Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Literature & Fiction

Blink, man, what were you thinking? Sneaking into the hotel for a hot breakfast  -  hot scraps of someone else’s breakfast, really. Couldn’t you just feel  that it was a wrong place/wrong time scenario? Even before you heard the banging and saw those dudes in suits jet it out of room 1616? Now you’re not only witness to a crime; you’re linked to it, thanks to the smartphone you were stupid enough to jack from the room. And then there’s Caution. As in “Caution: Contents Under Pressure.” She’s also on the run, from a skeezy drug-dealer boyfriend and from a nightmare in her past that won’t let her go.

It’s one single steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in New York City, otherwise known as the Cage. Hotshot baller ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch-tall Chester. Nine of young-adult literature’s top writers reveal how it all goes down in this searing novel in short stories that each ingeniously pick up where the last one ends.

Fourteen-year-old Jamie, aka “Punkzilla,” is on a mission: to see his older brother, Peter (“P”), before P dies of cancer. Hopping a bus while still buzzing from his last hit of meth, Jamie embarks on a days-long bus trip from Portland, Oregon, to Memphis, Tennessee, writing letters to his family and friends - letters so honest he may never send them.

Mimi Shapiro needs to get away. From New York City, from NYU. And from the professor who let things go too far. So when her artist father, Marc, offers his cottage in a remote part of Canada, she gladly hops in her Mini Cooper and drives up north. Way up north. The little house is fairy-tale quaint, and the key is hidden right where her dad said it would be, so she's shocked to find someone already living there  -  Jay, a young musician, who is equally startled to meet Mimi....

It’s 1849, and 12-year-old Addie lives in the shipbuilding town of Essex, Massachusetts. Her father has left the family to seek gold on the West Coast, and tragically the flux has ended the lives of her mother and baby brother, leaving Addie all alone. Fearful of being taken in as a servant, Addie flees from her house into the snowy woods, where she endures hunger and bitter cold until Nokummus, an elderly Wampanoag woman, coaxes Addie to her dwelling.

Moving from LA to nowhere Minnesota, 16-year-old Katla Leblanc expected the local fashion scene to be frozen in time. What she didn’t expect was induction into the Icelandic Stork Society, an ancient order of women charged with a unique mystical duty. Not only is Katla the youngest member, but Hulda, the society’s omen-guided leader, immediately bestows the coveted Second Chair on her - a decision that ruffles a few feathers.

When a young man’s body is found by the railroad tracks, the murder and its mysterious circumstances threaten the peace and security of a small Florida town. Zora believes she knows who killed Ivory, and she isn’t afraid to tell anyone who’ll listen. Whether Zora is telling the truth or stretching it, she’s a riveting storyteller. Her latest tale is especially mesmerizing because it is so chillingly believable....

Abram and Juliette know each other. They've lived down the street from each other their whole lives. But they don't really know each other - at least not until Juliette's mom and Abram's dad have a torrid affair that culminates in a deadly car crash. Later, when they see each other, it's uncomfortable, to say the least. They don't speak.

Jesse seems like a normal sixteen-year-old, but he isn't. He is a victim of King - a ruthless hacker who has been blackmailing Jesse with incriminating screen photos and videos. So far, Jesse's given in to King's demands in order to protect his family. But now King wants something that's too horrible to contemplate - and if he doesn't get it, King will kill Jesse's little sister.

The cards are stacking up against Gabriel James: first there’s Phil, the guy paying the bills for Gabe’s mom (but not leaving his wife). Then there’s Gabe’s new school, filled with kids competing for the Ivies, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street—while Gabe’s just trying to swing enough Cs to graduate.

High school senior Jesse Alderman, or Sway as he's known, could sell hell to a bishop. He also specializes in getting things people want—term papers, a date with the prom queen, fake IDs. It's all business with Jesse. He has few close friends and he never lets emotions get in the way.

The Bourne Identity meets Divergent in this action-packed debut thriller with a Katniss-esque heroine fighting to regain her memories and stay alive, set against a dystopian hospital background.

Sarah starts a crazy battle for her life within the walls of her hospital-turned-prison when a procedure to eliminate her memory goes awry and she starts to remember snatches of her past. Was she an urban terrorist or vigilante? Has the procedure been her salvation or her destruction?

The answers lie trapped within her mind. To access them, she'll need the help of the teen computer hacker who's trying to bring the hospital down for his own reasons, and a pill that's blocked by an army of mercenary soldiers poised to eliminate her for good. If only she knew why…

"This is a snap-the-whip story, dark and fast. The sparks of humor in the voice won me over. Bottom line: I think the cocktail of suspense and believable smart-assery adds up to an addictive dose of reader appeal." —Blythe Woolston, author of the William C. Morris Award winner The Freak Observer

By the author of the acclaimed Passion Blue, a Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2012 and "a rare, rewarding, sumptuous exploration of artistic passion," comes a fascinating companion novel.

Artistically brilliant, Giulia is blessed—or cursed—with a spirit’s gift: she can hear the mysterious singing of the colors as she creates them in the convent workshop of Maestra Humilitá. It’s here that Giulia, forced into the convent against her will, has found unexpected happiness and rekindled her passion to become a painter—an impossible dream for any woman in 15th century Italy.

But when a dying Humilitá bequeaths Giulia her most prized possession—the secret formula for the luminously beautiful paint called Passion blue—Giulia realizes she’s in danger from those who have long coveted the famous color. Faced with the prospect of a life in the convent barred from painting as punishment for keeping Humilitá’s secret, Giulia is struck by a desperate idea: What if she disguises herself as a boy? Could she make her way to Venice and find work as an artist’s apprentice?

Along with the truth of who she is, Giulia carries more dangerous secrets: the exquisite voices of her paint colors and the formula for Humilitá’s Passion blue. And Venice, she discovers, with its gilded palazzos and masked balls, has secrets of its own. Trapped in her false identity in this dream-like place where reality and reflection are easily confused, and where art and ambition, love and deception hover like dense fog, can Giulia find her way?

This stunning, compelling novel explores timeless themes of love and illusion, gender and identity as it asks the question: what does it mean to risk everything to pursue your passion?

On a hot summer night in a midwestern town, a high school teenage prank goes horrifically awry. Alcohol, guns, and a dare. Within minutes, as events collide, innocents becomes victims - with tragic outcomes altering lives forever, a grisly and unfortunate scenario all too familiar from current real-life headlines. But victims can also become survivors, and as we come to know each character through his/her own distinctive voice and their interactions with one another, we see how, despite pain and guilt, they can reach out to one another, find a new equilibrium, and survive.

It begins with the name JONAS W. on the side of a cardboard coffin - right before the funeral procession blows up. Then it’s the whisper in the back of Micah’s head: Your father betrayed his country. You can’t always trust your own brain. Not when you have one of the mayor’s mandatory chips in your skull. Micah knows that the chip developed by TFC (the corporation that runs the Therapeutic Forgetting Clinics) does more than just erase unpleasant memories - it implants new ones. The MemeCast warns citizens to "fight the hack".

Nell worships her older sister, Layla. They're one unit, intertwined: Nellayla. As Nell and her best friend, Felix, start their freshman year in high school, on Layla's turf, there's so much Nell looks forward to: Joining Layla on the varsity soccer team. Parties. Boys. Adventures. But the year takes a very different turn. Layla is changing, withdrawing. She's hiding something, and when Nell discovers what it is, and the consequences it might have, she struggles. She wants to support Layla, to be her confidante, to be the good sister she's always been. But with so much at stake, what secrets should she keep?

On the morning of the first day of senior year, Alix Keener awakens from a vivid, terrifying dream in which a ghostly boy warns her: Perennial is all around you. Shaking off the dream - and the cryptic message - is just what Alix doesn’t need as she starts a new life in Beaconsfield, the posh Detroit suburb she and her dad recently moved to after her mom’s death.

They come from different walks of life, with different problems and different hopes and dreams. But they have one thing in common: they need a scholarship to college. And they’re ready to battle seven other contestants on a reality TV show to get it. But only one contestant can win on "The Benefactor". Who will take home the big prize? Tune in to find out.

Siler House has stood silent beneath Savannah’s moss-draped oaks for decades. Notoriously haunted, it has remained empty until college-bound Jess Perry and three of her peers gather to take part in a month-long study on the paranormal. Able to talk to ghosts, Jess quickly bonds with her fellow test subjects, who have their own “gifts.” One is possessed. Another just wants to forget. The third is a guy who knows how to turn up the August heat, not to mention Jess’s heart rate…when he’s not resurrecting the dead.

Aiden Nomura likes to open doors - especially using his skills as a hacker - to see what's hidden inside. He just keeps pulling until one cracks open, exposing the flaws. The universe - or someone else - will fix things. It's like a game… until it isn't. Behind those doors are things Aiden doesn't want to see - things about his society, his city, even his own family. And this time Aiden may be the only one who can fix things… before someone else gets hurt.