Showing results by narrator "Elizabeth Evans" in All Categories

As an obedient orphan of the U.N.A. (the super-country that was once Mexico, the US, and Canada), Alenna learned at an early age to blend in and be quiet - having your parents taken by the police will do that to a girl. But Alenna can’t help standing out when she fails a test that all 16-year-olds have to take: The test says she has a high capacity for brutal violence, and so she is sent to the wheel, an island where all would-be criminals end up.

From the start of Elizabeth McKenzie’s beguiling fiction debut, we are drawn into the offbeat worldview of sharp-eyed, intrepid Ann Ransom. Stop That Girl chronicles Ann’s colorful coming-of-age travails, from her childhood in a disjointed family through her tender adolescence and beyond. Along the way, she discovers the absurdities that lurk around every corner of a young woman’s life, by way of oafish neighbors, overzealous boyfriends, prurient vegetable salesmen, sour landlords, and an iconoclast grandmother, known even to her family as Dr. Frost.

When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the soon-to-be-deceased themselves.

If Ruby Wright could have her way, her dad would never have met and married her stepmother Willow, her best friend George would be more than a friend, and her mom would still be alive. Ruby knows wishes can't come true; some things just can't be undone. Then she discovers a tree in the middle of an Ohio cornfield with a wormhole to nine alternative realities. Suddenly, Ruby can access completely different realities, each containing variations of her "life" if things had gone differently at key moments.

Here, in her first collection in eight years, McCorkle collects 11 brand-new stories bristling with her characteristic combination of wit and weight. In honeymoon shoes, mud-covered hunting boots, or glass slippers, all of the women in these stories march to a place of new awareness, in one way or another, transforming their lives. They make mistakes, but they don’t waste time hiding behind them. They move on. They are strong. And they’re funny, even when they are sad.

Ruby's turning 16 - but the day doesn't turn out to be as sweet as it's supposed to be. Her long-lost father shows up, and Ruby doesn't want to have anything to do with him. Instead, she wants to hang out with her friends: loyal Beth, dangerous Katherine, and gossipy Maria. They have plenty of advice for her - about boys, about her dad, about how she should look, and what she should be feeling. But really, Ruby doesn't know what to think or feel. Especially when a new boy comes into the picture....

Maggie learns all about dog racing when an injured greyhound is brought to the clinic. She goes to the track with Dr. Mac and Taryn, the newest Vet Volunteer, to check on the condition of the dogs. It's risky, but it will be worth it if they can save these greyhounds!

After Sunita's beloved pet cat, Mittens, gets injured on her watch, she wonders if vet work is right for her. She takes an internship at a research lab, but learns that they test on animals and eventually put them to sleep. Sunita loves animals, but can she find a way to work with them without harming them?

The fae are watching. They already suspect Nelay can see them. But as the drought worsens, nine-year-old Nelay must rely more and more on her forbidden sight to keep her family alive. And then the worst happens. Only Nelay's sight will allow her to save her family. With the fae already watching - waiting for Nelay to slip up - she has to be more careful than ever not to reveal herself. Because if the fae realize she can see them, nothing will stop them from claiming her for their dark purpose.

Johanna is steadfast, patient, reliable; the go-to girl, the one everyone can count on. But always being there for others can’t give Johanna everything she needs - it can’t give her Reeve Hartt. Reeve is fierce, beautiful, wounded, elusive; a flame that draws Johanna’s fluttering moth. Johanna is determined to get her, against all advice, and to help her, against all reason. But love isn’t always reasonable, right? In the precarious place where attraction and need collide, a teenager experiences the dark side of a first love, and struggles to find her way into a new light.

1924. May Marshall is determined to spend the dog days of summer in self-imposed exile at her father’s farm in Keswick, Virginia. Following a naive dalliance that led to heartbreak and her expulsion from Mary Baldwin College, May returns home with a shameful secret only to find her father’s orchard is now the site of a lucrative moonshining enterprise. Despite warnings from the one man she trusts - her childhood friend Byrd - she joins her father’s illegal business. When authorities close in and her father, Henry, is arrested, May goes on the run.

Dive into the silly world of Letter Town, where all the people are letters, but not always what you expect! Join Detective D and Little D, the dynamic duo solving mysteries like who is taking all the rotting vegetables from Letter Town? And who is demolishing that house? And WHY? Will you help find Robber R? Will you lock up Bad B for good? Or will you uncover someone else entirely?