Showing results by narrator "Julia Whelan" in All Categories

Meg Clark believes in the “hokey pokey” theory of life, Love comes to Meg in the form of Ahmed Bourhani, an exotically handsome Iranian-American who befriends her over a game of chess in a coffee shop. Meg knows that second chances require a leap of faith, and the result is more often a complicated mixed bag than a neatly packaged happily-ever-after. Sometimes in order to heal you have to hurt, but most of all you have to live your life and put your whole self in.

ShadowStrike poisoned the water of Trinity Falls two months ago. Now the Trinity Four, the teens most affected by the poison, have been isolated in a remote mansion under 24-hour medical care while scientists on four continents rush to discover a cure. Meanwhile, US operatives scour the world for the bioterrorists responsible for this heinous crime as two teen virtual spies, also infected, hunt for the criminals on the Internet.

Nyle’s life with her grandmother on their Vermont sheep farm advances rhythmically through the seasons until the night of the accident at the Cookshire nuclear power plant. Without warning, Nyle’s modest world fills with protective masks, evacuations, contaminated food, disruptions, and mistrust. Things become even more complicated when Ezra Trent and his mother, refugees from the heart of the accident, take temporary shelter in the back bedroom of Nyle’s house.

Growing pains are an essential part of teenage life, for better and for worse. Some “mistakes” turn into positive, life-changing experiences, and some apparent triumphs seem, in retrospect, like low points. Some first kisses leave you feeling on top of the world, and others can make you want to hide under a rock. In Dear Teen Me, your favorite YA authors - including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, Tom Angleberger, and Carrie Jones - revisit critical moments from their young lives....

In 1897 a young American woman named Margaret is attending school in England when she is transported to a place of magic. Through her eyes we experience the unfolding of this strange universe - its life, its history, its customs, and its people. As Margaret struggles to comprehend the world into which she has been thrust, she also must learn to handle the new abilities, training, and feelings which she encounters on her journey of exploration. Filled with music and poetry and dance and life, Kingdoms' Corner is the brilliant creation of a rising talent.

After parting ways with her troubled mermaid tribe, Luce just wants to live peacefully on her own. But her tranquility doesn’t last long: She receives news that the tribe is on the verge of collapse and desperately needs her leadership. The tribe’s cruel queen wants Luce dead. Dorian, the boy Luce broke mermaid law to save, is determined to make her pay for her part in the murder of his family. And while the mermaids cling to the idea that humans never suspect their existence, there are suddenly ominous signs to the contrary.

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths - for good and evil - of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies.

Running from a hazy past, mother and daughter tread lightly, checking in and out of hotel rooms, leaving all luggage and collected mementos behind when the mother knows they must run again. They make friends with no one and enemies with some. They are singular — a “Moon Unit”. Hotel workers place bets on whether the strange chain-smoking lady stole that beautiful girl away from her real mother, but to the Moon Unit the hotel people don’t matter.

Growing up in a world of wealth and pastel-tinted entitlement, 15-year-old Carly has always relied on the constancy - and authenticity - f her sister, Anna. But when 14-year-old Anna turns plastic-perfect-pretty over the course of a single summer, everything starts to change. And there are boys involved, complicating things as boys always do.

A Hollywood love story, a Hollywood memoir, a dual biography of two of Hollywood’s most famous figures, whose golden lives were lived at the center of Hollywood’s golden age, written by their daughter, an acclaimed writer and producer. Fay Wray was most famous as the woman - the blonde in a diaphanous gown - who captured the heart of the mighty King Kong. The book’s - and Wray’s - counterpart: Robert Riskin, considered one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. Fay Wray and Robert Riskin lived large lives, finding each other after establishing their artistic selves.

Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come.

At the opening of My Happy Life, the unnamed narrator of this bittersweet fictional memoir has been abandoned in a locked room of a defunct hospital for the mentally ill. She hasn't seen the nice man who brings her food in days; she's eaten the soap and the toothpaste; she tried to eat the plaster on her walls, a dietary adventure that ended none too well. And yet, curiously, the narrator is happy. Despite a lifetime of neglect, physical abuse, and loss, she's incapable of perceiving slight or injury.

After almost 20 years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind.

Originally produced as a one-act play starring Grace Experience and K.K. Glick, Wingspan is the story of a young flight attendant with a fear of flying who is about to work her first transatlantic trip. When a veteran coworker tries to help her through the turbulent crossing, she discovers that a fear of flying is the least of the young woman's secrets.

From midwifing new lambs to harvesting basil, Jessica Gigot invites the listener into her life on a small farm and the uncommon road that led her there. Fascinated by farming and the burgeoning local food movement, she spent her twenties wandering the Pacific Northwest, interning at small farms and doing graduate work in horticulture, always with an eye towards learning as much as she could about how and why people farm.

How do we reckon with our losses? In Animal Bodies Suzanne Roberts explores the link between death and desire and what it means to accept our own animal natures, the parts we most often hide, deny, or consider only with shame-our taboo desires and our grief.

In Thoreau’s God, Richard Higgins invites seekers—religious or otherwise—to walk with the great Transcendentalist through a series of meditations on his spiritual life. Thoreau offers us no creed, but his writings encourage reflection on how to live, what to notice, and what to love. Though his quest was deeply personal, Thoreau devoted his life to communicating his experience of an infinite, wild, life-giving God.

Caught in their last moment of decadent obliviousness, the characters in At Danceteria are so blinded by the strobe lights they can't see what's waiting in the shadows. While fictional, each of the collection's seven stories, set at the dawn of the AIDS crisis, takes as their inspiration a real event.

Picking up immediately following the events of Season 1, Majeaux returns to L.A. after the chaos in Park Heights. Reeling from the Sorrow, he finds new allies in the war he can no longer leave behind. Meanwhile, Tess fights to escape the mansion where she is imprisoned with the immortal, inhuman Watchers.

Tess Bellamy’s return home is anything but triumphant. She’s decided Hollywood isn’t for her, resigned to a normal life of caring for her ailing mother. Linna Severand would be a powerful sorceress…if she could escape her family’s mansion, and usurp their control of her magic. Gabriel Majeaux once tried to save the world from evil. Now he’s the last of his kind, moving from place to place to avoid detection. After a series of horrifying events, their lives collide…and if they aren’t prepared, it’s unlikely they’ll survive.