Showing results by narrator "Eliza" in All Categories

No one could ask for a better present than a collection of Connie Willis Christmas tales. These are amazing stories, representing all the best of the Connie Willis experience: true Christmas gifts to her many fans. They are full of humor, absurdity, human foibles, tragedy, joy, and hope. They both send up and embrace many of the best Christmas traditions, such as the Christmas newsletter, Secret Santas, office parties, holiday pageants, and Christmas dinners (both elaborate and spare).

Lauren “Lo” Bowman is in a bit of a pickle. She needs money, like ASAP. She lost her job, the rent is due, and her car needs repairs. Problem is, the inheritance left to her by her old-fashioned Granny has one stipulation before she can collect: She has to be married. Let’s just say suitors (of any gender) are not knocking down her door. And then Cara Simms, her best friend from childhood that she’s recently reconnected with, pours her heart out and confesses that she needs money to pay for grad school. Lo has a completely brilliant idea.

Marcia is only twelve years old the first time she is sent to the orphanage with her older sister, Cynthia. With their father in a POW camp in Singapore, her mother is struggling to cope and hands them over to the nuns to be 'orphans of the living' - a harsh term for those children with living parents, whose families have abandoned them.

Can a house save the lives of the people who live in it? Can an inscription written in a book over 60 years ago change the fates of people not even born when it was written? Beryl Gray is solid and dependable - her partner, Claire, thinks so, her family thinks so, her colleagues think so. She has a job she likes as a university librarian. Her life seems settled, content - except nothing is as it seems. Aggie Bishop's last girlfriend left her three years ago and she hasn't had a date since. She now takes care of her great-aunt Cory who doesn't want to be taken care of.

He runs his own business and coaches Little League. She drives a minivan, and she'd be lost without her trusty BlackBerry. They go on date nights. Their kids attend public schools, play sports, and take music lessons. They live in a roomy house in the 'burbs. They're about as mainstream as families come. They're also polygamists. The Dargers move the conversation away from child brides, Warren Jeffs, and the FLDS to more mainstream polygamists who willingly enter into plural relationships as adults.

Mothers and daughters share, and want, a bond for life - one that can remain positive and grow stronger with each passing year. Sil and Eliza Reynolds have designed a set of tools to assist you in nurturing that bond. If you're locked in a clash of wills or fear the prospect of getting into one, with Mothering and Daughtering you can learn how to build the foundation for a deep and lasting relationship that is a source of support, joy, and love throughout your lives.

Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy was the incandescent life force of the fabled Kennedy family, her father's acknowledged "favorite of all the children" and her brother Jack's "psychological twin". She was the Kennedy of Kennedys, sure of her privilege, magnetically charming, and somehow not quite like anyone else on whatever stage she happened to grace.

Los Angeles has been besieged with relentless rain for weeks. There has been massive flooding, swift-water rescues, and an entire warehouse has collapsed from the weight of catastrophic rainfall, resulting in the death of six people. When medium Sam Firecloud is asked to connect with the only “witnesses”—the victims—he finds more questions than answers. He and his partner, Lacey Fitzpatrick, must take on the police, the insurance company and the architectural firm as they realize that things are not as they seem. Sam and Lacey aren’t experts in any of the associated fields, but they do know one thing—the dead don’t lie.

Madison James always felt different than other kids, finding herself left out and the target of bullies from an early age. But she was about to find out why, on her 18th birthday. Her life would never be the same again. Waking up in the middle of the night covered in dirt, she found footprints that led across her bedroom floor to an open window. She couldn't remember a thing, but these mysterious incidents kept happening. Finally, upon revealing these occurrences to her grandmother, she found out about her emerging powers as a wolf shifter.

In the heart of Paris, in the posh building made famous in The Elegance of Hedgehog, Pierre Athens, the greatest food critic in the world, is dying. Revered by some and reviled by many, Monsieur Arthens has been lording it over the world's most esteemed chefs for years, passing judgment on their creations, deciding their fates with a stroke of his pen, destroying and building reputations on a whim. But now, during these his final hours, his mind has turned to simpler things.

Chris Crowley, the memorable patient and coauthor of Younger Next Year, partners with Jen Sacheck, a nutritionist and exercise physiologist from Tufts University, and in lively, alternating chapters they spell out a weight-loss plan that will have readers lose up to 25 pounds in the first six months - and keep it off for life. The message is straightforward and based on the most up-to-date nutritional science.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Röschenberg has inherited a ghost train and its members of the undead are very lively! And it's a suspenseful time for our young Ghostsitter: Vlarad the vampire has consumed too much hamster blood and has now turned into one, and Wombie the Zombie's hundredth deathday is coming right up. But the ritual for celebrating Wombie's deathday is no easy task: It requires a voodoo dagger, a magic ring, and an enchanted cauldron, and if Tom and his undead friends don't perform the ritual in time, Wombie will turn to dust.

It is nine months after the end of the previous book. Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo's first-born child. Jin Li Tam, his wife and mother of his heir, lies in childbed. As the feast begins, the doors of the hall fly open and invisible assassins begin attacking. All of Rudolfo's noble guests are slain, including Hanric, the Marsh Queen's Shadow. And on the Keeper's Gate, which guards the Named Lands from the Churning Waste, a strange figure appears, with a message for Petronus, the Hidden Pope.

In the context of a clear and bracing legal history of accountability for sexual assault and the legal recognition of sexual harassment, Nussbaum confronts three "citadels of pride" - the judiciary, the arts, and sports. Exposing prideful privilege in the intellectual world, unpunished narcissism in the arts, and toxic masculinity and corruption in American sports, she discusses egregious cases of male entitlement leading to sexual abuse and exploitation.

Aggie and Betty decide to take a last-minute flight to Las Vegas for a girl's weekend. Since the Christmas holiday had left them exhausted, they thought a mini-vacation was just what they needed. Who knew the flight would be just as exhausting as the Christmas season?

Zoey Stranford might've had a crush on the sexy boy next door since middle school, but she's a woman now, and that crush has turned into a full-blown case of lust. So why is it that at twenty-nine her libido decides to ramp into high gear, making her only focus the intensely sexy, scorching hot boy next door - who is definitely not a boy anymore? The problem is, Zoey and Kaleb have been best friends for as long as she can remember.

Simple science text gives a close-up account of the fascinating world of the dung beetle. When an animal lightens its load, dung beetles race to the scene. They battle over, devour, hoard, and lay their eggs in the precious poop. Dung is food, drink, and fuel for new life - as crucial to these beetles as the beetles are to many habitats, including our own.

The gruesome murders of the beautiful and talented actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child, and four others that same night at the hands of the notorious “Manson family” rocked the nation. As one of the most horrific crimes in modern history, these atrocities, the trial, and the subsequent conviction of Charles Manson and his followers caused a media sensation, spawning movies, documentaries, and best-selling books, including the classic Helter Skelter.

Titus King sees the world in black and white, right and wrong. That is why, as a teenager, he left behind the only family he'd ever known to make a better life for himself. Now a police detective in one of the worst cities in the country, he can't deny his life has turned into a million different shades of gray.

How do you make a good first impression? Trial and error. College is supposed to be an exciting time, an opportunity to meet new friends and make lifelong relationships. However, Kaitlyn was never the social type. Talking to people has always been hard enough, not to mention romance. Getting transported into a dating sim seems like the perfect opportunity to change that.