Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

To those who live there, Herot Hall is a paradise. With picket fences, gabled buildings and wildflowers that seed themselves in ordered rows, the suburb is a self-sustaining community, enclosed and secure. But to those who live secretly along its periphery, Herot Hall is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras and motion-activated lights. Dylan and Gren live on opposite sides of the perimeter, neither boy aware of the barriers erected to keep them apart.

In the American Civil War that began in 1861 the War was seemingly fought to end Slavery. A War for Good. The result a win for the good guys but a society that still bears fractures from this seminal period. The stories in this volume show the true scars that are endured as a riven Nations authors try to explain and reconcile.

Fifteen years ago Nora Watts gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Now Bonnie has vanished, and when the police don't seem to care, her desperate parents turn to Nora as a last resort. Nora knows only too well what happens to missing girls, especially when they aren't blonde or white enough. Despite herself, she sets out to find the daughter she's never known protected only by her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.

Only Willow has the power to defeat the malevolent Church of Angels, and they will stop at nothing to destroy her. Willow isn’t alone, though. She has Alex by her side - a trained Angel Killer and her one true love.But Willow will always be a half-angel, and when Alex joins forces with a group of Aks, she’s treated with mistrust and suspicion. She’s never felt more alone - until she meets Seb.

Natalie isn’t a romantic. She doesn’t believe in true love or destiny. She thinks that people are just plain lucky if they happen to find someone. It’s coincidence and nothing more. As a wedding dress designer, though, she knows she has to keep these feelings under wraps. Even if she’s suspicious that Harper, the bride she’s working with, might secretly agree with her. Because if Harper admitted she wasn’t sure about love, it might also mean giving up on a millionaire husband-to-be and the lavish island wedding of her dreams.

Poland, 1944. The train slowed and halted with a squeal of the brakes. It felt like we waited in the carriage for an eternity, but eventually, the heavy doors opened, directly into the chaos outside. Sara Leibovits, a 16-year-old Jewish girl, was a passenger on the train, together with her family. Within minutes, their horrific fate was sealed. The little family spent their final minutes together on the platform at Auschwitz before they were ordered in all directions and each left to their own fate.

In Judea, under the brutal rule of King Herod, a woman yearns for a child but is outcast when she does not fall pregnant. Against all convention, she masters the art of glassblowing. In Renaissance Florence, a young wife is left penniless by her hopelessly unfaithful husband and struggles to find a way to support herself and her young son. In contemporary Australia, a talented textile conservator, devastated by loss, is desperate to regain control of her life. Each woman wants something that seems unattainable, and it will take all their courage, creativity and determination to achieve it.

As half-angel Willow strives to save the world from her parasitic otherworldly kin, romance and tension heat up to a climactic finale... In the devastated remains of the world, millions of people live in "Edens" provided by the angels who have all but enslaved humanity. As the angelic stranglehold on humanity tightens, Willow and Alex are recruiting and training new Angel Killers while struggling to hold ground on the celestial battlefield.

The Grelliers and the Schapens: two families who have been farming in the Kaw River Valley for over 150 years, their lives connected through the generations by history and geography. Then Gina Haring, bringing with her the liberal air of the big city, moves into a dilapidated house near both farms. Gina has secrets, her own reasons for being in the Kansas countryside, and they're not necessarily what the people around her imagine.

Whilst Europe endured the Dark Ages in the 6th & 7th Centuries, devotees of Shiva and Vishnu in Southern India were creating the Bhakti Movement. Some of these exponents, as in our volume, were bestowed with the title of saint but some had the additional title of sant, swami or goswami. Broadly speaking, Bhakti poetry, as in Hinduism itself, is divided into ‘Nirguna’, the idea that the divine is formless as exampled by Kabir and ‘Saguna’, which interprets the divine as having physical form as captured by Mirabai.

There isn’t a woman on earth who doesn’t have her beauty secrets. But for Dina Kane, beauty is more than just business. It’s power. And it is the secret. She’s dragged herself up from poverty to Park Avenue. She’s rolled with the punches, and she’s learned how to win. Now someone is out to destroy her, and all she’s built. They’ve underestimated Dina Kane. She’s staying at the top – and she’s happy to wait for the perfect moment to exact her revenge...

The in-crowd wears Gucci, but one girl wears her heart on her sleeve. When a chance meeting propels Bette into a new role as a party planner, she can hardly believe her luck. A job that pays you to party! Running with the cool Manhattan pack, gaining VIP access to the city's hottest spots, and meeting "everyone worth knowing" is a million miles away from the number-crunching and paper-pushing of her old banking job. Overnight, the greatest city in the world has become her sexy, late-night playground.

High-flier Natalie Collins isn't the worrying type. Unlike her younger sister, Kit - who can't seem to settle on anything. But when Kit insists on joining Wisewood, a self-help retreat on a secluded Maine island, Natalie has concern. Why does it forbid contact with the outside world? Is it a cult? Then, after six months of silence, she receives a message: We know what you did. Would you like to come and tell your sister - or should we? Who is digging into the Collins' past? How did they discover Natalie's secret? She will have to go to Wisewood to find out.

It all hinges on one kiss. Whether Irina McGovern does or does not lean in to a specific pair of lips in London will determine whether she stays with her disciplined, intellectual partner Lawrence or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player. Using a parallel universe structure, we follow Irina's life as it unfolds under the influence of two drastically different men.

Marching to Zion is the tragic story of Minerva Fishbein and Magnus Bailey, a charismatic Black man and the longtime business partner of Minerva's father. From the brutal riots of East St. Louis to Memphis, Tennessee, during the 1920s and the Depression, Marching to Zion is a tale of passion, betrayal, and redemption during an era in America when interracial love could not go unpunished.

The last time Vee left the shores of Unity Island, she thought she'd left forever. But this summer, she's returning with her charming husband, Mike. Vee's unexpected arrival, this time as one of the wealthy 'summer people', sets the small island community alight with gossip. What's more, her childhood best friend, Sterling, is furious that she's come back—Vee abandoned him when he needed her most. And then Vee meets Rachel, Sterling's wife, and a spark is ignited within her that she can't extinguish.

The Crenshaw Six are an up-and-coming gang in South Central LA who have recently been drawn into a war between rival drug cartels. To outsiders they appear to be led by a man named Garcia...but the gang's real leader (and secret weapon) is Garcia's girlfriend, Lola. Lola has mastered the role of submissive girlfriend, and in the man's world she inhabits, she is constantly underestimated. But she is smarter, tougher and more ruthless than any of the men around her.

In this world, Dr Charlotte Stone is an expert psychologist helping to catch serial killers. In the next world, Charlotte's ghostly lover - wrongly executed killer Michael Garland - is facing death yet again: the ultimate annihilation of his soul. Can Charlie prove Michael's innocence and rescue him from total oblivion?

Angel, not fond of people at the best of times and having an identity crisis, is about to meet Zola – a talkative young American girl who makes herself at home in Angel’s tower in a tiny village high in the Swiss Alps. ‘This Zola is a lot bossy,’ Angel thinks. But out of their bickering an unexpected friendship forms, and their teamwork is about to benefit the entire village...

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own. Within this melting pot of styles, genres and wordplay one fact stands out: In the American short story, literary tradition has a strong, vibrant and almost inclusive history, if you know where to look.