Showing results by narrator "Zura Johnson" in All Categories

Sarah Kurchak is autistic. She hasn’t let that get in the way of pursuing her dream to become a writer, or to find love, but she has let it get in the way of being in the same room with someone chewing food loudly and of cleaning her bathroom sink. In I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, Kurchak examines the Byzantine steps she took to become “an autistic success story”, how the process almost ruined her life, and how she is now trying to recover.

Aveen is the perfect lady, placid and well-mannered, concealing her discontentment beneath false smiles and gentle nods. As the eldest, her duty has always been to her family legacy and her sister's happiness. But when she finds herself forced into betrothal to a man she loathes, she swears she'll do anything to escape. Even if it means bargaining with a wicked fae prince.

Becoming a parent, once the expected outcome of adulthood, is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life. We seek self-fulfillment; we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the home; and we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of climate change. Weighing the pros and cons of having children, millennials and zoomers are finding it increasingly difficult to judge in its favor. With lucid argument and passionate prose, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman offer the guidance necessary to move beyond uncertainty.

Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale were unique among their immortal family. Curious about mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, yet quickly found themselves at the perilous center of a dangerous Olympian rivalry and learned—too late—that a god's love is a violent one.

After Keelynn witnesses her sister's murder at the hands of the legendary Gancanagh, an immortal creature who seduces women and kills them with a cursed kiss, she realizes there’s nothing she wouldn't do to get her back. With the help of a vengeful witch, she’s given everything she needs to resurrect the person she loves most. Tadhg, a devilishly handsome half-fae who has no patience for high society—or propriety—would rather spend his time in the company of loose women and dark creatures than help a human kill one of his own. Until Keelynn makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

Anastasia and Verusha Stepanov are the tsar’s only children, heirs to the prosperous and sprawling Kievian Empire. Headstrong and fierce, the twins have long scorned their father’s opulent palace and the diplomatic obligations that come with it, preferring to train with the Royal Guard and dream of a soldier’s life beyond the palace walls.

Everly Winters is perfectly happy to navigate life like a good neutral paint color: appreciated but unnoticed. That’s why she’s still a receptionist instead of exploring a career in art, why she lurks but never posts on the forums for her favorite makeover show, On the Plus Side, and why she’s crushing so hard on her forever-unattainable co-worker. When no one notices you, they can’t reject you or insist you’re too much. This plan is working perfectly until someone secretly nominates Everly for the next season of On the Plus Side.

A malignant blight ravages Tearmann, wreaking havoc on the lives of the Danú. If Tadhg and Keelynn cannot find a way to stop it before it reaches the castle, there won’t be anything left for them to save. While the blight rages on, Aveen and Rían face troubles of their own. Between confronting ghosts from the past and fending off the Phantom Queen’s thirst for vengeance, peace and happiness seem too far out of reach. It isn’t a matter of if the Princes of Tearmann will fall, but when.

The relics of St. Nicholas are among the most divine and prized possessions in the Christian world, said to hold the power to heal the most incurable diseases and protect those who come in contact with them. Biblical archeologist Maggie Shepherd has the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to extract and study one of these priceless artifacts buried in the tomb of the man who is now known as Santa Claus. In just a few weeks, on Christmas Eve, the Pope will present the venerated relic of St. Nicholas to the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Moscow in the hope of reuniting East and West.

Nicole Victoria didn't grow up with wealth. But she learned the secrets to financial freedom and now specializes in helping twenty and thirty-something women effortlessly manage their money and build bank accounts that never stop growing. Money isn't everything, but everything takes money. Maybe you have debt. You feel like you'll always be playing catch up. Maybe you've tried to get help before, tried to budget, followed traditional advice . . . but it just doesn't work for you. You're stressed and overwhelmed, feeling stuck because you don't know where things went wrong.

Magic-less witch Violet Maxwell wants nothing to do with alpha wolf shifter Lincoln Thorne - the man who broke her fragile teenage heart. But when the two of them are forced by arcane Supernatural Laws to find mates, Violet and Lincoln agree to fake-date their way to a fake-mating in order to conjure themselves some time. The joke’s on them.

With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara’s life should finally be back to normal—but, of course, things can’t possibly be that simple. She is now in possession of twelve witch’s shadows. Holding them may grant her unprecedented power, but that doesn’t mean they’re always willing to do her bidding. Across the wall in Belograd, Asen chases his only lead on the latest witch murder case. He follows the trail of smuggling kingpin Konstantin Karaivanov to an underground monster auction—which leads him right back to Chernograd.

When Cassidy Jameson’s best friend Tyler took her to Texas with him when he left for college, she was expecting his ranch-owning cousin Gage, their new roommate, to be a Stetson-wearing cowboy; not an incredibly gorgeous guy with a husky Southern drawl that seemed to make the world stop whenever she looked at him. Because of her past, she’s only ever trusted two men in her life: Tyler, and her dad who passed away when she was six. But there’s something about Gage that draws her to him in a way she can’t explain.

For her entire life, Rose Maxwell trained to become the next Prima on the Supernatural Council. Now that she’s stepped down, it’s time for this witch to focus on herself—and not think about her impulsive one-night stand with Damian Adams, a half-demon veterinarian who she can’t get out of her head, since neither of them is looking for a relationship. But when Rose is sentenced to community service at Damian’s animal sanctuary, it becomes impossible for them to ignore their sparking attraction.

A powerful and fierce reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history’s greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible.

Mia Madden is pretty sure that the road to dating app hell is paved with suspiciously hot profiles. Take tonight's date, for example. Alex Conroy is unreasonably gorgeous—he's got that whole "board-room in the streets, lumberjack in the sheets" happening—but he also represents everything she loathes about corporate hustle culture. Yet another lousy date to laugh-cry about later. Except, it turns out that Alex is also the hot-shot new boss her dad can't stop complaining about—the Forbes thirty-under-thirty company fixer of his nightmares. Worse, their respective best friends are dating.

She’s lost her ship, lost her job, lost her reputation, and is on the run from the law. Jez is a damn good pilot, and she’s always worked alone. Until she got picked up for smuggling, that is. Now she’s an ex-con and ex-employed, and there are plenty of people with old scores to settle. So when a mysterious stranger in a battered pilot's coat comes to her with an offer that sounds too good to be true, she reluctantly agrees to listen. All she has to do is fly one little job.

In this book, technical strategist Sarah Wells provides practical, in-depth advice for moving to microservices. Having built her first microservices architecture in 2013 for the Financial Times, Sarah discusses the approaches you need to take from the start, and explains the potential traps most likely to trip you up. You'll also learn how to maintain the architecture as your systems mature while minimizing the time you spend on support and maintenance.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first issues of Weird Tales Magazine, 100 Years of Weird is a masterful compendium of new and classic stories, flash fiction, essays, and poems from the giants of speculative fiction, including R. L. Stine, Laurell K. Hamilton, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Asimov.

Breck isn’t alone. After months of being in this strange new world full of swords and magic, trapped as a dungeon core, he’s desperate to communicate with a fellow Earthling. He’ll stop at nothing to advance up the essence ranks and make contact with Zach. During his attempts to rank up, his experiments turn deadly. He’ll need to call upon help from everyone and everything he can.