Showing results by narrator "Brittany Pressley" in All Categories

Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him?

It's 1789, and France is on the brink of revolution. Belle has broken the enchantress' curse, restoring the Beast to his human form and bringing life back to their castle in the principality of Aveyon. But in Paris, the fires of change are burning, and it's only a matter of time before the rebellion arrives on their doorstep.

In this darkly comic and surreal collection from celebrated author Alissa Nutting, misfit women scramble for agency in a series of uncanny circumstances. Throughout these breathtakingly creative 17 stories spread across time, space, and differing planes of reality, we encounter a host of women and girls in a wide range of unusual jobs. A space cargo deliverywoman enlists the help of her cybersex partner to release her mother from cryogenic prison.

Jenny Kristal was six years old when she was snatched off the sidewalk from her quiet suburban neighborhood. Twelve years later, she's miraculously returned home after escaping her kidnappers - but as her parents and older brother welcome her back, the questions begin to mount. Where has she been all these years? Why is she back now? And is home really the safest place for her...or for any of them?

Allie Garvey is heading home to the funeral of a childhood friend. Allie is not only grief-stricken, she's full of dread. Because going home means seeing the other two people with whom she shares an unbearable secret. Twenty years earlier, a horrific incident shattered the lives of five teenagers, including Allie. Drinking and partying in the woods, they played a dangerous prank that went tragically wrong. The teenagers kept what happened a secret, believing that getting caught would be the worst thing that could happen. But time has taught Allie that not getting caught was far worse.

The year is 2047, and teleportation is the cutting-edge transportation method of choice - Teleportation Services International (TSI) operates facilities in all of the world’s major cities. When Lillian, a TSI employee, wins a once-in-a-lifetime family vacation, she knows it’s just a photo op for the tech giant, but she takes the opportunity and books a trip to Tokyo with her husband Jackson and their six-year-old son Cole. But before they arrive, tragedy strikes: Cole disappears in transit.

Ever since childhood, Emma Merrill and Sophia Mason were bound by a passion for painting. Like all young best friends, they promised to never lose touch. But the girls came from different worlds, and their paths diverged when Emma went to an elite college and Sophie worked her way through state school. After a decade they’ve reconnected, both in a time of need. Emma has been struggling with depression since her college years, and she’s lost herself under the suffocating influence of her controlling and manipulative mother.

Strange things are happening to Daire Santos. Crows mock her, glowing people stalk her, time stops without warning, and a beautiful boy with unearthly blue eyes haunts all her dreams. Fearing for her daughter’s sanity, Daire’s mother sends her to live with the grandmother she’s never met. A woman who recognizes the visions for what they truly are - the call to her destiny as a Soul Seeker - one who can navigate the worlds between the living and dead.

Kat MacTaggart is a girl who has a plan for everything - including her holiday ski trip to Monterra with her best friend. Everything is going according to plan until she finds herself careening out of control down a mountainside and being rescued by a guy who looks like Superman's hotter Italian cousin. HRH Prince Nico is intrigued by the woman he saved on the slopes and her refusal to date him. He offers Kat a deal - let him show her his country and he'll pay her to write articles that will help Monterra's tourism industry.

A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.

When Savannah history Professor Everly Winthrop is asked to guest-curate a new museum collection focusing on artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she's shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later. Everly can't resist the opportunity to try to solve some of the mysteries and myths surrounding the devastating night of its sinking. Everly's research leads her to the astounding history of a family of 11 who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family.

Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia Sweeney grew up as a happy threesome in a seaside town in Connecticut. But after their mother’s death from cancer 15 years ago, the sisters drifted apart. Their one touchstone is their father, Bill Sweeney, a famous literary lion universally adored by critics, publishers, and book lovers. When Bill dies unexpectedly one cool June night, his shell-shocked daughters return to their childhood home. They aren’t quite sure what the future holds without their larger-than-life father, but they do know how to throw an Irish wake to honor a man of his stature.

When Kristy reluctantly takes part in a hazing prank for her softball team, she worries that her little stepsister, Karen, will find out the truth and think badly of her.

New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Traveling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis.

Elliot Carson left Sugarlake and has never looked back. Revered as the next big thing in basketball, Eli’s a star until an injury ends his career, sending him spiraling with no direction. But he won’t go home. He can’t. Instead, he accepts a coaching gig at Florida Coast University, determined to leave his past behind. But fate has other plans when Becca, his sister’s best friend, shows up as a student and, even worse, becomes the new team manager.

Everything you know is about to change. Victoria Brie is getting her life together. She may be just a cashier, but she has big dreams and high hopes for what comes next. In the meantime, she has everything that matters: her family and her best friend. If only life were that simple. When she comes home to find her parents murdered by an elf — yeah, an elf — she’s thrust into a world of magic, mystery, and a madman who wants her dead. The question is… why? Merged with a powerful artifact created by an evil mastermind, Victoria is hunted, stabbed, burned, shot, and attacked in the street… but she’s a survivor, damn it, and no one’s taking her out. She falls in love with the magical underground city of Fairhaven, and when the elf who assassinated her parents comes after her new home, she not taking any prisoners. This series is an enchanting urban fantasy saga with sarcastic ogres, wise-cracking wizards, and a brutally addictive full-contact sport called Berserk. Your only regret will be not starting it sooner.

Tress Montor’s family used to mean something - until she didn’t have a family anymore. When her parents disappeared seven years ago while driving her best friend home, Tress lost everything. The entire town shuns her now that she lives with her drunken, one-eyed grandfather at what locals refer to as the “White Trash Zoo.”

Whether it’s meditation or a walk in nature, reading a sacred text or saying a prayer, there are many ways to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around you and your place in it. In The Awakened Brain, psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller shows you how. Weaving her own deeply personal journey of awakening with her groundbreaking research, Dr. Miller’s book reveals that humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient and robust as a result of it.

The Kick-A** Book of Cobra Kai is a celebration of the superfans — an essential companion to the show acting as a master sensei ready to guide listeners through the karate-crazed San Fernando Valley. The legacy of The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai continues with interviews with Ralph Macchio (Daniel LaRusso), William Zabka (Johnny Lawrence), Martin Kove (John Kreese), Xolo Maridueña (Miguel Diaz), and Mary Mouser (Samantha LaRusso).

Josie Moore has given the opposite sex—and love—plenty of chances. Four exactly, if you count all her failed engagements, and five if you include her no-longer-absentee father. Nonetheless, when the influential man decides to announce his retirement with a splashy magazine piece and Josie learns that her romantic history isn’t great PR for the family, she jumps at the chance to offer a solution.