Showing results by narrator "Kim Mai Guest" in All Categories

Star-crossed lovers, meddling immortals, feigned identities, battles of wits, and dire warnings: these are the stuff of fairy tale, myth, and folklore that have drawn us in for centuries. Fifteen best-selling and acclaimed authors reimagine the folklore and mythology of East and South Asia in short stories that are by turns enchanting, heartbreaking, romantic, and passionate. From fantasy to science fiction to contemporary, from romance to tales of revenge, these stories will beguile listeners from start to finish.

Grace Johnson can’t escape the feeling that her life is on autopilot—until her husband announces he’s done with their marriage. Grace has a choice: wallow in humiliation . . . or reluctantly grant her outlandish mother’s seventieth birthday wish with a road trip Graceland. Buckle up, Elvis. We’re on our way.

When it comes to modern relationships, our thumbs do the talking. We swipe right into a stranger's life, flirt inside text bubbles, spill our hearts onto the screen, use emojis to convey desire, frustration, rage. Where once we pored over love letters, now we obsess over response times, or wonder why the three-dot ellipsis came . . . and went.

Cordelia Liu’s first year at Shadow School was a success. She studied hard and made friends. She also sent hundreds of ghosts into the afterlife, because Shadow School isn’t a normal school, and Cordelia Liu isn’t a normal girl. But her second year is already different. Ghosts are refusing to move on, the teachers are acting weird, and Cordelia’s best friends, Benji and Agnes, aren’t as interested in rescuing the ghosts as they used to be.

In this sequel to The Year of the Dog, Pacy has another big year in store for her. The Year of the Dog was a very lucky year: She met her best friend, Melody, and discovered her true talents. However, the Year of the Rat brings big changes: Pacy must deal with Melody moving to California, find the courage to forge on with her dream of becoming a writer and illustrator, and learn to face some of her own flaws. Pacy encounters prejudice, struggles with acceptance, and must find the beauty in change.

Since Jimm Juree moved, under duress, with her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she has missed her career as a journalist. In Chiang Mai, she was covering substantial stories and major crimes. But here in Maprao, Jimm has to scrape assignments from the local online journal, the Chumphon Gazette. This time they are sending her out to interview a local farang (European) writer, Conrad Coralbank, who writes award-winning crime novels.

Quincie P. Morris, teen restaurateuse and neophyte vampire, is in the fight of her life - or undeath. Even as she adjusts to her new appetites, she must clear her best friend and true love, the hybrid werewolf Kieren, of murder charges; thwart the apocalyptic ambitions of Bradley Sanguini, the seductive vampire-chef who "blessed" her; and keep her dead parents restaurant up and running. She hires a more homespun chef and adds the preternaturally beautiful Zachary to her wait staff. But with hundreds of new vampires on the rise and Bradley off assuming the powers of Dracula Prime....

Mirabelle’s past is shrouded in secrecy, from her parents’ tragic deaths to her guardians’ half-truths about why she can’t return to her birthplace, Beau Rivage. Desperate to see the town, Mira runs away a week before her sixteenth birthday - and discovers a world she never could have imagined. In Beau Rivage, nothing is what it seems - the strangely pale girl with a morbid interest in apples, the obnoxious playboy who’s a beast to everyone he meets, and the chivalrous guy who has a thing for damsels in distress.

Will love break the spell? After cruelly rejecting Bao, the poor physician's apprentice who loves her, Lan, a wealthy nobleman's daughter, regrets her actions. So when she finds Bao's prized flute floating in his boat near her house, she takes it into her care, not knowing that his soul has been trapped inside it by an evil witch, who cursed Bao, telling him that only love will set him free. Though Bao now despises her, Lan vows to make amends and help break the spell. Together, the two travel across the continent, finding themselves in the presence of greatness.

Death, accidental and early, has always been Abby Walters's preoccupation. Now 33 and eager to settle down with her commitment-shy boyfriend, a recurring dream from her past returns: a paralyzing nightmare of being buried alive, the taste of dirt in her mouth cloying and real. But this time the dream reveals a name from her family's past. Looking for answers, Abby returns home to small-town Minnesota for the first time in 14 years, where she reconnects with her high school crush, now a police detective on the trail of a violent criminal.

From the New York Times and internationally best-selling authors of The Illuminae Files comes a new science fiction epic.... It's 2380, and the graduating students of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Tyler Jones has been a star pupil who hopes to recruit the squad of his dreams but ends up with a mixed and volatile crew. And Ty's squad isn't even his biggest problem - that'd be Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley, the girl he's just rescued from interdimensional space.

For the first eight years of her life, an unusual apple orchard in Vermont is Sorrow Lovegood's whole world. The land has been passed down through generations of brave, resilient women, and while their offbeat habits may be ridiculed by other townspeople - especially their neighbors, the Abrams family - Sorrow and her family take pride in its odd history. Then, one winter night, an unthinkable tragedy changes everything. In the aftermath, Sorrow is sent to Miami to live with her father, away from the only home she's ever known.

Having barely escaped the clutches of the Guard, Sefia and Archer are back on the run, slipping into the safety of the forest to tend to their wounds and plan their next move. Haunted by painful memories, Archer struggles to overcome the trauma of his past with the impressors, whose cruelty plagues him whenever he closes his eyes. But when Sefia and Archer happen upon a crew of impressors in the wilderness, Archer finally finds a way to combat his nightmares: by hunting impressors and freeing the boys they hold captive.

Sefia is determined to keep Archer out of the Guard's clutches and their plans for war between the Five Kingdoms. The Book, the ancient, infinite codex of the past, present, and future, tells of a prophecy that will plunge Kelanna in that bloody war, but it requires a boy - Archer - and Sefia will stop at nothing to ensure his safety. The Guard has already stolen her mother, her father, and her Aunt Nin. Sefia would sooner die than let them take anymore from her - especially the boy she loves.

In her national bestseller Alice I Have Been, Melanie Benjamin imagined the life of the woman who inspired Alice in Wonderland. Now, in this jubilant new novel, Benjamin shines a dazzling spotlight on another fascinating female figure whose story has never fully been told: a woman who became a nineteenth century icon and inspiration—and whose most daunting limitation became her greatest strength.

Jason Zhou, his friends, and Daiyu are still recovering from the aftermath of bombing Jin Corp headquarters. But Jin, the ruthless billionaire and Daiyu's father, is out for blood. When Lingyi goes to Shanghai to help Jany Tsai, a childhood acquaintance in trouble, she doesn't expect Jin to be involved. And when Jin has Jany murdered and steals the tech she had refused to sell him, Lingyi is the only one who has access to the encrypted info, putting her own life in jeopardy.

Hygge (hoo-gah) is a Danish word but a universal feeling of being warm, safe, comforted, and sheltered - an experience of belonging to the moment and to each other. When life gets hectic, work grows stressful, and the days fly by, unplug and tune in. Hygge anchors us, reminding us to slow down, to connect with place and with one another, to dwell and savor rather than rush and spend.

All Eva ever wanted was the chance to be herself. But in the Americas, to be hybrid - to share your body with a second soul - is not tolerated past childhood. Now Eva and Addie, her sister soul, are constantly on the move, hiding from the officials who seek to capture them. But the tide is changing. A revolution is brewing, and people are starting to question the hybrids' mistreatment.

Zhade's power might be going to his head. Newly on the throne, he’s still getting used to wearing Maret's face, but he can't deny that the influence it affords him has its perks. So when the magic of Eerensed starts to turn deadly, Zhade must master the Crown if he's going to save his people, and Tsurina's destructive plans for Eerensed aren't going to make that easy. Worse, he's starting to see her point.

Li has a father and a sister who love her. A best friend, Mirabae, to share things with. She goes to school and hangs out at the beach and carefully follows the rules. She has to. Everyone she knows - her family, her teachers, her friends - is an alien. And she is the only human left on Earth. The Abdoloreans hijacked the planet 16 years ago, destroying all human life. Li's human-sympathizer father took her in as a baby and has trained her to pass as one of them. The Abdoloreans appear human. But they don't think with human minds or feel with human hearts.