Showing results by narrator "Jesse Vilinsky" in All Categories

There were warning signs that the molasses tank would break. The steel sides moaned and groaned. Molasses oozed from its seams. But the people of Boston's North End - mostly poor immigrants - were powerless to complain to the big molasses company. On a bright January day in 1919, the tank finally broke and almost three million gallons of molasses rushed the neighborhood. At 15 feet tall, 160 feet wide, and traveling at 35 miles per hour, the gooey wave was more destructive than any flood of water would have been.

Most nights, you’ll find Alison Hunter at The Venue, the kind of sweaty Nashville spot that’s on the circuit for bands like Bon Iver and Death Cab. Sounds glamorous—but not for Al, who stamps hands at the door with Julien, the quiet coworker who treats her like a little sister. When she can sneak off, she bums drinks from the tattooed bartender and watches the bands, wondering if she’ll ever finish a song of her own after her disastrous attempt to play in public.

Fifty-something Dan is struggling to cope with a mid-life career change. MBA-educated wife and mother Jen has dealt with life’s disappointments by becoming a closet alcoholic. Seventeen-year-old Chloe is obsessing about getting into the right university and her state tennis semifinals. Fourteen-year-old Max is trying to figure out when he can next sneak a puff on his beloved vape and plotting revenge on the school bully.

When nineteen-year-old Avery awakens to flames consuming her family's remote compound, she knows it's her only chance to escape her father's grueling survival training, bizarre rules, and gruesome punishments. She and her brother Cole flee the grounds for the first time in their lives, suddenly homeless in a world they know nothing about. After months of hiding out, they are arrested for shoplifting and a shocking discovery is made—Avery and Cole were kidnapped fifteen years earlier, stolen by cult leaders they knew as Mom and Dad.

While Stavros moves to take over Lars’s throne, the war for the entire kingdom begins. However, this is no ordinary war against Seelie or Unseelie. The real enemy is the most powerful object in the world: The Stone of Fail. Lars isn’t the only one the stone wants. Zoey Daniels is next on its list. And the stone will do whatever it takes to finally get the girl. With a battle on all sides and lives of those they love threatened, fae, humans, Druids, pixies, and a certain sprite-monkey will have to come together to save the true King, along with the world, from destruction.

It’s the first week of senior year at Meadowbrook Academy. For Amy and her best friend Sarah, that means late-night parties at the boathouse, bike rides through their sleepy Connecticut town, and the crisp beginning of a New England fall. Then tragedy strikes: Sarah and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in their dorm room. Now the week Amy has been dreaming about for years has turned into a nightmare, especially when all eyes turn to her as the culprit.

Alyson is a romantic, and sometimes it gets her into trouble. Like last summer, she thought her co-worker was into her, when in reality he found her flirting pathetic. Then she meets Brenton Riggs Jr., and right away she knows that their connection isn’t just in her head. When he swoops in to save her one night from a less than savory party encounter, she falls head-over-heels. Finally, someone Alyson likes who likes her back!

Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now, at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother. That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgängers from parallel universes.

The Teen Killers Club is on the brink of destruction, with one faction pitted against another in a deadly game of survival. Erik and Signal are part of the group who’ve had their “kill switches” disabled, and the others are under orders to hunt them down—or meet their own demise. Erik and Signal have to find a way to neutralize the others’ switches and clear Signal's name—in the middle of a manhunt that is going viral and turning them into an internet-age Bonnie and Clyde. As if being hunted wasn’t enough, Erik is determined to get Signal to admit that she loves him.

Jane is the only person left on the planet, minding the only business left: a gift shop. She wasn’t born on Earth, but her ancestors were; they lived there before the AI in charge of geoengineering failed and the oceans got too hot to sustain the terrestrial food web and before humans took off to colonize other planets. She’s heading to college on Jupiter in the fall of 3020, so her days on the home planet—selling “American Epoch” postcards, “History: The Poster!” and “War: The Soundtrack” to tourists from the suburbs of Europa—are numbered.

A keenly perceptive coming-of-age novel set at a prestigious New England prep school, as nine young women navigate their ambitions, friendships, and fears against the backdrop of a scandal the administration wants silenced. An all-girls boarding school in a hilly corner of Connecticut, Atwater is a haven for progressive thinking and feminist intellectuals. The students are smart, driven and worldly; they are also teenagers, learning to find their way.

I know my brother is dead. But sometimes Mama gets confused. There’s plenty about the grownup world that six-year-old Aoife doesn’t understand. Like what happened to her big brother Theo and why her mama is in the hospital instead of home where she belongs. Uncle Donny says she just needs to be patient, but Aoife’s sure her mama won’t be able to come home until Aoife learns what really happened to her brother. The trouble is no one wants to talk about Theo because he was murdered. But by whom?

Book two of the Spyglass Sisterhood finds Ellie, Rachel, Kiara, and Alyssa back for another adventure. When the spyglass reveals an image of Rachel walking a dog, she knows it's pure fantasy. Her overprotective moms would never let her walk a dog alone, much less own one! To the dismay of her Spyglass Sisters, Rachel would rather avoid the whole thing altogether. However, she can't avoid it for long when a lost dog follows her home.

Liv becomes involved in the investigation of the murder of Jill Brannigan, a summer intern at the limestone mine Liv manages near Fort Collins, Colorado. In doing so, she inadvertently puts her friends, her family, and herself at risk of being swallowed in the belly of a madman bloated with perverse appetites for women, surrealistic art, and renown. Perhaps a bit too daring (and at times irreverent) for her own good, “Boots,” as Liv’s eight siblings call her, soon realizes she has a knack for outsmarting and tracking down the Venus de Milo murderer - and she enjoys it!

In Gustav Gloom and the Nightmare Vault, Fernie and Gustav find themselves battling another shadowy foe - The Shadow Eater. He is after one thing, The Nightmare Vault, which his master, the evil Lord Obsidian, will use to unleash the most terrifying and threatening shadows into the world. As Fernie and Gustav race to stop the Shadow Eater, Fernie learns about Gustav's mysterious past and just what happened to his missing parents.

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others. With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.

The witch Quin Schumacher ekes out a living as the crotchety colosseum combat critic for the Daily Stardust newspaper. Complicating her job is Fergus, the former Death Lord of Jocrom. Fortunately, Quin already turned him into an ostrich. On their way to the dilapidated city of Queensworth to see heads roll in the local arena, Quin finds a note in a dead man's pocket. Written in blood, it hints towards a nefarious conspiracy linking a gladiator to one of Quin's fellow witches, all of whom are compelled to serve Her Majesty Queen Siobhan the Third.

We all want to experience great joy, peace, and love in our lives. We all want to find our true purpose and live an abundant life. But to do that, we have to first ask ourselves a few questions and get to know someone who we might be unconsciously allowing to drive our lives: our younger selves.

July 1985. It’s a normal, sweltering New Jersey summer for soon-to-be seventh grader Bee Kocsis. Her thoughts center only on sunny days spent at Deer Chase Lake, on evenings chasing fireflies around her cul-de-sac with the neighborhood kids, and on Max, the boy who just moved in across the street. There's also the burgeoning worry that she'll never be as special as her younger sister, Audrina, who seems to effortlessly dazzle wherever she goes.

Millie has one goal: to make a movie in tribute to her late father. At the Manhattan Movie Academy, run by Ricky O’Naire, her favorite director, she’s determined to make it happen. But before she can finish her project, the academy is shut down. Six months later, she sees a preview for the new O’Naire movie—and he’s stolen her idea. Outraged, she reunites her former film crew to steal the movie and hold it for ransom days before its high-profile premiere. Putting their training and film-nerd backgrounds to use, they pull off the heist in extravagant fashion.