writers” (Publishers Weekly). From a live necrophilia show starring reanimated corpses to a confrontation between a security guard and inhuman squatters, from who can be found at an all-night laundromat to what lies in wait at the bottom of the sea, from undead addictions to all-consuming obsessions, Kissing Carrion is “a journey through some of the most beautifully rendered visions of darkness and death to be published this past year."

Since she went straight, Annie Kincaid's been applying her genius for fine art forgery to her own faux finishing business in San Francisco. She hasn't seen the inside of a jail cell since she was 17, although sometimes it takes all of her arts-fine or otherwise-to keep it that way.... Annie knows that art security can be inadequate, but it's crazy to think that an Old Master painting could be hanging unguarded in the local columbarium where she's doing restoration work. Still, when she gets a tip that the chapel's copy of Raphael's exquisite La Fornarina might be the real thing, Annie has to take a look.

Ivy Gordon is living on borrowed time. For the past eighteen years, she has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending. But now, at age thirty-four, she is tired of pretending everything is fine. In secret diary entries, Ivy begins to reveal the truth of her life at the Dollhouse: strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that’s left Ivy terrified and feeling like a prisoner.

Pregnancy? Newborn baby? Partway through parenthood with a toddler or preschooler? No matter your stage, I'm guessing you could use more calm, more confidence. You could listen to dozens of parenting books on pregnancy, baby sleep, picky eaters, child psychology, child development, potty training, and discipline. Or you could listen to Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science.