Showing results by narrator "Lauren" in All Categories

Salina has been dating Josiah for almost a year now, but he feels more like a friend than a boyfriend. Her parents approve of Josiah, who is a hardworking roofer. He’s handsome and easy to talk to, but he just doesn’t warm her heart the way she feels a boyfriend and future husband should. She secretly longs for more. Along comes William “Will” Zimmerman, a Mennonite chef who runs a restaurant located next door to the Amish market. He wants Salina to supply the produce for his restaurant, and as they forge a business relationship, they both feel themselves falling in love.

Fiery, free-loving Amber Fields has just discovered she's the daughter of a 90s rock legend. Amber is determined to know more and heads to the bright lights of New York City, a world away from the hippie commune she’s grown up on in Maine. She tracks down the band but answers seem hard to come by. And then there’s the new lead guitarist - troubled, sexy, intriguing Ty who is anything but welcoming.

From best-selling authors in the Amish genre come three sweet stories centered around Amish traditions and the possibility of romance.

In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all.

Everyone knows Bettina’s father was the one who murdered her mother a decade ago. It’s the subject of podcasts, murder tours, and even a highly anticipated docuseries. But after growing up grappling with what that means, a string of copycat murders forces Bett to answer a harder question: What if he didn’t? Old-money Bett must team up with the only person willing to investigate alongside her: bookish goth girl Eugenia, the mortician’s daughter, who everyone says puts the makeup on corpses. Can this “true crime princess” unmask a murderer who’s much closer to home than she ever imagined?

In Nebraska, in the late 1890s, 17-year-old Effie and 11-year-old Bridget must struggle to endure at a time when women and children had few rights, and society looked upon domestic abuse as a private family matter. The story is told through the eyes of the girls as they learn to survive under grueling circumstances. River People is a novel of inspiration, love, loss, and renewal.

The Last Tycoon, edited by the renowned literary critic Edmund Wilson, was first published a year after Fitzgerald's death and includes the author's notes and outline for his unfinished literary masterpiece. It is the story of the young Hollywood mogul Monroe Stahr, who was inspired by the life of boy-genius Irving Thalberg, and is an exposé of the studio system in its heyday.

Now that I maneuvered my parents into giving me the future I wanted, life seems easy. I finally have some freedom to enjoy my senior year without feeling like I'm slowly suffocating under the twisted morals and warped expectations of my parents. But it's not long until everything starts to fall apart. The pretty lies that kept my world tied up in a pretty red bow? They're starting to unravel.

Sinister forces lurk in the corners of the Iron Kingdoms - restless souls, mischievous and cunning creatures, darker beings that bargain for mortal souls. Most pass unmarked, shunned, or avoided, but there is one group willing to seek out and study what others fear. In abandoned halls and forgotten ruins, the investigators from the Strangelight Workshop illuminate the darkness, armed with wisdom, curiosity, and specialized tools.

For everyone who’s ever felt too big, too weird, too queer—or just too much—comes Because Fat Girl, a hilarious, emotionally piercing, unapologetically fat novel that is Chasing Amy meets Romantic Comedy. The only man Diana has ever wanted is golden and goes by the name of “Oscar.” Now this off-her-game filmmaker has a chance to make her dream come true...but to get her Hollywood ending, she’s going completely off-script.

Forensic artist Gwen Marcey is between jobs when she accepts temporary work in Pikeville, Kentucky - a small town facing big-city crime. But before Gwen can finish her first drawing of the serial rapist who is on the loose, the latest witness vanishes. Just like all the others. Gwen suspects a connection between the rapist and the "accidental" deaths that are happening around town, but the local sheriff has little interest in her theories. When her digitally-obsessed teenage daughter joins her, Gwen turns her attention to a second assignment.

Another week, another few clues trickling in about the Circle, the mysterious group that supposedly runs the city's underworld. Gathering intel on my hidden enemies is a painstaking process, but a more immediate mystery has popped up on my radar: a missing girl. My search for the girl begins on the mean streets of Ashland, but with all the killers and crooks in this city, I'm not holding out much hope that she's still alive.

After a disappointing year as a society columnist for the Herald and staying with her more well-heeled Vanderbilt relatives in New York City, Emma has returned to the stately mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, more determined than ever to report on hard news. But for now she's covering the social event of the season at Ochre Court, a ball designed to showcase Cleo Cooper-Smith, who will be literally on display. Modern electricity will allow her to truly shine. But then the ballroom is plunged into darkness. When the lights come on, Cleo sits on her throne, electrocuted to death.

Best-selling author Leigh Bardugo takes listeners deeper into her world than ever before. Out of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, from the hands of Alina Starkov to yours, the Istorii Sankt’ya is fully realized for the first time. These tales include miracles and martyrdoms from familiar Saints like Sankta Lizabeta of the Roses and Sankt Ilya in Chains, to the strange and obscure stories of Sankta Ursula, Sankta Maradi, and the Starless Saint.

After running away across the country, Brie Masters is finally settling into her life in California. She's surrounded by loving friends and her brother, who is there to keep her safe - specifically, to protect her from a man from her past who won't let her go. But, as the danger starts affecting those around her, she flees back home, back to the life of Gabby Mastreoni. When her stalker goes after the one thing that could hurt her forever, she has no choice but to run to the last person she wants to ask for help. And then all of her secrets will be exposed.

Everley Donovan’s mission: retrieve the hallowed sword of Avelyn stolen by the wicked Prince Killian, who slayed her family and left her for dead. Should she fail, the seven worlds will come to an end, as could time itself. And no one treasures time more than Everley, whose lifesaving clock heart cannot beat forever. She has set sail with a rogue crew for the otherworlds, where the key to dethroning the prince lies deep within the Land Under the Wave.

Charity Raber is one of many single women who came to Birch Creek, Ohio, with one goal in mind: secure a husband from among the desperate bachelors a newspaper advertisement claimed inhabited the town. Even though that claim proved to be nothing more than a cruel prank, Charity is still hopeful that her happy ending might be within reach when she’s set up on a date with Jesse Bontrager. That is until Jesse not-so-gently shares that he has no interest in a relationship with anyone—and especially not with her.

Following the death of her uncle Cornelius Vanderbilt in September 1899, a somber Emma is in no mood for one of Newport's extravagant parties. But to keep Vanderbilt's reckless son, Neily, out of trouble, she agrees to accompany him to an Elizabethan fete on the lavish grounds of Wakehurst. Held in Wakehurst's English-style gardens, the festivities will include a swordplay demonstration, an archery competition, scenes from Shakespeare's plays, and even a joust. As Emma wanders the grounds distracted by grief, she overhears an argument between a man and a woman behind a tall hedge.

Maisy never expected that a Plain girl like her could have her heart stolen by an Englisch boy. But when her rumspringa ends and Maisy realizes she’s pregnant, the reality of their choices—and their differences—sets in. Maisy knows she will never leave her faith to marry her baby's father. But she also knows the road to acceptance as an unwed mother in an Amish community will be long and hard. To protect her family from the scandal, she goes to live with her cousin in Haven, Kansas, where she will have some solitude to figure out what kind of future she might have.

The four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country. Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota.