Showing results by narrator "Amy McFadden" in All Categories

It's a piece of news Daphne never expected to hear: Her globe-trotting friend Skylar, who vowed never to get married, is engaged! Time to celebrate in Manhattan - Skylar's treat, of course. After years scaling the corporate ladder, she can more than afford it. Daphne arrives in NYC with news of her own - the novel she's finally finished appears to be going nowhere but the trash bin of every publishing house around. She's devastated, but plans to keep her disappointment under wraps.

Rasha is a Syrian refugee fleeing war with her infant son. Sahira is a time-traveling, shapeshifting hijabi defender of humanity. In a distant future when all humanity flees a predatory and unexpected horror, Rasha's choices at a critical moment could make the difference between extinction and refuge - if Sahira can get her safely to that day. This riveting addition to the Ansible saga takes you from the dust and despair of bombed-out cities and poisoned land to the weird apparitions that can transform a planet's future.

With their reality TV series Antiques Sleuths, Brandy Borne and her quaintly kooky mother, Vivian, have a real hit on their hands. But when another hit enters the picture, Brandy's implicated for the crime. With Brandy now wearing basic jailhouse orange, Vivian must largely investigate alone, sorting through a rogue's gallery of suspects that includes a too-friendly farmer's wife, a ratings-happy TV producer, a questionable husband-and-wife auctioneer team, and even the chief of police himself!

Living the food allergy life and having a kid who can't have dairy, tree nuts, peanuts, or soy is not easy. And neither is worrying about accommodating all the food requirements at a play date. From avoiding major food allergens and respecting food preferences like vegetarian or vegan to being aware of religious practices like keeping kosher, making a simple snack resembles navigating a minefield. Thankfully, Bake Sales Are My B*tch is here to help.

Priscilla Slater goes to her 10-year high school reunion with equal parts dread and eager anticipation. Even though she's a successful owner of a chain of hair salons and no longer has the mousy brown hair, crooked teeth, and a discount-store wardrobe, she still feels like the ugly duckling. But when she arrives at the reunion, Priscilla soon realizes that her old classmates aren't exactly as she remembers them.

Since 2001, the Gallup Management Journal has provided leaders with essential insights into managing the human side of their businesses - their employees and customers. This book features the highlights of the first seven years of the GMJ: more than 50 thought-provoking articles with actionable ideas, grounded in decades of Gallup management research.

Decade of Change features insights and wisdom into how to manage, and make the most of, change. Vinton Cerf, co-creator of the Internet, peers into the Web's future. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman probes the nature of decision making. Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, the Hurricane Katrina hero, offers leadership lessons he applied in that crisis. Visionary executive Ray Anderson makes a powerful business case for environmental sustainability.

The previous Ansibles found themselves marooned, but Zahid, last survivor of Ansible 15718, commands an interstellar fleet, and Sahira, the psionic savant we meet in Ansible: Night Land and Ansible: Strike Force, will take the battle to the pneumavores, humanity's fiercest predators.

Navy SEAL Brody Hawke gets a letter from his father - who died when Brody was three. Not only is Giancarlo Hawke alive, he begs his son to come to California. He believes he's in grave danger and warns Brody to trust no one. Taped to the back of the letter is a photo of a man who's a dead ringer for Brody - the twin brother he never knew existed. Victoria Anderson thinks she's found an ideal partner in loyal, levelheaded vintner Elliott Hawke. But then his father dies under suspicious circumstances, and she meets the brother who was separated from Elliott.

For Patricia Curren, the summer of 1978 begins with a devastating discovery: an unfamiliar black pearl button in the bed she shares with her controlling husband, Jack. Seeking the courage to end her desolate marriage, Patricia spends a quiet summer alone on beautiful Kiawah Island. But when she meets Terry Sloan, a collegiate tennis player trying to go pro, their physical attraction sparks a slow burn toward obsession.

Bex has always been her daddy's little girl. After her mother left, it was just the two of them. Sure, he spoiled her with clothes and jewelry, but what father doesn't dote on his daughter? Except Bex's dad is alleged to be a notorious serial killer. Dubbed the Wife Collector by the press, her father disappeared before he could stand trial, and Bex was left to deal with the taunts and rumors. Foster care is her one chance at starting over, starting fresh. But Bex's old life isn't ready to let her go.

Marked for sacrifice by her own father, a young woman flees to the hills, knowing her father may appear with his stone blade at any time to claim her - while the unburied dead of her people also hunt her in the low ravines. Guided by the memory of how her mother stood bravely against the dead, Jepthah's daughter begins her long flight in the dark.

Marooned in an alien body on an alien world. It is the 25th century. The planet's most ambitious project is Starmind, an Islamic research institute that transfers the minds of volunteers, called Ansibles, across gulfs of space and time to make first contact with other sentient beings in the universe. Each of the Ansible stories follows one team of brave minds across the void. These are their reports, their transcripts, the only accounts of what they have found.

On a far future space station, once each year, nano-engineered young women run genetically engineered tyrannosaurs in a race as brutal and bloody as any witnessed in the Roman Circus 3,000 years before. Egret thinks she is ready for this day. She has been brainwashed for it, trained for it, shaped and reshaped into a sacrificial model of beauty for the entertainment of millions. Her world is one of strict regimen and fierce competition, one in which others can only be competitors or worshippers, never friends.

When Jesse Graham unlocks the door to the deserted house she inherited from her Aunt Helen, she doesn't realize she's unlocking secrets that had lain dormant for years. Reeling from a broken engagement to acclaimed musician Robert Cronmiller, Jesse wants to leave the city where her name is linked to his in all the society pages. Her best friend, Maggie, aka Sister Angelina, convinces her to take a job at a private girls school in the pastoral Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

Liz McGinnis never imagined herself living in a luxurious gated community like The Palms. Ever since she and her family moved in, she's felt like an outsider amongst the Stepford-like wives and their obnoxiously spoiled children. Still, she's determined to make it work - if not for herself, then for her husband, Phil, who landed them this lavish home in the first place, and for her daughter, Danielle, who's about to enter high school.

Brimming with life and unforgettable voices, the stories in Austin Bunn's dazzling collection explore the existential question: what happens at the end, and what lies beyond it? In the wry but affecting "How to Win an Unwinnable War", a summer class on nuclear war for gifted teenagers turns a struggling family upside down. A young couple's idyllic beach honeymoon is interrupted by terrorism in the lush, haunting "Getting There and Away".

Can the misfortunes of one woman's ancestors give her the strength to fight for her freedom? When Alice inherits a wooden chest from her deceased mother, she suddenly finds herself swept away by the devastating stories contained within.

A powerful story about a mother struggling to keep her family together amid unsettling events: the family dog goes missing, her teenage daughter has become increasingly rebellious, and a bloated, unidentifiable animal corpse washes up on the local beach. As her two younger children hang up missing dog posters around the neighborhood, she discovers that a class ring identical to one worn by her old flame was found in the mysterious creature, and now the local news and her children are beginning to ask questions.

Duncan Flynn long ago said goodbye to his hometown of Bayberry Island, Massachusetts, where a mermaid statue allegedly grants true love to the pure at heart. So when the injured Navy SEAL gets sent home - just in time to help his family prepare for the annual Mermaid Festival - he's not in the mood to celebrate. Nor fall in love. But during a night run on the beach, a magnificently naked woman emerges from the surf who bears an uncanny resemblance to the mermaid in Fountain Square.