Showing results by narrator "Ezzo Ezzo" in All Categories

Years before, a gateway opened between their world and ours. Sending one young woman through may be the key to survival for the kingdom of Fourline. Strapped for cash, college student Natalie Barns agrees to take a job at a costume shop. Sure, Estos - her classmate who works in the shop - is a little odd, but Nat needs the money for her tuition.

How well do we really know the people sleeping next to us in bed at night? After a tragedy strikes the Barnes family, Sarah's husband Tom begins acting strangely. It starts with wild mood-shifts and accusations at their thirteen-year old daughter, but quickly escalates to the attempted murder of an off-season mall Santa.

As assistant buyer for the world's second-largest Christmas store, Kelsey Parker feels like a holiday harlot. She's contractually obligated to promote the yuletide season. All. Year. Long. And it's taking a toll on her spirit. But when her clueless, self-absorbed boyfriend goes on their long-anticipated romantic vacation - without her! - Kelsey is beyond disappointed to find herself tromping through the Bell Harbor snow instead of lounging on a tropical beach.

Wren owes everything she has to her hometown, Hollow’s End, a centuries-old picture-perfect slice of America. Tourists travel miles to marvel at its miracle crops, including the shimmering, iridescent wheat of Wren’s family’s farm. At least, they did. Until five months ago. That’s when the Quicksilver blight first surfaced, poisoning the farms of Hollow’s End one by one. It began by consuming the crops, thick silver sludge bleeding from the earth. Next were the animals.

Charis Willowthorn is a queen without a throne. A Rakuuna invader holds Charis's kingdom of Calera captive, leaving her desperate—and ruthlessly committed to vengeance. But with her allies reluctant to intervene and her enemies hunting her across the open sea, Charis is left with only one choice: forge a temporary alliance with Tal Penbyrn, the boy who betrayed her—and, at all costs, keep him out of her heart.

In the summer of 1925, the winds of change are particularly chilling for a young woman whose life has suddenly become unbalanced. Devastated by her mother’s death and a cruel, broken engagement, Sadie Halloran learns that her great-aunt Marguerite, a renowned artist now in the throes of dementia, needs a live-in companion. Grasping at newfound purpose, Sadie leaves her desolate Kansas City boardinghouse for Blackberry Grange, Marguerite’s once-grand mansion sitting precariously atop an Arkansas bluff.

What do you do when faced with a big, important question that hectors you day and night? Many people, understandably, seize answers dispensed by experts, influencers, gurus, and more. But these fast, easy, one-size-fits-all solutions often fail to satisfy. Indeed, the notion of taming uncertainty is an illusion. What if the questions of our lives—the ones we ask about our relationships, work, meaning, identity, and purpose—are not our tormentors, but our teachers? That is the provocative premise of How to Fall in Love with Questions.

With daring realism and stunning imagination, the author of Geek Love, Katherine Dunn, takes us on a journey into the mind of a feisty, adventurous adolescent named Jean "Dutch" Gillis. Dutch goes "trucking" from Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles on a quest in search of herself, which, like the river trek of Deliverance, is filled with discoveries and sudden violence. With boyish-looking Dutch is her friend Heydorf, a shadowy character who has his own secrets to hide.

In the twenty-first century, we meet Verity Frazier, a disillusioned history professor who sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminated artwork in Christine de Pizan’s medieval manuscripts was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the exquisitely-rendered medieval backdrop of moral disaster, political intrigue, and extraordinary creativity, Verity finds her career on the brink of collapse by her efforts to uncover evidence of the lost artist’s existence.

There’s a price on Everley Donovan’s head. Fleeing from the queen’s false accusation of murder and sorcery, the girl with the clock heart knows there’s only one way to prove her innocence. Everley must catch Killian Markham, the fugitive prince guilty of the crimes for which she’s been condemned. To do that, Everley must follow him into the towering realm of the Silver-Clouded Plain. It’s where flesh-eating behemoths thrive, long-lost gods hide, and an artifact of destructive force awaits the death grip of the immortal prince.

Holland, 1650. One fine spring day in Friesland, twenty-year-old Clara van Weiren is faced with an ill omen: a whale, beached and rotting in the noonday sun. But Clara doesn’t believe in magic and superstition, and this portent is quickly dismissed when a proposal from a wealthy merchant arrives, promising Clara the freedom she seeks from her mother’s overbearing rule. When her attempts at overseeing the household at the family’s estate lead to her chance encounter with a young man with russet hair and sparkling eyes the color of the sea, she finds herself strangely drawn to him.

When her sister Lila and brother-in-law Gray are killed in a tragic accident, Bella is named as guardian to her two young nephews. Then she discovers that she's expected to co-parent with Gray's best friend, and grief turns to shock. Noah has always driven her crazy, and Bella's sure the arrogant, handsome Navy SEAL is the last person she wants to share a life with.

Shirley Davenport is as much a patriot as her four brothers. She, too, wants to aid her country in the war efforts and joins a new branch of the Coast Guard for single women called SPARs. At the end of basic training, Captain Webber commissions her back home in Maine under the ruse of a dishonorable discharge to help uncover a plot against the First Lady. Shirley soon discovers nothing is as it seems. Why do the people she loves want to harm the First Lady?

The people in Frankie Morgan’s life say she’s angry. Emotionally stunted. Combative. But really, who can blame her? It’s hard being nice when your clients are insufferable, your next-door neighbor is a miserable woman and the cowardly driver who killed your mother is still out living it up somewhere. Somehow, though, she finds herself at her very first anger-management group session—drinking terrible coffee and learning all about how “forgiveness is a process.” One that starts with a list.

The Commonwealth Civil War has stalemated, but both sides - desperate to win at all costs - are looking for ways to end the fighting before everything they’ve built is turned to ash. King Hadrian, on the edge of madness, searches for allies who might help, at a price. His enemies, all too aware the battle is far from won, search for long-forgotten truths that might tear the king’s forces apart and end the war in a single blow. For Admiral Kat Falcone and Commodore William McElney, caught on opposite sides, everything they’ve ever loved is at stake.

In the near future, older generations can reverse the aging process through weekly transfusions while, far removed from the realities of the outside world, aimless postmillennials or “blood chickens” can live a life of guiltless bliss in idyllic youth farms. Among the first wave of volunteer donors are Billy Cantor and Frankie Halifax, who quickly bond over their dream paradise. What’s not to love? Wine tastings, parties, yoga, and all the organic avocados they can eat. Best of all: not a single care in the world until their thirty-fifth birthdays.

Kinsley just wanted to have some fun for a change. Then she wakes up in a stranger’s bed, with her bridesmaid dress on backward and a hazy memory of what happened at her friend’s wedding. With a quick escape, she can get back to her predictable life. But then she meets her new boss - the same guy she’d woken up next to - and seeing him with a clear head doesn’t make him any less attractive.

Maya has never had much to complain about. Sure, her parents are absent a lot, having important jobs in the government, but at the end of the day, she has all the material possessions a girl could want. Not to mention a great best friend and secure spot in the popular group at her school. Yet she can never shake the feeling of displacement. Constantly searching for something that’s missing from her life.

Banking heiress Trish and her husband, James, seem to have it all, from a lavish lifestyle to a historic mansion in the nation’s capital. The only thing that’s missing to make their family complete is a baby, so when Trish holds Anne Elise in her arms for the first time, it’s no surprise that she falls deeply in love. There’s just one problem: Trish isn’t the mother. The baby belongs to Laurel, James’s young mistress. And more than that, James and Laurel want to start a new life together - despite an ironclad prenup standing in their way.

Following her forced departure from Fourline, Natalie Barns has been aching to rejoin the struggle to overthrow its evil dictator. With Soris and those she left behind constantly on her mind, Nat bides her time, determined to find a cure for the duozi - those infected by the terrifying Nala. An unexpected discovery propels her back to those she has sworn to protect, but her reappearance in Fourline is anything but straightforward, particularly when familiar faces appear when least expected.