Showing results by narrator "Julia Whelan" in All Categories

The first time violinist Julia Ansdell picked up the Incendio Waltz in a darkened antique shop in Rome, she knew it was a strikingly unusual composition. The minor key and complex feverish arpeggios have a life of their own. But when she plays the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her small daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence.

After the sickness known as the Doom destroyed civilization, magick has become commonplace, and Fallon Swift has spent her young years learning its ways. Fallon cannot live in peace until she frees those who have been preyed upon by the government or the fanatical Purity Warriors, endlessly hunted or locked up in laboratories, brutalized for years on end. She is determined to save even those who have been complicit with this evil out of fear or weakness - if, indeed, they can be saved.

Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter most - the ones that people will kill and die for - are ethnic, religious, sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to see the world in terms of nation-states engaged in great ideological battles - capitalism vs. communism, democracy vs. authoritarianism, the "free world" vs. the "axis of evil" - we are often spectacularly blind to the power of tribal politics. Time and again this blindness has undermined American foreign policy.

No matter what the world throws her way, at least Ruthie Beamish has the house. Lovingly renovated, located by the sea in a quiet Long Island village, the house is her nest egg - the retirement account shared with her ex-husband, Mike, and the college fund for their teenage daughter, Jem. The catch? To afford the house, Ruthie must let it go during the best part of the year. It's Memorial Day weekend, and Ruthie has packed up their belongings for what Jem calls "the summer bummer": the family's annual exodus to make way for renters.

Abridged edition: Fallon Swift, approaching her thirteenth birthday, barely knows the world that existed before - the city where her parents lived, now in ruins and reclaimed by nature since the Doom sickened and killed billions. Traveling anywhere is a danger, as vicious gangs of Raiders and fanatics called Purity Warriors search for their next victim. Those like Fallon, in possession of gifts, are hunted - and the time is coming when her true nature, her identity as The One, can no longer be hidden. In a mysterious shelter in the forest, her training is about to begin under the guidance of Mallick, whose skills have been honed over centuries.

After their mother’s probable suicide, Jazz and Olivia Moon struggle to move on with their lives. Olivia, an 18-year-old who can taste words and see sounds, blinds herself by staring at the sun, then decides to walk to the remote setting of her mother’s unfinished novel to resuscitate her hopes and dreams. Jazz, plagued by unresolved conflict with her mother and a hidden trove of her unsent letters, takes a job in a funeral home before being forced back into the role of her sister’s keeper.

Books seven and eight in Shannon Hale and Dean Hale's New York Times best-selling series take the Princess in Black on two of her biggest adventures yet!

Isabelle Scott and Mirabelle Monroe are still reeling from the revelation that they share more than just the roof over their heads. The media has pounced on their story and the girls are caught up in a flurry of talk-show appearances and newspaper interviews. They’ve put on a happy public face, but someone is leaking their true feelings to the press. While it seems like the world is watching their every move, at least they have each other. But with cotillion season right around the corner, Izzie and Mira have barely had time to process their newfound sisterhood.

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families - best friends and business partners - have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be - and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds.

Kat Dubois has been sidelined. With a single word from Heru - no - her plans to save humanity from the Cascade Virus one mortal at a time are put on hold indefinitely. But Kat's not willing to sit by, watching the world as she knows it crumble around her. While Heru awaits a miracle discovery that may never come, Kat shuns his orders and takes rogue action. Thanks to her trusty deck of tarot cards, she knows that at least the universe is on her side. Probably.

After a betrayal derailed her interior design career, Liz Bennet found a fresh start in New York. Now an executive assistant by day and stage kitten by night, she’s discovered a second home with the performers at Meryton, Manhattan’s top-tier burlesque venue. Love’s the last thing on her mind when she locks eyes with Will Darcy across the crowded club, yet the spark between them is undeniable - that is, until she overhears the uptight wealth manager call her merely “tolerable”.

Trashy-romance writer Gerri has it all - an overbearing family, a dead-end job, and no man but a ton of pressure to get married and have kids. Frustrated and hopeless that things will ever change, she decides it’s time to transition from “tragic loser” to “tragic loss”. Armed with a shoebox full of sleeping pills and a big bottle of vodka, she’s ready to end it all. First, she writes “honest” farewell notes to everyone she knows…

Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside a grim Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation: she becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in. All of them, like her, are lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives.

Tarset is accustomed to being the most famous woman on the planet. But the world is locked in a devastating war between humans and immortals, and her spotlight is fading. When she is inexplicably “killed” only to rematerialize in ancient Egypt, she is desperate to cross the vast chasm of time stretching out before her. Striving to keep a low profile to avoid causing a devastating butterfly effect, Tarset journeys across the harsh desert and befriends a handsome stranger who claims he can repair the damaged timeline.

For decades, the Hollander Estates winery has been the premier destination for lavish parties and romantic day trips on the North Fork of Long Island. But behind the lush vineyards and majestic estate house, the Hollander family fortunes have suffered and the threat of a sale brings old wounds to the surface. For matriarch Vivian, she fears that this summer season could be their last - and that selling their winery to strangers could expose a dark secret she's harbored for decades.

There was a time, not long ago, when all Zara wanted was to have Nick back. Rescuing him from Valhalla should have made all her problems disappear. He’s Bedford’s greatest warrior, not to mention Zara’s true soul mate. Except. Nick isn’t the person he used to be. And neither is Zara. She’s a warrior now, and a pixie queen. Astley’s queen. She has a plan to stop the evil pixies that are ravaging her town, and her ideas are not the same as Nick’s or Astley’s. One thing they can all agree on though: war is here.

Zara and Nick are soul mates, meant to be together forever. But that’s not how things have worked out. For starters, well, Nick is gone. He’s been taken to some mythic place for warriors called Valhalla, where Zara and her friends might be able to get him back. It’s just not going to be easy.

Out of nowhere Comanches attack, and sixteen year-old Jane narrowly survives the slaughter of her family and the kidnapping of her baby sister. Driven by grief and fury, she rides headlong into Indian territory, seeking vengeance. But the odds are stacked against a young girl on the trail, and Jane soon realizes she must disguise herself as a boy to join forces with a tough company of cowhands on a cattle drive to Dodge City.

The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage. One night in Waterloo, Iowa, with young policeman Virgil Holt watching from the audience, she swaps her trademark saw for a fire ax. Is it a new version of the illusion, or an all-too-real murder? When Arden's husband is found lifeless beneath the stage later that night, the answer seems clear.

Kat is on a mission, and the fate of the universe depends on whether or not she succeeds. She must journey into the heart of the underworld and track down Isfet before time runs out. Before the bonding withdrawals claim her bond-mate’s life and her ticket out of the afterlife vanishes. Before the Mother of All attacks. For once, luck is on Kat’s side. Some of her closest friends and most trusted allies have her back, even in the hereafter. But it doesn’t take Kat long to realize that the underworld is far more dangerous than she ever could have imagined....