Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life.

Tina Chen just wants a degree and a job, so her parents never have to worry about making rent again. She has no time for Blake Reynolds, the sexy billionaire who stands to inherit Cyclone Systems. But when he makes an offhand comment about what it means to be poor, she loses her cool and tells him he couldn't last a month living her life.

In The Buzz Kill by Kevin Hearne, Oberon the Irish wolfhound, and Starbuck the Boston Terrier sink their teeth into a new Meaty Mystery when they discover a body underneath a beehive in Tasmania. It’s been badly stung, but the bees aren’t at fault: This is homicide. The hounds recruit the help of their Druid, Atticus O’Sullivan, and the Tasmanian police to track down the killer in the interest of a reward - but this time, they want more than food, and justice.

When Iola Anne Poole, an old-timer on Hatteras Island, passes away in her bed at ninety-one, the struggling young mother in her rental cottage, Tandi Jo Reese, finds herself charged with the task of cleaning out the rambling Victorian house. Running from a messy, dangerous past, Tandi never expects to find more than a temporary hiding place within Iola's walls, but everything changes with the discovery of eighty-one carefully decorated prayer boxes, one for each year, dating from Iola's youth to her last days.

Because Plath drew so heavily on her own life in both her poetry and her fiction, the outlines of her life are familiar to listeners. Like most writers, Plath changed the facts of her life in her writing. In her determination to be both wife and mother, on the one hand, and teacher and writer on the other, Plath tried simultaneously to fulfill and to fight the conventions that bound women in the 1950s. In this biography, the first to draw on unpublished journals and letters recently made available, Wagner-Martin examines the ironies, contradictions, and achievements of Plath's life.

Barnes's career began long before Nightwood, with journalism, essays, drama, and satire of extraordinary wit and courage. Long into her later life, after World War II, when she published nothing more, it was her short fiction above all that she prized and would continue to revise.

Prosecutor Jessie Black has an airtight case against Tyrone Nash, a gang thug who shot a man behind a bar in West Philly. But what should be an easy trial turns complicated when Nash somehow intimidates her eyewitness, and he recants his testimony on the eve of the trial. Now Jessie's only move to stop the killer from walking is to call a witness she had hoped to avoid - Reggie Tuck, a smooth-talking jailhouse snitch who claims Nash confessed to him during a short time they shared a cell.

Fifteen years ago, Alice Hoffman received a diagnosis that changed everything about the life she'd been living. Most significant - aside from the grueling physical ordeal she underwent - was the way it changed how she felt inside and what she thought she ought to be doing with her days. Now she has written the book that she needed to read then. In this honest, wise, and upbeat guide, Alice Hoffman provides a road map for the making of one's life into the very best it can be.

Pen Yas ben Min's cousin was one of the legendary heroes of the wars against the giants until her untimely death. Pen has grown up in her famous cousin's shadow, but when she's given a quest to plant the seed of the magical Fourth Tree, she has a chance to step into the light - and usher in a new age for her country.

Journalist Kate Aitken leaves New York for a fresh start in California and a new job: as an archivist for the estate of famed photographer Miranda Brand, who died mysteriously some decades earlier. Miranda’s son, Theo, has returned to the family home after his father’s death, and needs Kate to organise his mother’s work and the mess of her personal effects. The further Kate digs into the material, the more a picture begins to emerge of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood and marriage.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

As time has passed, Dr. Renee Caisson has begun to see the demonic, alien August as more than a research subject or an unlikely colleague—they’ve become friends. And together, she and August have helped the two societies of Nextdoor and Earth through the confusion of first contact, the danger of misunderstandings, and the anger of mistreatment. But when a popular blogger and conspiracy theorist twists August’s words, an uproar ensues, turning a powerful section of human society against the Neighbors—and resulting in Renee’s house arrest.

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement of Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster. As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before—and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise.

Grayson Ford and Emma Kinglsey - close since they were kids, opposites in every way. He's the stuff high school crushes are made of, Mister Popular, and captain of every team. She's artsy, cute, and not in his league, though fully aware of Summerland's "I Dream of Dating Grayson Ford" support group.

Jordan Cullen is a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She invites her grandmother and best friend, Ellie, to visit for Parents' Weekend and meet her favorite professor and adviser, Dr. Hay. Ellie never imagined that Dr. Hay is none other than Jean Hay, her former flame, and first love. Ellie left many things unsaid when they parted, leaving Jean to mend the pieces of a broken heart. Fifty-four years later, the two stand in front of each other, feeling mixed emotions.

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security.

Alone and on the run, betrayed at every turn, Jenna's path takes her from sun-drenched Key West to the alligator-infested Everglades, the streets of Miami, and the Caribbean islands. Along the way brutal criminals, deadly assassins, and the forces of nature conspire to end her life unless she can rise to embrace an impossible destiny and unleash her own lethal potential. Everything Jenna has been told about herself is a lie, and the truth is a secret that may destroy the world--or save it.

When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists' retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor's dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a "waiting room for death". After years of covering murder and violence as a crime reporter, Eleanor hopes that being around artists and writers in this new job will be a peaceful retreat for her as much as for them.

The Empress almost has control of the world she was promised and soon her enemies will not be able to thwart her. There is just one man keeping her from her prize: Kaiyer.

In the tourist town of Wharton, on the coast of Lake Superior, Tess Bell is renovating her old family home into a bed-and-breakfast during the icy dead of winter… As the house’s restoration commences, a shuttered art studio is revealed. Inside are paintings Tess’s late grandfather, beloved and celebrated artist Sebastian Bell, hid away for generations. But these appear to be the works of a twisted mind, almost unrecognizable as paintings she and others familiar with his art would expect.