Showing results by narrator "Jesse Vilinsky" in All Categories

Hearts and loyalties collide in this electrifying new YA series from best-selling author Jennifer A. Nielsen. Nothing is as it seems in the kingdom of Antora. Kestra Dallisor has spent three years in exile in the Lava Fields, but that won't stop her from being drawn back into her father's palace politics. He's the right-hand man of the cruel king, Lord Endrick, which makes Kestra a valuable bargaining chip. A group of rebels knows this all too well - and they snatch Kestra from her carriage as she reluctantly travels home. But Kestra is not the obedient captive they expected.

When Amy moves to Manhattan and starts her dream job at a top advertising agency, she thinks she’s found a perfect new life. But someone is watching her. This mysterious “best friend” sends her creepy text messages…and murders coworkers who stand in her way. As the body count rises, the brutal crimes threaten to expose the deadly secrets of her past. Amy finds an unlikely ally in a handsome executive, but can she trust him, or is he just a pawn in the killer's lethal game?

Vampires and merpeople, angels and demons—the stories in this anthology imagine worlds where the only thing more powerful than the supernatural, is love. A girl in a graveyard goes on an unexpected date, a shipwrecked sailor makes a connection on a forbidden island, a piano melody summons a soul mate. Creatures of folktales and legend, of land and sea, of centuries past and life after life, all wrapped into one spellbinding compendium. Once you sink into its story, it’ll never let you go.

Rhett Gallagher’s adventurous life is imploding. Just as she turns the big 4-0, her long-term relationship collapses and her gran’s death draws her back to the family farm. The only silver lining is that Rhett’s inspirational book, The Modern Pioneer Girl’s Guide to Life—written under a pseudonym—has become a wild success, so much so that when her big publicity moment comes, self-doubting Rhett panics and persuades her best friend, Jasmine, to step into the limelight in her stead.

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.

Sylvi Quine, the best rig driver on Layce, has braved the dangers of the Shiv Road to save her friend and learned the truth of her power over Winter. Now, she’s joined the rebels working to take down the Majority. Her magic could change the course of their fight, and she agrees to meet the king of Paradyia to offer an exchange: the healing powers of the Pool of Begynd for his army.

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?

When fourteen-year-old Dorea endured the trial of Mother's Wrath, she hoped to be the recipient of one of its three elemental powers: water, lightning, or wind. To her surprise, she was the first in her village to be gifted all three, making her the most powerful mage of her generation. But outside peaceful Whitecliff, the winds of war are blowing once again.

With that terrifying message, Jo and her family learned the truth: They are trapped forever on Tau Ceti e. But the planet’s current occupants - the Sorrow - are not interested in sharing. The fragile peace Jo negotiated abruptly shatters, and soon a bloody battle is raging between the Sorrow and the Pioneers. As tensions rise, the survival of everyone Jo cares for seems less likely by the second.

What Elisa, Lucia, and Alice see–and judge–of each other from the outside is drastically different from how each girl feels inside. They attend the same classes in the same New York City middle school, but no one knows that Elisa is trying to navigate the bewildering asylum process having just arrived from El Salvador; or that Lucia, who also speaks Spanish and brims with self-confidence, is caught in the middle of her parents’ heartbreaking divorce; or that Alice, who appears to be a rebel in combat boots, carries the burden of her mother’s progressing cancer.

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.

Twelve-year-old Melanie has been in foster care her whole life, moving from home to home—unloved and unwanted. And although she has found relative contentment with her current foster parents, Melanie harbors a secret that, if discovered, would blow her world apart. Someone talks to Melanie, a presence no one else can see or hear, and this presence has a message for her: Something bad is about to happen.

Andi Wyndham has been able to communicate with spirits since she was a kid. When a bone pendant carved into the likeness of a girl’s face calls to her at a gem show in Pennsylvania, she can’t resist buying it and a sister piece. When she discovers the girls are missing runaways and the pendants made of human bone, Andi is drawn into a mystery that will force her to confront her gifts, her guilt, and the ghosts haunting her.

Alex Walker has always looked up to her perfect older sister. Maddie has succeeded in all the ways Alex has not: She escaped their hometown and seems to have put the memories of their unstable childhood behind her. But despite the different paths their lives have taken, the two sisters made a pact to spend one week together every summer. It was a promise they’d never broken . . . until now.

Scoring an invitation for membership to the exclusive Legacy Club in New York City is more than an honor. It gives you a lifetime of access to power and wealth beyond any prep school doors and guaranteed safety and security. So it’s not surprising when Excelsior Prep seniors Bernie Kaplan, Isobel Rothcroft, and Skyler Hawkins are nominated as Legacies; their family pedigrees have assured their membership since birth—even if they're all keeping secrets that could destroy their reputations. But scholarship kid from Queens Tori Tasso? She’s a surprise nominee.

Samantha and her best friend Elissa don't follow the rules, stealing drinks, pulling pranks, and having boys over in Samantha's basement. Until Elissa is sent away, to a school designed to reform wealthy, wayward teenagers. A year later, she is dead. In Samantha's grief, she scours Elissa's social media pages and notices memorial messages from two girls called Alyssa and Alissa. Both sign off their messages with 'Save Our Souls' - a phrase that Elissa had tattooed on her ribs. Samantha learns that they were Elissa's closest friends at the school, but too soon, Alyssa and Alissa are also dead.

For years Mamie Künstler, ninety-three-years-old, as clever and glamorous as ever, has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California, with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City. Like many a twenty-something, he has come to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the global pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight.

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.

Samantha and Rachel used to be friends. But then Rachel betrayed Samantha...and Samantha decided to make her life a living nightmare. Then one day, Sam and Rachel found themselves in a fight by a lake. Samantha pushed Rachel...and watched as Rachel fell back. And back. Into the water. And gone. No way to save her. No way she could be alive. The next day, Rachel shows up to school as if nothing happened. And now she's the one who wants to make her former friend's life a living nightmare....

Former actress Becca Ransom lived her dream in Hollywood for seven years before returning to her hometown of Larch Haven, known as the Venice of North America. The Vermont town has canals instead of roads, gondolas instead of cars, and charming cottages plucked from the pages of a fairy tale. It’s also where Becca is pursuing her newest passion as a chocolatier at True Confections, the chocolate shop owned by her grandparents, Lolly and Pops.