Showing results by narrator "Tavia Gilbert" in All Categories

Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new - new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her devoted father. Overwhelmed by her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words in to the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class?

After a near-fatal family catastrophe and an unexpected romantic upheaval, Adelaide Buchwald finds herself catapulted into a summer of wild possibility, during which she will fall in and out of love a thousand times—while finally confronting the secrets she keeps, her ideas about love, and the weird grandiosity of the human mind.

In the mid-'60s, Helen Gurley Brown, author of the groundbreaking Sex and the Single Girl, took over the ailing Cosmopolitan magazine and revamped it into one of the most successful brands in the world. At a time when magazines taught housewives how to make the perfect casserole, Helen reimagined Cosmo and womanhood itself, championing the independent, ambitious, man-loving single woman.

Lo Gunderson feels trapped in her small midwestern hometown until she sees an ad for a free car in the local paper. To maintain her staunch anticapitalist values, she refuses to spend money on what she can find for free, so this car is the perfect ticket out of the town. Though it doesn’t cost any money, it still comes with a price. Blanche Peterson is dying and asks for a single favor—that Lo track down her estranged son, whom Blanche hasn’t seen in over a decade. But before she can decide whether to fulfill Blanche’s dying wish, she needs to get the car started.

In February of 2009, Shannon and Paul Morell were especially eager to bring a new life into the world. After years of infertility and miscarriages, they had, in 2006, finally scrimped and saved enough to have in vitro-fertilization. The result? Two dear daughters had been born, and six precious embryos had been frozen. They counted the days until they could transfer the six remaining embryos. But then the clinic called....

Lizzie Brown is about to have the destination wedding of her dreams. But as this former preschool teacher knows, being a demon slayer makes everything more complicated. The vengeful Earl of Hell is on her tail. And now it seems one of the guests at the eccentric, seaside mansion is possessed and trying to kill her. Maybe she should just elope. The groom, studly shape-shifting griffin Dimitri Kallinikos, vows to protect her at all costs.

For high-school senior Celeste Watkins, every day is a brutal test of bravery. And Celeste is scared. Alienated because she's too smart, her speech too affected, her social skills too far outside the norm, she seems to have no choice but to retreat into isolation. But college could set her free, right? If she can make it through this grueling senior year, then maybe. If she can just find that one person to throw her a lifeline, then maybe, just maybe.

When Michael O’Hara’s favorite uncle’s boat floats into the Miami docks wired to explode, Molly DeWitt is horrified when Michael leaps aboard and speeds away from the gawking crowd. Singed by his narrow escape, Michael is burning to discover the truth. Is Uncle Miguel dead? Molly and Michael search for clues, but find themselves point-blank in the cross hairs of terror.

The number-one international best-selling author of The Gray Rhino offers a bold new framework for understanding risk and how we can reexamine and reshape our relationship with uncertainty to live more productive and successful lives.

Les, a longtime sheriff just three weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town. Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina.

Happily married Brooke discovers her loving husband has led a separate life with…another wife. Newlywed Samantha learns of her husband's cheating heart when she finds the goods on his computer. High-powered career woman Katherine works with heartbreaker Phillip, the man who hurt her early on in her career. Brooke, Samantha, and Katherine don't know one another, but their stories are about to intertwine in ways no one could have imagined. And all three are about to discover the power of friendship to conquer adversity.

Ever since Stieg Larsson shone a light on the brilliance of Swedish crime writing with his acclaimed and best-selling Millennium trilogy, listeners around the world have sought out and devoured the crime fiction of his countrymen (and women), many of whom have proved to be some of the greatest masters of the genre. In this landmark and unique publication, Sweden's most distinguished and best-loved crime writers have contributed stories to an anthology that promises to thrill even the most jaded mystery listener.

In Exteriors, Annie Ernaux concentrates not on the essential details of a relationship with a family member or lover as before but on ephemeral encounters within the larger circle of one's environment and the hundreds of strangers who inhabit it. Here, she captures the feeling of contemporary living on the outskirts of a great city: tortured, chaotic, lyrical, and powerfully alive. Exteriors is, in many ways, the most ecstatic of Ernaux's books.

My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon, begins Shame, the probing story of the 12-year-old girl who will become the author herself and the single traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. With the emotionally rich voice of great fiction and the diamond-sharp analytical eye of a scientist, Annie Ernaux provides a powerful reflection on experience and the power of violent memory to endure through time, to determine the course of a life.

American women are so close to winning the right to vote. They've been fighting for more than 70 years and need approval from just one more state. But suffragists face opposition from every side, including the "Antis" - women who don't want women to have the right to vote. It's more than a fight over politics; it's a debate over the role of women and girls in society, and whether they should be considered equal to men and boys.

Harvard professor Wilson Chaney has a secret and somebody knows it. His adulterous affair with a freshman ended just weeks before she wound up dead. The sole trace of his infatuation is a stack of missing love letters - and they’ve fallen into the wrong hands… Carlotta Carlyle takes the case to find his blackmailer and retrieve the letters. Six-foot-one and red-haired, this private eye doesn’t blink when the going gets tough.

When Katie Steury hires her old friend Harley Lambright to remodel her rundown old house into a charming bed and breakfast, she does so with trepidation. Though they are longtime friends, they’ve always had a rocky relationship, thanks to her being partly responsible for his most recent breakup. But while they may not always get along, she needs someone to trust with her secrets, and Harley is nothing if not trustworthy and loyal.

New York Times and USA TODAY best-selling author Shelley Shepard Gray returns to the charming and evocative Walnut Creek Series with an unforgettable novel following one broken young woman whose search for peace leads her back to her hometown, where she rediscovers her faith and reconnects with those she loves most.

Dr. Mark Fabian is dead - bludgeoned in his office. But that doesn’t stop former patient Nadine Raines from talking to him - in her head. Why did she come back to her hometown after so many years away? Everyone here thinks she’s crazy. And she has to admit - they might have good reason to think so. She committed a shockingly violent act when she was 16, and has never really been able to explain that dark impulse - even to Fabian. Meanwhile, as detective Henry Peacher investigates Fabian’s death, he discovers that shortly before he died, Fabian pulled the files of two former patients.

Brooke Hauser takes us deep inside a unique New York City high school over the course of a year as she follows diverse newcomers whose lives are at once ordinary and extraordinary, international headlines brought to life. No native English-speaking students attend the International High School, and more than twenty-eight languages fill the halls.