Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Aquino" in All Categories

Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she's returned to her mother's imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria's royal palace. Thanh's new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh's home.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, renowned marine biologist and co-founder of the All We Can Save climate initiative, compiles the best science and nature writing of the year.

Companies from around the world are doing their best to achieve greater levels of diversity in senior leadership positions. However, their efforts are frequently unsuccessful, meeting widespread cultural resistance and pushback. Only a few firms create lasting change in the makeup of their boards and executive leadership. So, what sets these successful firms apart from their less successful counterparts? Diversity Intelligence provides listeners with a road map to achieving impactful change in the areas of diversity and inclusion.

Seventeen-year-old Malaya is cursed. In her family, every girl’s first love ends in death after falling for someone evil. Good thing Malaya’s dream guy isn’t monstrous. Except the curse is real and preventing Malaya from noticing how much he has gaslit and isolated her until she can’t be saved. With no other options, the sea witch is the only one to help her.

Through a series of essays, poems, and comics, 30 creators give voice to moments that defined them and shed light on the immense diversity and complexity of the Asian American identity. Edited by CAPE and with an introduction by renowned journalist SuChin Pak, My Life: Growing Up Asian in America is a celebration of community, a call to action, and a road map for a brighter future.

Narra Jal is one of the cursed, cast aside her whole life, considered unlucky. But with her mother's life on the line, she will return to the city where she was born to face the trials: a grueling, bloodthirsty series of challenges designed to weed out the weak, the greedy, and the foolish. Trials to select the next ruler of Tigang. Narra has nothing. No weapons. No training. No magic. No real chance of leaving with her life. Just her fierce grit and a refusal to accept the destiny she's been handed.

Study Break, a collection of interconnected contemporary Young Adult short stories written by Gen Z authors, explores different parts of "the college experience," from questioning your major to questioning your identity.

Kimmie Park has finally met a man who gets her and laughs at her jokes. Matt West is kind, compassionate, and a smoking-hot FDNY firefighter. There’s just one—okay, many—problems. They’ve never met in person because he lives in New York, and she’s in Oklahoma. He also doesn’t know that her life recently imploded when she very publicly quit her retail job and became a meme in a viral video, known as the woman who twerked as she told off her boss. And he has no idea what she really looks like.

The Minerva Sierra Challenge is a grueling spectacle, the cyborg’s Tour de France. Rich thrill seekers with corporate sponsorships, extensive support teams, and top-of-the-line exoskeletal and internal augmentations pit themselves against the elements in a daylong race across the Sierra Nevadas. Marmeg Guinto doesn’t have funding, and she doesn’t have support. She cobbled her gear together from parts she found in rich people’s garbage and spent the money her mother wanted her to use for nursing school to enter the race.

Aging doesn’t have to mean getting old. There’s mounting evidence that particular behaviors and lifestyles seem to lead to “more life.” Aging Brilliantly is a guide to proven habits you can adopt at any age to help achieve not only longevity but also a happier, healthier existence.

Veteran teacher and counselor Delaney Frost accepts a job at Havenhart Academy and soon learns that not only are her new charges “gifted," but that within her resides a power so rare and precious, it can be used to heal others. When danger arrives at the academy gates, Delaney and her mysterious yet alluring boss will fight to protect the children from a megalomaniac out for revenge and the destruction of all she holds dear. Welcome to Havenhart Academy.

The ink on Cecilia's divorce papers might be dry, but she’s in no hurry to connect with another traveling businessman, especially the spatially challenged one seated beside her on a crack-of-dawn flight from San Francisco to Madrid. Felip should be on top of the world running his family’s cava empire, however life has left him feeling unfulfilled as of late. Good conversation and a hard-won smile from his seatmate—a grumpy but lovely American hearing-impaired teacher—have him wondering if maybe fairytales are possible.

Jasmine Yap’s life is great. Well, it’s okay. She’s about to move in with her longtime boyfriend, Paul, before starting a nursing program at community college - all of which she mostly wants. But her stable world is turned upside down when she catches Paul cheating. To her giant, overprotective family, Paul’s loss is their golden ticket to showing Jasmine that she deserves much more. The only problem is, Jasmine refuses to meet anyone new. But...what if the family set up a situation where she wouldn’t have to know? A secret Jasmine Project.

In her first collection of poems, Ching Yeung Russell captures elements of her youth in rich, vivid snapshots and authentic detail. Listeners of all backgrounds will relate to spirited Yeung Ying, her dynamic family, and her courage in the face of life's obstacles.

I was engaged to my high school boyfriend, about to get married and live a life I no longer wanted. After breaking up, when he insisted that I go on our planned honeymoon anyway … alone … I wasn’t about to say no. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I’d meet someone there. I wasn’t looking for love, but it sure seemed to be looking for me—in the shape of a six-foot tall, tanned professional surfer named Diego. Our time together was filled with passion unlike anything I’d known back in my small town. I went to the North Shore one kind of woman … but I came back completely changed.

Ocean Sun has always felt an enormous pressure to succeed. After struggling with depression during her senior year of high school, Ocean moves to New York City, where she has been accepted at a prestigious university. But Ocean feels so emotionally raw and unmoored (and uncertain about what is real and what is not) that she decides to defer and live off her savings until she can get herself together.

When it comes to the gender gap, it is not enough to ask women to "lean in" and demand promotions and raises. Organizations have an obligation to level up and provide women with more opportunities for advancement. In this book, leadership and governance expert Carol Geffner makes a strong case that for women to reach their full potential, workplaces and their leaders must take a more proactive role in combating gender discrimination.

Triumph. Tragedy. The empyreal. The infernal. Even the mundane, filtered through the fantastical. Superheroes are, appropriately enough, a sort of super-genre, encompassing all other story types. This YA anthology features thirteen short stories that creatively turn superhero tropes on their head, while still paying homage to the genre that has found fans for more than eight decades. And there will be no mistake—superheroes don’t have to just be generic handsome white dudes.

There's harrowing tension in being Asayi. But join Asayi's circle to oppose a punitive regime. Court intrigues swirl, underbelly characters from different levels of society emerge, deceptions reign, yet truth emerges at the end. Layers of nuance unfold: the vulnerability of an autistic young woman in a merciless time period; political unrest, physical survival, secret identities, and finding ones tribe and love while facing injustices and revolts that are just as real as todays inequities and discontents.

At the beginning of February 2060, Mount Erebus erupted, the first of a chain of Antarctic volcanoes that forever changed Earth’s future. Within days, sea levels began to rise, until 60 meters of water claimed coastlines worldwide. Twelve-year-old Xin-yi and her mother fled their home, surviving among a community of rice farmers. A year later, a chance conversation with international census officials prepared her for a new life.