Showing results by narrator "Kirsten Potter" in All Categories

Her genetic secret could change humanity forever. Her DNA grants her the ultimate power. But all she wants is to disappear. Looming buildings rise into the sky of a near-future America, shadowing the desperate poverty of the soovie parks, death doctors, and fear bombs. In this world of walled cities, where status matters most, Caitlyn Brown is desperate to remain invisible, wrongly believing what she needs to hide is the deformity on her back. The powerful want her for so much more.

Meet the Alter sisters - Lady, Vee, and Delph, three delightfully witty, complicated women who live together in their family's apartment on the Upper West Side. Though they love each other fiercely, being an Alter isn't easy. Bad luck is in their genes, passed down through the generations. But no matter what curves life throws at these siblings, they always have a wisecrack - and each other.

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, Robin Black's If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all.

Recovering from a painful divorce, Sarah Draycott has moved to the picturesque village of Sea Glass on the Maine coast in order to make a fresh start. And it's not long before she becomes immersed in the lives of her charming and eccentric new neighbors: the irrepressible 90-year-old Nellie Armitage; the elegant but troubled widow Gwen; and precocious 9-year-old orphan Oliver. As Sarah finds herself increasingly caught up in the lives of the Sea Glass residents, helping Gwen cope with her desperately ill son, and assisting Oliver in uncovering the secrets surrounding the Cully Mansion, she finds her broken heart beginning to heal.

'You can't get around Kate Battista as easily as all that.' Kate Battista is feeling stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister, Bunny? Plus, she's always in trouble at work - her preschool charges adore her, but the adults don't always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

A clash of powerful magical forces sets off the Graygem of Gargath, sending Destina and her companions deeper into the past than she intended - to the age of Huma Dragonsbane and the Third Dragon War. Now, after the Device of Time Journeying shatters, they must find another way back to their own era, before the Graygem alters history irrevocably and the Third Dragon War ends in defeat for the forces of good. With the battle raging on, Destina tries desperately to make amends and prevent disaster.

For Clara Bixby, brokering mail-order brides is a golden business opportunity - and a desperately needed chance to start again. If she can help New York women find husbands in a far-off Nebraska town, she can build an independent new life away from her own loss and grief. Clara’s ambitions are shared by two other women, who are also willing to take any risk. Quiet immigrant Elsa hopes to escape her life of servitude and at last shape her own destiny. And Rowena, the willful, impoverished heiress, jumps at the chance to marry a humble stranger and repay a heartbreaking debt.

Building on the success of All City, here is a wry, and at the same time dark and risk-taking, story collection from author (and baker) Alex DiFrancesco that pushes the boundaries of transgender awareness and filial bonds. There is DiFrancesco's willingness to enter lands that are violent and comfortless in some of these stories, testing the limits of what it means to be human, sometimes returning stronger and wiser, and sometimes not returning at all as their characters surge forward into unknown spaces.

One of the hardest parts of leadership is knowing how to step away from your hard-won authority and let others step forward. Dr. Karen Morley is here to help! She emphasizes that in an environment of continuing disruption (where innovation and creativity are crucial assets), a command-and-control method of leadership is destined to fail. However, leaders who are able to coach, rather than give orders or step in, will find themselves in the midst of a solutions-forward, creative-minded team.

It's autumn of 1881, and Inez Stannert, still the co-owner of Leadville, Colorado's Silver Queen saloon, is settled in San Francisco with her young ward, Antonia Gizzi. Inez has turned her business talents to managing a music store, hoping to eventually become an equal partner in the enterprise with the store's owner, a celebrated local violinist. Inez's carefully constructed life for herself and Antonia threatens to tumble about her ears when the badly beaten body of a young musician washes up on the filthy banks of San Francisco's Mission Creek canal.

In this robust, elegantly plotted, and ultimately life-affirming novel, Zoe Whittall presents a dazzling portrait of the Millennial Generation - the 25-year-olds who grew up on anti-anxiety meds, text-messaging each other truncated emotional reactions, unsure of what's public and what's private. Holding Still explores an unusual love triangle involving Billy, a former teen idol, now an anxiety-ridden agoraphobic; Josh, a shy transgendered paramedic who travels the city patching up damaged bodies; and Amy, a fashionable filmmaker coping with her first broken heart.

Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the 20th century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war.

Meet Marc Solomon, an Israeli ex-Navy commando now living in L.A., who is falsely accused of money laundering through his asset management firm. As the Solomons' Santa Monica home is raided, Marc's American wife, Carolyn - concealing her own dark past - makes hopeless attempts to hold their family of five together. But news of the scandal makes its way from America to the rest of the Solomon clan on the kibbutz in the Jordan River Valley.

New York, 1946: The last time Will Parker let a case get personal, she walked away with a broken face, a bruised ego and the solemn promise never again to let her heart get in the way of her job. But she called Hart and Halloway's Travelling Circus and Sideshow home for five years and Ruby Donner, the circus' tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse, the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go.

When sixteen-year-old Abigail’s mother dies in Scotland—leaving a faded photo, a weirdly cryptic letter, and a one-way ticket to America—she feels nothing. Why should she? Her mother abandoned her as a baby to grow up on an antinuclear commune and then in ugly foster homes. But the letter is a surprise in more ways than one: her father is living in California. What’s more, she has an eighteen-year-old sister, Becky. And the two are expecting Abigail to move in with them

A short story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science-fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Unearth your next great listen with Assemble Artifacts.

Brenda Lockhart’s family has been living well beyond their means for too long when Brenda’s husband leaves them―for an older and less attractive woman than Brenda, no less. Brenda has never worked outside the home, and the family’s economic situation quickly declines. Oldest daughter Peggy is certain she’s heading off to a university, until her father offers her a job sorting mail while she attends community college instead. Younger daughter Allison, a high school senior, can’t believe her luck that California golden boy Kevin has fallen in love with her.

Dr. Carl Houseman, celebrated minister and speaker, is determined to find out what really happened to his wife, declared dead five years ago after her sailboat washed ashore on a coastal island of Maine. Private investigator Terri Blake-Addison must piece together the life of this woman who felt she didn't know or understand the God that her husband so faithfully served. Did Ellen really die in those cold Atlantic waters?

When young minister Noah and his dutiful wife arrive at their new post in the hills, they find a gray and wet little town where it's been raining for as long as anyone can remember. Noah's wife is determined to help her husband revive this soggy congregation, but she soon finds her efforts thwarted by her eccentric new neighbors, among them an idiom-wielding Italian hardware store owner, a towering town matriarch, and a lovelorn zookeeper determined to stand by his charges.

Will climate change force a massive human migration to the Northern Rim? How does our sense of morality arise from the structure of the brain? What does the latest research in language acquisition tells us about the role of culture in the way we think? What does current neurological research tell us about the nature of time? This wide-ranging collection of never-before-published essays offers the very latest insights into the daunting scientific questions of our time.