Showing results by narrator "Taylor Meskimen" in All Categories

Two days after a megaquake and tsunami combine to wreak havoc on the Pacific Northwest, Clint and his daughter are together at last. Instead of retreating to safety, they're on a one-way mission into the heart of the disaster. Chaos on the streets, impassable routes, and the worst of human nature combine to thwart them at every turn. But Mika's mom is missing, and they won't stop until they find her.

Audrey St. Vrain has grown up in the shadow of someone who doesn’t actually exist. Before she was born, her mother, Camilla St. Vrain, wrote the bestselling book Letters to My Someday Daughter, a guide to self-love that advises treating yourself like you would your own hypothetical future daughter. The book made Audrey’s mother a household name, and she built an empire around it. While the world considers Audrey lucky to have Camilla for a mother, the truth is that Audrey knows a different side of being the someday daughter.

Twelve-year-old Olivia Hales has a foolproof plan for winning a million dollars so that she and her little sister, Berkeley, can leave behind Sunny Pines Trailer Park. But first she has to: Fix the swamp cooler and make dinner and put Berkeley to bed because her mom is too busy to do all that. Write another letter to her dad even though he hasn't written back yet. Teach Berk the important stuff, like how to make chalk drawings, because they can't afford day care and Olivia has to stay home from school to watch her.

When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Mari is desperate to avoid being caught up in the foster system. Again. And to complicate matters, she is now the only one who can take care of her super-smart and on-the-spectrum nine-year-old stepbrother, Conor. Is there anyone Mari can trust to help them? Certainly not her mother’s current boyfriend, Dennis. Not the doctors or her teachers, who would be obliged to call in social services. So in a desperate move, Mari takes Conor and sets out to find their estranged grandmother.

When Lena's younger sister Fressa is found dead, their whole Viking clan mourns—but it is Lena alone who never recovers. Fressa is the sister that should've lived, and Lena cannot rest until she knows exactly what killed Fressa and why—and how to bring her back. She strikes a dark deal with Hela, the Norse goddess of death, and begins a new double life to save her sister.

When rogue drones threaten citizens and the ship’s crew falls ill, the Recorder answers their call for help, once again drawing scrutiny from the Consortium. With no other option and under an Elder’s overbearing watch, she returns to Pallas Station where she nearly lost her life in the hope of finding something—anything—to save her friends and countless others. Her friends are determined to keep her safe, but for the Recorder, saving others comes first, no matter the cost.

Four girls are forced to spend the summer together when their moms reunite at their childhood lake house. Always-sunny Skyler is a softball star who’s hiding how bad her joint pain has gotten. Always-stormy Scarlett, Skyler’s twin, would much rather be hanging out with her boyfriend back home. Amelia Grace just wants to escape her conservative stepdad after he caught her kissing a girl. And homeschooled social-media star Ellie is just excited at the chance to make some friends IRL.

Spring break...heartache? For coder extraordinaire Ashley, high school is all about prepping for college. Her love life? Virtually nonexistent. She's never been on a date. Never been kissed. Never been in love. When her plans veer off course, Ashley realizes she might be missing out on her high school experience. Now that spring break is finally here, Ashley vows to have fun...and, for the first time, follow her heart.

Being recruited by the CIA to join a top-secret intelligence program should be the opportunity of a lifetime. For Issa, it's a shot at creating a new and better life for herself and her siblings. For clever con artist Harper, it's a chance to bury the secrets of her troubled past and make sure those secrets stay buried. But for Owen - honor student, star quarterback, and computer-hacking genius - it sounds like a trap. He's right. They've all been tricked by a multibillion-dollar tech company into creating the ultimate computer virus.

On the eve of the Occupy Wall Street protests, C is flat broke. Once a renowned textile artist, she’s now the sole proprietor of an arts supply store in Lower Manhattan. Divorced, alone, at loose ends, C is stuck with a struggling business, a stack of bills, a new erotic interest in her oldest girlfriend, and a persistent hallucination in the form of a rogue garden gnome with a pointed interest in systems collapse. Replaying recent history through a distorting glass, The Visitors charts the last days of a broken status quo as the path is cleared for something new.

We wait in lines around the block for scoops of cookie dough. We photograph every meal. We visit selfie performance spaces and leave lucrative jobs to become farmers and craft brewers. Why? What are we really hungry for? In Hungry, Eve Turow-Paul provides a guided tour through the stranger corners of today's global food and lifestyle culture. How are 21st-century innovations and pressures are redefining people's needs and desires? How does "foodie" culture, along with other lifestyle trends, provide an answer to our rising rates of stress, loneliness, anxiety, and depression?

On Mintari, dinosaurs live again. Brontosaurs roam the forests. Mosasaurs haunt the deep blue seas. Tyrannosaurs prowl the plains. Life thrives. Yet life is also fragile. Amissa Triplehorn, a deadly huntress, leads an army of poachers. They sweep across Mintari, armed with modern weapons. Burning. Killing. Mintari bleeds. Only one man can stop Amissa: her brother. Joe Triplehorn is a Mintari Ranger. He vowed to defend the dinosaurs. To kill poachers. But could he truly kill his own sister?

Calista, Zoe, Holly, and Denise were inseparable best friends when they spent their summers together at sleepaway camp. But after an unexplained tragedy forced the camp to close, the girls drifted apart.

Some doors were never meant to be opened. Some tales were never meant to be set free. When seventeen-year-old Sahara O’Saughnessy discovers a rift into the realm of lore, the most haunting stories she’s been telling her friends come to life, and she must find a way to stop them before they tear her world apart.

Time is running out. Cities are being engulfed in the Mist and humanity is on the brink of extinction. Theo believes he has found a way to stop mankind from Turning, but he doesn’t know how to alter Cass’s unique blood into a cure. Or if it can even be done. Meanwhile, Cass struggles with the idea that she is possibly the savior of the world—a world she is not sure is worth saving. From the Winchester manse to the steel city of Decadenn, there is something more chasing Cass than the House of Lords or the masked man who can walk in the Mist.

When everyone else goes to bed, the ones who stay up feel like they’re the only people in the world. As the hours tick by deeper into the night, the familiar drops away and the unfamiliar beckons. Adults are asleep, and a hush falls over the hum of daily life. Anything is possible.

Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past. Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life.

Nora and Sophie Linden may be sisters, but they're not friends. Not since the party last month. Not since the night Sophie's boyfriend, Garrett, disappeared. Half the town thinks Garrett is dead, the other half believes he ran away, but Sophie knows something no one else does -- Garrett left that party with Nora. And straight-A, Ivy-league-bound Nora had never been to a single party before that night.

Long ago, a brave little girl named Anja wanted to be one of Santa's elves. So she leaves a note for her family and helps her elderly neighbor prepare for the holiday, then she straps on her skis, and heads out into the snowy landscape. From a red bird to a polar bear to a reindeer, a menagerie of winter animals help Anja make her way to Santa.

When Florence Nightingale decided as a teenager that she wanted to become a nurse, her parents tried to talk her out of it, claiming that it wasn't a suitable profession for a woman. But she persisted in her career and went on to save countless lives of patients, especially of soldiers. Known as "The Lady with the Lamp," she is widely considered to be the founder of modern nursing. In this chapter book biography by critically acclaimed author Shelli R. Johannes, listeners learn about the amazing life of Florence Nightingale—and how she persisted.