Showing results by narrator "Lynn Norris" in All Categories

It started with the mannequin heads. They were my escape, my solace, my companions in the darkness. But the day came when they weren't enough. That's when I started taking the girls. But Avery? She's not like the others. She's beautiful - so beautiful - but I can't hurt her. I need to keep her with me...forever. He should terrify me. I'm his prisoner. I've seen what he did to the others. How can I believe him when he says he won't hurt me? But there's more to him than darkness. There's a terrible sadness.

Pirates and kraken, boats and submarines, deadly sirens, mermaids, and the women who face them all. These are our heroes. High seas adventure, fantasy, and magic weave together in this sapphic anthology focusing on the joy of the unbounded oceans.

Widowed and without grandchildren, the loneliness becomes crippling for children's illustrator Beverly Vernon. So she begins a portrait of the ideal granddaughter, who is blonde, violet-eyed and smiling. Until she uncovers the bones of a young child in her back garden. Then Beverly's painting changes of its own accord; the girl's smiling expression turns grim. As Beverly endeavours to identify the child and how it died, her sanity is tested to the limit. While hunting for the truth in a dark past, Beverly risks everything in her present.

In a world where magic is mundane, soothsayer Journi McCutcheon's love of black lipstick and sarcasm is the oddest thing about her. Being clairvoyant isn't glamorous, but it pays the bills. Mostly. When an ordinary sooth goes awry, however, revealing that a child's life - and maybe the entire city - is in danger, it's up to her to save them.

Venice, 1943. How much will she risk to save the ones she loves? Evelina has already lost so much: her sons are away fighting, her husband is dead, and most of her friends have fled the little valley that once felt like home. Her heart breaks in two once more when she receives a desperate handwritten note from her best friend Talia, a devoted Jewish schoolteacher in Venice: Help me.

The planet wakes. Atalant is torn between two worlds. In uncharted space, head of a sentient planet, the new eld of Ardulum now leads the religion she once rejected. Emn is by her side but the Mmnnuggl war brewing in the charted systems, threatening her homeworld of Neek, cannot be ignored. Atalant must return to the planet that exiled her in order to lead the resistance.

Tales From Ardulum continues the journey of Atalant, Emn, Yorden, Nicholas, and Salice as they try to define their place in a galaxy that no longer needs them while battling the artifacts of Ardulan colonization. Other stories include Yorden’s acquisition of the Mercy’s Pledge (and his grudge against the galaxy), Atalant’s exile from her homeworld, Ekimet and Savath’s romance, and many others.

The Charted Systems are in pieces. Mercy's Pledge is destroyed, and her captain dead. With no homes to return to, the remaining crew sets off on a journey to find the mythical planet of Ardulum - a planet where Emn might find her people, and Neek the answers she's long sought. Finding the planet, however, brings a host of uncomfortable truths about Ardulum's vision for the galaxy and Neek's role in a religion that refuses to release her.

The world ends not with a bang but a hiss. Since the Rise of Magic, soothsayer Journi McCutcheon has faced supernatural sycophants, dated zealous zombies, and battled possessed pediatricians, but when an eccentric client hires her to investigate haunted pickles, her day goes from weird to worse.

Survivors of sexual abuse and assault often find themselves feeling like the woman who touched the hem of the Lord's robe to be healed: desperately needing the Savior's help, but feeling too full of shame and pain to approach him. When seeking help, survivors are generally counseled to forgive, but instead of bringing relief, this message often increases their shame and pain.

Fifteen years ago, Guard Four stood by and watched her friend, Atalant, be jettisoned into space for questioning their planet's religion. Atalant should have died. Instead, she disappeared. Consumed by guilt, Guard Four trawls space, hopping from spaceport to spaceport, hoping to find and bring Atalant home with exonerating evidence that Ardulum, the traveling planet her people worship, is no mystic deity. At the edges of the known galaxy, Guard Four finds the shattered remains of a murdered world...

From the carcass of a Washington, D.C. car bomb explosion, the CIA launches an investigation into the mysterious events leading to the assassination of Chilean dissident and infamous casanova, Eduardo Allesandro Palmero. As CIA investigator Alfred Dobbs rummages through the evidence, Palmero's mysterious life, from heir to the Chilean oligarchy to a fist-raising Marxist and trickster in disguise, comes to light. But what Dobbs soon discovers soars beyond his wildest imagination. At the height of international terrorism, Eduardo fights his war with an unlikely weapon - seduction.

After 26 years of hiding from the king's soldiers and enduring loss beyond measure, Mariah has finally unlocked her ability to shapeshift. Before she can even figure out what that means, her mentor thrusts her into an impossible mission to rescue two young shifters from the life of subjugation she barely escaped. Will returning to her homeland end up costing Mariah the freedom she gave up everything to gain? An epic fantasy adventure about friendship and doing what's right, whatever the cost.

Pulled by the will of gods and the call of her best friend, Mariah knows it’s time to return. The children she left behind, the children she didn’t save, are waiting, still imprisoned in camps, still being molded into tools to deliver the world into the hands of a power-hungry king. Mariah will need help to destroy the slave camps and deliver the children to safety. But will questions about her past derail Mariah’s quest and have her fleeing for her life before she can even begin? An epic, shapeshifting fantasy adventure about the friends we choose and the choices we make.

'Twas the night before Catmas...For soothsayer Journi McCutcheon, last-minute holiday shopping with her grandmother is no winter wonderland. Especially when the wily, wand-wielding old witch declares war on Santa in the middle of a crowded mall to the tune of jingle bells, wailing children, and shouting security guards. And that's just the tip of the magical mistletoe. When the discovery of a kitten triggers a disturbing vision that promises tragedy for a local family, Journi and Gramma Jude must put Kris Kringle's would-be slaying on ice to save Christmas.

The Land of Five is being systematically torn apart by war, and witch Lilith Lace has a number of problems. First - having been captured in the Battle of Ignis by the Elemental Coven, she's now being held - well, she really has no idea where, so getting back home again is going to be hard, if not outright impossible.

Since disease stole her mother at a young age, Rose Caden has longed to become a healer. Juggling her family, her work, and her studies on the edge of a blade, she’s almost made it. But her life is transformed in one night when her daughter’s magic - forbidden magic - reveals itself. When even her mentors refuse to aid her, Rose must find a solution or risk losing her daughter forever.

Private intelligence agent Savannah Summers is skating on thin ice after nearly blowing an undercover operation. Hell-bent on proving herself, Savannah agrees to a dangerous operation that exposes her to more than she ever imagined. Posing as a Diamond Club member's daughter from overseas, Savannah gains the access she needs to the town's most infamous club. But when she discovers that she's been promised to a prominent member's son, who despises her, Savannah is in deeper than she can handle.

For two long terrifying years, Sakhi Borren, and her beloved brother Reve, are headed to live at The Complex. An enclosed metal and concrete manufactured world on the barren planet Lorn, the Complex is some government's version of a good idea. Its sole purpose is to "heal the rifts between warring races" - a joke if ever Sakhi heard one. If she and her brother can survive to the end, they'll leave, far richer. In the meantime, all they can look forward to is co-existing with criminals and the scumbags known as Metas.

When Gertrude wakes up in a world steeped in the past, discovering that she's pregnant with no memory of how she got there, she panics. But when her baby is kidnapped she has to snap out of her stupor or lose everything she loves. It is only when she comes upon a sailor with turquoise eyes that all the disturbing memories begin to resurface. But despite what happened between them, he is her only hope.