Showing results by narrator "Mia Barron" in All Categories

Best-selling author Allison Winn Scotch showcases heroines who face monumental life changes with unmatched fervor and grace. When Nell Slattery awakens in a hospital bed, she cannot remember who she is, much less the horrific plane crash that put her there. Now, with the help of her friends and family, she’s beginning to piece her memory back together. But she cannot shake the suspicion that her loved ones are hiding secrets from her.

Jayné Heller has discovered the source of her uncanny powers: Something else is living inside her body. She's possessed. Of all her companions, she can only bring herself to confide in Ex, the former priest. They seek help from his old teacher and the circle of friends he left behind, hoping to cleanse Jayné before the parasite in her becomes too powerful. Ex’s history and a new enemy combine to leave Jayné alone and on the run. Her friends, thinking that the rider with her has taken the reins, try to hunt her down, unaware of the danger they’re putting her in.

Annie and her devoted but comically incompetent childhood sweetheart, Sam, are the owners and operators of Annie's, a gourmet sandwich shop, home to the legendary Paul Bunyan Special Sandwich - their nutritionally challenged continual source of income and marital harmony and local fame. But into their mostly charmed marriage comes a scary medical diagnosis for Annie - and the overwhelming challenge of finding a way to help Sam go on without her. Annie decides to leave Sam step-by-step instructions for a future without her and considers her own replacement in his heart and their bed.

It is the early twentieth century and the spiritualism movement is soaring in America. World War I and an influenza pandemic have killed hundreds of thousands. People are desperate to communicate with their dead loved ones, so they seek the help of mediums, psychics, and fortune tellers. The mourners don’t realize they’re being deceived by frauds. But famed magician Harry Houdini isn’t fooled. He knows that these scammers’ methods are no more than conjurer’s tricks. Houdini and his team of investigators, led by detective Rose Mackenberg, set out to expose the ghost hoaxes.

Two estranged sisters find that forgiveness never goes out of style when they inherit their mother’s vintage jackets, purses... and pearls of wisdom.

Many smart students reach a point where they feel overwhelmed and stressed out. As their grades drop, so does their self-esteem, and this combination of external and internal pressures can seem insurmountable. To make matters worse, students feel unable to ask for or accept help. In The Disintegrating Student, Jeannine Jannot, PhD, draws on her decades of experience as a school psychologist, educator, and student coach to explain the reasons for this increasingly common phenomenon.

Sixteen-year-old Addison is on the run. She’s leaving her life on New York’s streets behind for a new one with Rafe, armed with just his phone number on a scrap of paper. She’s taking the subway to meet him in New Jersey. He’ll take care of her. Or so she thinks....

An ex-government assassin turned bounty hunter, Nyx is good at solving other people's problems. Her favorite problem-solving solution is punching people in the face. Then maybe chopping off some heads. She's trying to navigate an apocalyptic world full of giant bugs, contaminated deserts, scheming magicians, and a centuries-long war that's consuming her future. Managing her ragtag squad of misfits has required a lot of morally gray choices. Every new job is another day alive. Every new mission is another step toward changing a hellish future, but only if she can survive.

Detective Dana Rohan has an excellent arrest and conviction rate, but even her partner doesn't know the real reason why. All her life, Dana has borne a mark of unknown origin that she's kept secret. A mark that allows her to walk into alternate pasts and futures and allows her to go back and see any crime as it's being committed. But the life she's carefully built around this secret ability begins to crumble when she's assaulted by a ragged old man. He babbles an incoherent warning that "the Shadows are coming" right before he's killed by an armored monstrosity out of another century.

Teresa Rhyne vowed to get things right this time around: new boyfriend, new house, new dog, maybe even new job. But shortly after she adopted Seamus, a totally incorrigible beagle, vets told Teresa that he had a malignant tumor and less than a year to live. The diagnosis devastated her, but she decided to fight it, learning everything she could about the best treatment for Seamus. Teresa couldn't possibly have known then that she was preparing herself for life's next hurdle - a cancer diagnosis of her own.

On the eve of her fourth album, singer-songwriter Aviva Rosner is plagued by infertility. The twist: as much as Aviva wants a child, she is wary of technological conception, and has poured her ambivalence into her music. As the album makes its way in the world, the shock of the response from fans and critics is at first exciting—and then invasive and strange. Aviva never wanted to be famous, or did she? Meanwhile, her evolving obsession with another iconic musician, gone too soon, might just help her make sense of things.

Fifteen-year-old Nina and her family are struggling to hold things together in the wake of the accidental death of her brother several years earlier. Seeking refuge in art, Nina's mother has painted a series of nude portraits of her remaining child. As these haunting images go public, Nina is forced to deal with her burgeoning sexuality in front of a large and critical audience.

Cape Morgan, Maine, is the utopian ideal for a charmed life, and Beatrice Wicker knows it. The multi-million-dollar house on the sea coast. The joint bank accounts. The safety and security that go along with being married to an esteemed architect and community leader. So what if her husband sneaks off to see his second family now and again? Beatrice is willing to look the other way. It’s simply the price she must pay to keep their life together. Josh doesn’t realize that Beatrice knows about his other life. That’s just one of Beatrice’s secrets.

French-born author Elena Mauli Shapiro vividly recreates Paris during World War I in this captivating novel. 13 Rue Thérèse follows Trevor Stratton, an American academic working in Paris who discovers a keepsake box dated back to the Great War. The box, Trevor discovers, belonged to a piano teacher named Louise Brunet. Inside it are mementos that give Trevor clues to Louise’s life, including the love she lost in the war and her affair with a neighbor. Mesmerized, Trevor begins to imagine what life was like for the mysterious Frenchwoman.

Liz Galin, an out-of-work fashion stylist, lives in a walk up studio apartment in Alphabet City in Manhattan. She has put her life on hold during COVID-19 to care for her mother going through chemo, and cannot see her boyfriend Cary as he is an emergency room doctor during the height of the pandemic. One Monday morning, she receives a cryptic letter from a Miami lawyer indicating that she should call his office. When she does, she and her mother Linda find out she has been bequeathed an asset in a will.

At Grace Memorial Hospital in Chicago, something is stirring. Patients are going AWOL and research subjects share the same sinister dreams. Half a century ago, something was buried under Grace in a terrible ritual, and it’s straining to be free. Jayné Heller is primed to take on whatever’s about to be let loose. Yet the greatest danger now may not be the huge, unseen force lurking below, but the evil that has been hiding in plain sight all along - taking her ever closer to losing her body, her mind, and her soul....

In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide.

In 11 captivating tales, Pure Hollywood & Other Stories brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic widowed actress living in desert seclusion, to a young mother whose rejection of her child has terrible consequences, a newlywed couple who ignore the violent warnings of a painter burned by love, to an eerie portrait of erotic obsession, each story in Pure Hollywood is an imagistic snapshot of what it means to live and learn, love and hurt.

Amelie and Janet are in love with the same man: Janet's husband. One knows it; the other doesn't. Or does she? As best-selling novelist Amelie Ferrar knows, an affair with a married person is like a work of fiction - a kind of spy story with its own rules, customs, and private rituals. But like any spy story, there will inevitably be a betrayal: something will slip; someone else will find out; someone may even die. As Amelie falls deeper into her obsession with the man she loves - and his wife - the twisted ending to this story is one that not even she could have seen coming....

After her girlfriend breaks up with her for being too emotionally stifled, Jo Miller is trying to become more expressive. But then her boss calls her into his office for a private meeting and sexually assaults her. His parting words are, “you won't want to talk about this Jo. You think you do now, but trust me, you won’t.” Jo had been ready to go straight to the police, but every time she tries to talk about what happened, live insects crawl up her throat and into her mouth.