Showing results by narrator "Jeremy Carlisle Parker" in All Categories

Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.

In her fine new Virginia school, Dawn Longchamp feels happy and safe. But nothing is what it seems... Now Dawn and her older brother Jimmy have a chance for a decent, respectable life, and Dawn’s secret, precious hope to study singing can come true. Philip Cutler, the handsomest boy in school, sets Dawn’s heart on fire. She is deeply devoted to her brooding brother; but with Philip, she imagines a lovely dream of romance...

When Byron Kidd’s twelve-year-old daughter vanishes, the only clue is a note claiming that she’s taken off to explore the Hidden World, a magical land from a series of popular novels. She is not the only child to seek out this imaginary realm in recent years, and Byron—a cynical and hard-nosed reporter—is determined to discover the whereabouts of dozens of missing kids.

It’s been close to twenty years since forensic pathologist Dolores Hawthorne left her hometown of Little Horton, Wisconsin. The town is famous for its Halloween celebrations, but also its history of violent deaths linked to the holiday. To Dolores, it’s the place she fled, family, bad memories, and all. Until the FBI calls to tell her that her father--the former mayor turned US Senator--is missing under mysterious circumstances.

Twelve-year-old Wren loves makeup—special effect makeup, to be exact. When she is experimenting with new looks, Wren can create a different version of herself. A girl who isn’t in a sort-of-best friendship with someone who seems like she hates her. A girl whose parents aren’t divorced and doesn’t have to learn to like her new stepmom.

A boy on the edge of adolescence fears his mother might be a robot; a psychotically depressed woman is entrusted with taking her niece and nephew trick-or-treating; a reluctant dad brings his baby to a debaucherous party; a teenage boy tries to prevent his mother from putting his estranged father’s dogs to sleep. Ranging from a youth arts camp to an aging punk band’s reunion tour, from a dystopian future where parents no longer exist to a ferociously independent bookstore, Last Day on Earth revolves around the endlessly complex, frequently surreal system that is family.

Euphoria meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this latest novel by the Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper, following a couple whose search to spice up their sex life leads them down a path of madness.

Ivy Winslow has the house to herself for a week while her parents are away. She’s planning to use this newfound freedom to binge-watch her favorite fantasy TV show, H-MAD, and hang out with her best friend, Henry. She’ll also have to avoid her former best friend-turned enemy (and neighbor), Mack. But things quickly go awry when Ivy wakes up to find Weston, the gorgeous, very fictional main character of H-MAD in her bedroom, claiming to be her soul mate.

After years racing go-karts and looking up to her mother, a celebrity Formula 1 racer, Jojo Emerson-Boyd should be starting her own racing career. But when she loses her mom in a tragic crash, Jojo’s future comes to a screeching halt. Now her dad won’t let her get a license, much less race. Instead, she’s stuck working at her grandmother’s mechanic shop in the sleepy small town of Dell’s Hollow. But Jojo’s heart quickens when Motorcyle Girl Eliana “El” Blum shows up at the shop. El grew up on the motocross circuit sidelines, watching her sister and idol Maxine compete.

After running away from home, Sybil Clarion is eager to embrace all the freedom the Belle Époque city of Severon has to offer. Instead, she’s traded high-society soirées for empty pockets. At least she has Esme, the girl who offered Sybil a home, and if either of them dared, something more.

JT Cox never quite fit into Hart’s Landing. Playing on the boys’ hockey team and coming out young didn’t help. Now, thanks to an Olympic gold medal, JT’s name is on a sign greeting visitors to her hometown. Her family of artists and creatives still treat her as an odd duck, but elsewhere there’s a warm welcome. Especially from her best friend’s older sister, newly divorced Ali Porter.

A boyband fandom becomes a conduit to coming out. A former bully becomes a first-kiss prospect. One nonbinary kid searches for an inclusive athletic community after quitting gymnastics. Another nonbinary kid, who happens to be a pirate, makes a wish that comes true - but not how they thought it would. A tween girl navigates a crush on her friend's mom. A young witch turns herself into a puppy to win over a new neighbor. A trans girl empowers her online bestie to come out.

When MC Calloway’s best friend Joe, an editor at the notorious gossip website Jawbreaker, calls her in for an emergency meeting, MC is unprepared for how frantic he is. But when he shows her a copy of Girl Next Door, the steamy, bestselling rom-com taking the literary world by storm, written under a pen name, points to one of the women on the front cover, and says, “that's you,” its MC who begins to panic.

Ix Tatterfall has always been an outcast with big secrets: She can cross into the Labyrinth, home to the powerful Sorrows, and she can see strange Nightmare beasts when no one else can. Some, like the shadowy Inklings or bothersome Stubbed Toads, are merely a nuisance. Many more—like the Jimber-Jawed Hounds—are dangerous. Even deadly.

It's never been safe for Fern, Jaq, or Mallory to come out to their families. As kids their emerging identities drove them into friendship but also forced them into the woods to hide in an old, abandoned house when they needed safety. But one night when the girls sought refuge, Mallory never made it back home. Fern and Jaq did, but neither survivor remembered what happened or the secrets they were so desperate to keep. Five years later, a spirit who looks like Mallory begins to appear, seeking revenge for her death, and the part Fern and Jaq played in it.

Ember, Miles, and Sam have been called home—only home is a place none of them have ever been before. The choices they make will not only determine their own futures but will also have vast and permanent consequences—they will either restore a cosmic balance or destroy the dams that separate two worlds, ending them both. Ember was called because she belonged, Miles because his mother belonged, and Sam . . . well, Sam arranged his own invitation.

After her twin’s death, a solitary young woman leaves Rome for Shanghai, the city where her brother Ruben had long dreamed of opening a restaurant. Teaching Italian to Chinese students, she meets a mysterious girl named Xu, who is also running from a turbulent past. Xu's house is dingy and full of rotting food, like a museum of decomposing organic matter. In the gloom of abandoned textile factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, the two discover an extreme dimension where biting, swallowing, and taking each other in are part of the erotic ritual.

It's the eve of the first full moon of summer and twelve-year-old Riley Callahan is ready to turn into a wolf. Nothing can ruin her mood: not her little brother Milo’s teasing, not Mama N’s smoth-ering, and not even Mama C’s absence from their pack’s ceremony. But then the unthink-able happens—something that violates every rule of wolf magic—Riley and four other kids don’t shift.

Nina always followed her older sister, Lily. But just before her thirteenth birthday, Lily died, leaving Nina behind forever. In the three years since she lost her sister, Nina has completed Lily’s secret Before Birthday lists to continue in her footsteps. But now Nina is catching up. When Nina flies to Paris, France, and completes tasks that Lily never finished, Nina finds herself magically transported inside of her own memories, face-to-face with the ghosts of her past.

On the morning Twain, a lonely boy with a knack for danger, discovers a strand of starlight on the cliffs outside of Severon, a mysterious curiosity shop appears in town. Meanwhile, Quinta, the ordinary daughter of an extraordinary circus performer, chases rumors of the shop, The Vermilion Emporium, desperate for a way to live up to her mother’s magical legacy. When Quinta meets Twain outside of the Emporium, two things happen: One, Quinta is sure she’s infatuated with this starlight boy. Two, they discover a book that teaches them how to weave starlight into lace.