Showing results by narrator "Elena Rey" in All Categories

As next-door neighbors and best friends, Claudia and Rachel share everything. But in Claudia’s mind, that means recipes and clothes—not husbands. So it’s a huge shock when Rachel runs off with hers. If that weren’t enough, her mom shows up at her door with heavy suitcases in tow. She intends to stay until Claudia has pulled through this. But behaving like a typical mother or grandmother isn’t Gloria’s style, and Claudia wonders why she’s really there.

Brought to you by Penguin. BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn't. My first love was figure skating. Katarina Shaw has always known she’s destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system...

Aidan Thomas is a hardworking family man and a respected member of his community. He's also a kidnapper and serial killer who has murdered eight women. And there's a ninth, a woman he's renamed Rachel, imprisoned in a backyard shed where she fears for her life. When Aidan's wife dies, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Cecilia, are forced to move. Aidan brings Rachel along, introducing her to Cecilia as a family friend who needs a place to stay. After five years of captivity, surely Rachel is too brainwashed to attempt to escape.

Visit the Antidote of Uz – a prairie witch who can keep your memories safe. Speak into her emerald-green earhorn, and your secrets, your shames, your private joys, will leave your mind and enter hers. Until the Black Sunday storm, which flattens wheatfields, buries houses and vaporizes every memory stored inside the Antidote. She wakes up empty – as bankrupt as America. If her customers ever discover the truth, her life will be in danger.

Eight students walk into an exclusive writers’ retreat, but only one will walk out with a life-changing opportunity to realize their creative dreams. Effy is piecing together a story about the tragic betrayal that led to her mother’s death. Arlo hopes to publish a novel – but he’s also trying to start a new chapter with Effy after he broke her heart and ghosted her three years earlier. Their mentor is Meredith Graffam, enigmatic writer, director and actress, whose compelling accounts of her own near-death experience on the same retreat decades before continue to spark controversy.

In the summer of 1877, Bridget is orphaned when her unreliable father succumbs to a snakebite as they're crossing the Kansas prairie. Arriving in Dodge City as a penniless orphan, she's quickly recruited for work at the Buffalo Queen brothel and befriends her bookish mentor Constance, securing her home and employment as the favorite of Sheriff's Deputy Jim Bonnie. As winter creeps in from the plains, female gunfighter Spartan Lee rides into town, and Bridget falls in love with her the moment their paths cross.

Wolf pack politics, heart-pounding action, dark magic, newfound family dynamics, and shifter romance come to an explosive climax in the incredible conclusion of the Golden Court Trilogy by bestselling author A.K. Mulford. The only thing more challenging than taming a sorceress is protecting her...

“An uplifting tale of friendship, kindness, and connection . . . This joyful story of the unlikely friendship between five strangers and one remarkable cat is a must-read for cat lovers.”—Marianne Cronin, author of The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot Núria, a single-by-choice...

In this high-octane conclusion to Ivelisse Housman’s Unseelie duology, which Andrew Joseph White calls “a portal to a world of glimmering fae and blistering magic,” two sisters discover that the things that make them different can lend them more power than they ever imagined. Isolde...

When the first letter appears in Kay Anderson's locker, it carries one instruction: dye your hand blue. She definitely shouldn't follow it. Kay doesn't have time for secret societies: as a scholarship student at up-and-coming Manhattan prep school Davison High, she knows her job is to work hard...

An intimate collection of spells and stories to infuse our lives with ritual, history, and magic from the visionary artist and infamous witch Bri Luna, founder and creative director of “The Hoodwitch.” Blood Sex Magic is an invitation and an awakening—a guide toward a life of connection...

Rachel Hartman's Seraphina meets The Priory of the Orange Tree in Lady Dragon, a sapphic YA romantasy from A.M. Strickland. The age of queens is over . . . unless they can save it. Since the last war between humans and dragons left the leaders of both species slain — the last human king of...

With so many immediate and intensifying crises unfolding around us, how can therapists adapt to promote healing and growth? “As these intriguing essays make clear, some of the finest minds in the world are thinking through the problems and arriving at powerful answers." —Bill McKibben...

The start of a swoony, high-energy duology that Emily Lloyd-Jones, author of The Bone Houses, calls “reminiscent of classic fairytales yet brimming with a charm all its own.” “A world of glimmering fae that sparkles with mystery, adventure, and enchantment.” —Andrew Joseph White, New...

An epic comedy about love, spirit, and the quest for transcendence in an anything-but-transcendent America, from the author of the perennial cult bestsellers The River Why and The Brothers K. A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young...

From the Man Booker-shortlisted author of Fever Dream comes a hotly anticipated new collection of eerie short stories. Playful and unsettling, teeming with the energy of barely contained violence, Seven Empty Houses dismantles the neat appearance of domesticity to expose the darkness and discomfort that lies beneath.

Between chronic health issues and an overprotective mother, twenty-two-year-old Oriah Pera feels like she’s stuck waiting for her life to begin. But when her mother’s job takes them to Majora, Ry’s ready to break free and make this summer hers. In her first small act of rebellion, she escapes to explore the island on her own – only to run into an infuriatingly charming Spaniard who sees her as nothing more than a sheltered tourist. With unexpected tension simmering between them, Ry isn't sure if she should start listening to her head or her heart.

A twisted game master has no intention of letting players go in this escape room horror story. “You have been chosen to participate in a new Escape Room. You can bring one person. The one you trust the most. Your very best friend.” When Lexi receives an invitation to participate in a...

For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before senior year. Once, she had Alex, her loyal best friend, the one who always had her back. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his touch. Now, July is alone. Every single person in her small town of Lithia has disappeared.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee and series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short...