Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

Callie Aspen can't think of a more appropriate place to spend Valentine's Day than her adopted hometown of Heart's Harbor, Maine. When she's not helping out at Book Tea, her great-aunt Iphy's vintage tearoom, Callie's adorning Haywood Hall with hearts and roses for the big Valentine's event, where townspeople will fall in love with sweet treats, heartwarming music, and delightful books. But when a dead body is discovered, the stirring spoon of suspicion points at the many people who had reasons to want the victim dead.

Elyth - a former agent of the religious arm of the Ascendance, The First House - is on the run after the events of Every Sky a Grave, when she and the fugitive Varen Fedic exposed the darker side of Ascendance hegemony on a planet called Qel. Though she just wishes to put the past (and Varen) behind her, she is soon tracked and cornered by the Ascendance agents. Surprisingly, they aren’t there for punishment. Instead, they offer her a deal in exchange for her help in exploring a new planet that seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

From the ancient indigenous narratives of "The Dreamtime" in Australia to the classical founding tales of some of the greatest empires of Western antiquity, these accounts are at once creative works of art as well as valuable sources of early history and sociology. Terri-ann White has brought together a range of fascinating stories from around the world. Each reflects familiar and universal themes such as humor, fear, lust, familial love, romantic love, mortality, a reverence for the divine, and a preoccupation with the meaning of life.

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own. Within this melting pot of styles, genres and wordplay one fact stands out: In the American short story, literary tradition has a strong, vibrant and almost inclusive history, if you know where to look.

It's New Year's Day, and the residents of a small fishing town are ready to start their lives anew. Leo takes his two young sons out to the lake to write resolutions on paper boats. That same frigid morning, Vera sets out for a walk with her dog along the lake, leaving her husband in bed with a hangover. But she never returns. She places a call to the police saying she's found a boy in the woods, but the call is cut short by a muffled cry. Did one of Leo's sons see Vera? What are they hiding from the police? And why are they so scared of their own father?

In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right - he is thin, almost ghostly and behaving very strangely. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max’s condition.

An unknown vessel, not of this world, materialises in London. A colossal figure towering over the city, it makes no move. Is this a peaceful first contact or the prelude to an invasion? Every child has nightmares. But the only thing scarier than little Eva Reyes' dreams - apocalyptic visions of death and destruction - is the habit they have of coming true. Scientist Dr Rose Franklin has no memory of the last few years. The strangers she works with say she died, and was brought back to life. The question is not just how...but why?

The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the horrific accident at Bennington, the two friends - once inseparable roommates - haven't spoken in over a year. But Lucy is standing there, trying to make things right. Perhaps Alice should be happy. She has not adjusted to life in Morocco, too afraid to venture out into the bustling medinas and oppressive heat. Lucy, always fearless and independent, helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country.

Dr. E. Ridley Woodhouse is like no physician Ben Madison has ever met - she's a woman. As the newly elected sheriff of Frost Falls, Colorado, Ben is tasked with welcoming Ridley to the community. But while Ben might be tempted by the new doc's charms, getting the town to accept a big-city female doctor is no easy feat. To earn their trust, she'll have to prove herself, and Ben is determined to help her...even if she's the most stubborn woman he's ever met. Then Ridley is threatened, and Ben's protective instincts kick in.

In this book, Trine Syvertsen explores the phenomenon of digital detox: users taking a break from digital media or adopting measures to limit smartphone and social media use. Based on studies, documents, media texts and interviews with media users, Syvertsen discusses how media industries intensify the quest for attention, how companies and governments team up to get everybody online, and how the main responsibility for managing online risks and problems are placed on the users' shoulders.

On a warm spring day after a long New England winter, Hazel and Remy spot each other for the first time in years. Under ordinary circumstances, this meeting might seem insignificant. But Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to the Scottish composer Nicholas Elko—once the love of Hazel's life, now struggling with a masterwork he cannot realize. In the 20 years since Hazel's world was tipped on its axis, these three artists have faced unexpected joys, mysterious afflictions, and other puzzles of life, their fates irrevocably interlaced.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.

Christmas on Nantucket finds Winter Street Inn owner Kelley Quinn and his family busily preparing for the holiday season. Though the year has brought tragedy, the Quinns have much to celebrate: Kelley has reunited with his first wife, Margaret; Kevin and Isabelle have a new baby; and Ava is finally dating a nice guy. But when Kelley's wife, Mitzi, shows up on the island along with Kevin's devious ex-wife, Nora, and a dangerously irresistible old fling of Ava's, the inn is suddenly overrun with romantic feuds, not to mention guests.

Juliana Chastain doesn't know anything about her family history. While her mother was alive she remained very secretive about her past. So when Juliana discovers a photograph of a glamorous French actress from World War Two amongst her mother's possessions, she is in shock to find herself looking at her grandmother - especially as she is arm in arm with a Nazi officer.... Desperate for answers, Juliana is determined to trace the journey of her grandmother. Surely there is more to the photograph than meets the eye?

Benét was born on 22nd July in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Prodigiously his first book was published at 17 and for he obtained his M.A. in English when he submitted a poetry volume as his thesis. Whilst travelling in France, in the early '20s, he met and quickly married a fellow writer and poet, Rosemary Carr. She would also collaborate with him on several works. In Paris he wrote the book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War ‘John Brown's Body’, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Standing by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders...is this it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that ends her marriage and upends her life. Based on the intimate diaries Will Self's mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer's attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm of a parent's interior life prior to his own existence.

When Mouse's dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be? Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there's more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather's journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself. Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors.

In the last years of his life, the writer Amos Oz talked regularly with Shira Hadad, who worked closely with him as the editor of his final novel, Judas. These candid, uninhibited dialogues show a side of Oz that few ever saw. What Makes an Apple? presents the most revealing of these conversations in English for the first time, painting an illuminating and disarmingly intimate portrait of a towering literary figure.

This first in a “fresh new sci-fi” (Jason M. Hough, New York Times best-selling author) series follows a powerful woman who can destroy planets with a single word but is suddenly faced with an adversary that threatens the entire known universe.