Showing results by narrator "Rachel Hirsch" in All Categories

Carmen Alvarez is new to competitive gymnastics, and it isn't quite what she expected. Her Level Four season is having a rough start with silly mistakes and several falls. Carmen continues to work hard. But just when she has competition figured out, she learns she must score a 34.00 All-Around to be eligible for Level Five. What will Carmen do if her season ends without getting the coveted 34.00 All-Around? Can she talk her family and coaches into letting her attend one more meet to try to get the score? And if she can get to another meet, will she be able to score out?

At age ten, Paige Green is the oldest girl on the Level 3 Team at Perfect Balance Gymnastics Academy. In practice she struggles to fit in. Paige secretly likes dance class and wants to beat her teammates and win the All-Around at the State Meet. But at State her team is falling apart and Paige learns that winning as a team is more important than the individual All-Around. Can she step up as a leader and pull this group together? Or is it too late?

Gwen Russell is thrilled to hear she will be heading to Paris with her family. Even though the main reason for the trip is to see her three older brothers play lacrosse, Gwen and her Mom have plans to tour the city when they can. As soon as they land, Gwen is swept up in the city she has always wanted to see, and even meets a tres cute boy named Henri. If that wasn't enough excitement, Gwen finds out that her all-time favorite band is playing a one-night only concert in Paris—and there are tickets available to the sold-out show for three lucky people.

The moment a mysterious boy moves in next door to Sydney and Allyson Tate, both of their lives begin to change in ways that neither of them can ignore. When Allyson meets Graham Copeland, she instantly feels like he's a kindred spirit - shy and awkward like her, someone who has trouble making friends. It's almost impossible to resist having a crush on him.

Jace and Andrea. Andrea and Jace. From the moment of their fate-filled first meeting in Central Park, they’ve known one true thing—they’re meant to be. Life doesn’t have many certainties, but for Andrea and Jace, forever is one of them.

With just a touch, George experiences a person's future death. High school is hard enough, but sixteen-year-old death witch Georgiana “George” Colburn can’t seem to catch a break. Even Jen’s ghost, the recently deceased popular girl who ignored George in life, won’t leave her alone. George is convinced her life can’t get any worse. That is until she bumps into the new student and experiences his death at her hand. When a coven mate, Trixie, offers to help her with her magic, George finds herself with a new friend and crush.

Sibilla Fenoglio wants nothing more than to live with her husband in this run-down, derelict watermill. Uninhabited since the Renaissance after a mysterious disaster befell the previous owners, the mill requires extensive repairs. But there is something frightening about the mill. Repairs are violently undone, half-seen figures begin stalking Sibilla through the grounds, and haunting echoes of the previous owners’ lives infiltrate the present. As the disturbances grow more vicious and her husband more secretive, she realizes that she and her child are in danger.

En route to her first season in London, however, a failed kidnapping sends Miss Jillian Roring into the arms of the most jaded bachelor in England. When Logan and Jillian unwittingly violate the rigid rules of propriety in Victorian-era England, he is obliged to make her an offer of marriage. Because she aspires to be more than an obligation, Jillian refuses the match. Logan follows her to London to woo her properly, but his scheming ex-fiance has other plans.

Darya does not remember how she came to be a slave or who she was before she was bought by an army captain for his motherless daughter in the ancient Persian city of Susa. Protected and nurtured by the housekeeper and her daughter, Darya has as good a life as a slave can have, even acquiring the rare skill of reading and writing, which she learns alongside her young mistress.

Where will you stand at humanity's end? The corporate abuse of youth who have the special ability to manipulate reality is at its apex. A revolution to regain society has emerged and 16-year-old Leeyah is thrust in the middle of the war against the corporate-controlled police. Will a growing ability put her life at risk? Immerse yourself in the universe of the Influence series with this origin novella. Discover the beginning of the Influence phenomenon.

Set at first in late 19th century Eastern Europe, Fire in My Ears by Susan Schneider is a coming-of-age tale that begins with a beautiful young woman who makes a tragic far-reaching decision and the result is three generations of pain, disappointing and bitter struggle for happiness.

When Sara Marsala’s beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, she leaves Sara a valuable piece of land in Sicily, but there’s a catch: the locals refuse to acknowledge the rightful owner of the deed, and if Sara wants the land she must first uncover the truth about what happened to her great-great grandmother, Serafina Marsala. Because Rosie didn’t think Serafina died of illness as family lore states... Rosie believed Serafina was murdered, and she wants Sara to prove it.

A modern-day Miss Lonelyhearts, Gina’s smart, she’s sassy, she’s got a potty mouth, and she’s determined to live life on her own terms. She’s also divorced, an empty nester, and turning fifty. In the true spirit of midlife crises, Gina dyes her hair, pierces her nose, and moves to a tiny tourist town on the Canadian shores of Lake Huron. Just as she’s settling into her new life and deciding whether to fall into bed with her hot contractor, Gina advises a reader to leave her husband, right before the woman goes missing. And Gina’s got a stalker.

Too many Jews have been told: "You don't look Jewish!" It begs the question, "What does Jewish look like?" Well, there are over fifteen million Jews in the world, which means there are more than fifteen million ways to look and be Jewish. It can look like setting out menorahs on tribal land, adding kimchi to the seder plate, organizing for change, and living out loud.

If you told Sloane Osburn and Amelia Miller-Poe that they'd be hiding in their town cemetery from an evil mastermind, they would have been hard-pressed to believe you. If you also told them that person was intent on beating them to a cache of long-lost jewels using nothing more than a slingshot and wicked aim, they'd have been sure you got your facts wrong. Finally, if you told them they'd be doing this as friends . . . well, they would have been sure you needed medical attention.

When Sloane Osborn and Amelia Miller-Poe arrive at Tangle Glen mansion, they have one goal: find the two million dollars that went missing on its premises decades ago. Solving the mystery would be just the kind of splashy victory their new detective agency needs to gain traction. Except that everything from the weirdly intense peony competition to the mansion's cook who may or may not be hiding murder dolls in the attic seems to get in the way of their investigation. Not to mention Amelia's obsession with speaking in 1920s slang, which sounds like a whole lot of nonsense to Sloane.

Sloane and Amelia’s amateur detective agency has landed their first paid gig! After seeing their YouTube documentary series, eccentric millionaire Covington Cooley hires them to solve a mystery: the secret location of a time capsule buried in 1865 somewhere on the grounds of Cedar Point Amusement Park. Cooley is sure that the box holds documents proving that his ancestor is the rightful owner of the land, a fact which, if proven, would turn him from a millionaire to a billionaire overnight.

It is the summer of 1982, just before the fall. The political campaign ad of It’s Morning in America has not yet aired, but the present era of cultural hedonism and radical individualism has already dawned. Against this backdrop, Edward Bennett is the all-American son of a mother who emigrated from Italy and a first-generation Italian American father. Edward has it all: good looks, pedigree, and the financial fruits of his father’s business empire. As he readies for his junior year abroad in London, however, something feels amiss.

Tales of guardian spirits and divine powers by Seanan McGuire, Ken Liu, Alethea Kontis, Laura Anne Gilman, Scott Edelman and more. Guardian spirits. Divine presences. Demonic powers. Ghosts. The concept of "genius loci" is indeed an ancient one, found in nearly every human mythology. Genius Loci is a huge anthology of 31 all-new fantasy and science fiction stories drawing on the rich tradition of place-as-person. In it, the authors present stories of sentient deserts, beneficent forests, lonely shrubs, and protective planetary spirits.

Virginia Collins is not what she appears to be. By all outward appearances the successful uptown psychiatrist is just another beautiful dame who hires a private investigator to find her missing husband: a weird little man who makes fancy umbrella drinks and dresses like something out of an old gangster movie. Collins hides her real motives, along with her tragic past, in order to win the affections of Raffy Rheinhardt, a cynical PI with an equally tragic history; a long forgotten shared incident resulting in damaged psyches and dead bodies.