Showing results by narrator "Stacey Glemboski" in All Categories

If you thought the suburbs were boring, think again. Kelly Fordon’s I Have the Answer artfully mixes the fabulist with the workaday, illuminating relationships and characters with crisp, elegant prose, and dark wit. The stories in Fordon’s latest collection are disquieting, humorous, and thought-provoking. They might catch you off guard, but are always infused with deep humanity and tenderness.

Lia’s meeting was on the 60th floor, in a corner office, with a view of Chicago that took her breath away. When the power went off, her gut told her something horrible was happening. Then she saw the plane heading for the building. She had to get out.

Two Christmas novellas combined into one heartwarming bundle! Wish Upon a Christmas Star: When Gwen Hayward spots a little girl leaving an anonymous wish on a Christmas tree in a bookshop, she sets out to grant it. A Time-Travel Christmas: After learning of her beloved grandmother's recent death, a heartbroken Elizabeth Rubi makes a wish on a Christmas Eve star asking to see her one more time.

When Hadley's parents leave on a cruise and then are reported lost at sea, her perfect world is turned upside down. In a flash, she is whisked away to a new life of drudgery at Grimm House where she waits on not one but two persnickety old aunts. As she grudgingly fulfills their commands of cooking, cleaning, and even after-dinner-dancing, she comes to suspect the aunts are really witches who are scheming to take the thing she loves best. With only her wits and the help of some unlikely new friends, Hadley makes a plan to escape Grimm House and find her way home before it's too late.

Vienne is trying desperately to support herself and her six-month-old baby when she is threatened with having baby Cooper taken away. A promising mail order bride advertisement causes her to flee to Oregon.

Life is supposed to be about following your dreams, taking risks, and getting lost in love. I have my dream job. Hadley is definitely a risk. Getting lost in love with her is the easiest thing I've ever done.

Henry Oatway…tall, lanky and his ears a size too big. Amber Camfield…pretty, warm, yearning and…lonely. Two hearts that are not yet beating as one. Thankfully there are the twins, too. Penny and Terry have been put in charge of Henry after the unfortunate death of their dear parents, and these twins are no pushovers. They will not leave a stone unturned to make Henry realize he's supposed to declare his love for Amber.

After her boyfriend breaks up with her and her job is downsized, Elizabeth thinks life can’t get any worse. That is until she gets the news of her beloved grandmother’s unexpected death. Instead of spending the holidays together, Elizabeth will be planning a funeral. Heartbroken, she makes a wish on the brightest star in the night sky: I wish I could see Grandma one more time.

In 1971, Elizabeth Garber’s domineering father announced he was sending his “problem children”—seventeen-year-old bookish Elizabeth and her fourteen-year-old brother Woodie—to a school on a sailing ship, in order to “shape up and learn to work.” Sailing at the Edge of Disaster chronicles Garber’s adventures, along with the fifty teen misfits and their teacher chaperones aboard the sailing school housed on a once-magnificent yacht formerly owned by General Post heiress, socialite, and philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post.

A woman begins work on a novel about Mary Shelley while pregnant for the first time. Recently married, she has just moved from New York to Montana. As the woman writes, fragments of Shelley’s story begin to detach themselves from the page. Moving through her reproductive years, Shelley endured a catalogue of losses painful beyond comprehension. Still, she wrote, conceiving Frankenstein in 1818. The woman’s experiences of pregnancy, miscarriage and labour are traumatic and disorienting, especially in the context of political upheaval, climate crisis, and an ongoing pandemic.

The plan: Joy is going to be the best bridesmaid ever for her college BFF Katie’s wedding. And to add to the fun, Katie is playing matchmaker! She’s sure Joy and handsome groomsman Tom are perfect for each other. Joy is so ready for a happily ever after of her own! The reality: Tom doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in Joy. The wedding seems determined to be a disaster. And then there’s the fact that Joy keeps finding herself falling into bed with her friend Charlie. Oops.

The plan: Best friends Clio and Nicole take a fun road trip across Michigan to deliver the centerpieces to their friend Katie’s wedding, giving the groom’s cousin, August, a ride for the big day. Nicole planned everything, from borrowing her mom’s minivan to hotel accommodations, and the perfect amount of sightseeing along the way. The reality: Nicole is having emergency surgery, Clio overslept, her car is way smaller than a minivan, and August turns out to be super hot. The centerpieces? Enormous. The itinerary? Blurry at best. The chemistry with August? Unexpected.

The plan: Bridget brings über-hot Lucas as her date to her cousin Katie’s wedding. That way, no one will think she’s not over Katie marrying Bridget’s high school boyfriend, and she’ll prove to her family she’s not the emotional little girl they all called Bleeding Heart Bridie. The reality: Bridget loses her job. Lucas is a cheating bastard. And the only way she can convince her neighbor Adam to come with her last-minute is by agreeing to chauffeur him on his work trip en route to the wedding. The ruse? Pass Adam off as Lucas. The complication? Adam has a secret of his own.

After barely escaping with their lives, Mel and her friends make it safely to the island. Unfortunately, important members of their group weren’t with them. And what was worse, they soon find out, safety is only an illusion. If survival was a game, Mel was losing. Faced with an unexpected obstacle, they must find a way to escape, only to willingly walk back into the lion’s den to rescue those that were left behind. As Mel’s inner demons cause her to spiral further out of control, she will need to find a strength she’s never even known she’s possessed.

When billionaire Felix Worthington invites the five cast members of the TV show A Little Slice of Haven to recreate their roles twenty-five years later, they're initially skeptical. It's an unusual request, even for a self-professed superfan like Felix. For several of them, playing a member of the Barlow family in the small town of Haven in the 1940s was an experience best forgotten. But living in a recreated version of the town in a warehouse in Montana has its appeal. And the clincher? Two million dollars for each of them, provided they stay in character.

Former Navy SEAL Maddox King’s latest assignment for Blackout is to obtain information on a possible domestic terrorist operation. To do so, he must go undercover as a maintenance man at an estate owned by real estate tycoon Seymore Foggerty. Taryn Parsons is his prime suspect. The woman was plucked out of obscurity to become Mr. Foggerty’s personal assistant. Beneath her innocent demeanor, does she have ulterior motives and plans to gain from the man’s wealth and connections?

Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past. Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life.

“One of Mexico’s greatest living writers,” wrote Jonathan Lethem in 2018, “we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.” In the years since, Rivera Garza’s work has received widespread recognition: she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Yet we have still only started to discover the full range of a writer who is at once an incisive voice on migration, borders, and violence against women, as well as a high stylist in the manner of Lispector or Duras.

Glo has been out of high school for three years but has remained friends with some of the high schoolers. Living in dysfunctional families—as she had while in high school—she has allowed them to spend time at her place, hoping they will miss some of the pitfalls that could prevent them from graduating high school. When their prospects for summer jobs crash, she takes them on an exploration hike through the woods that changes everything.

When my teammates drag me to a club for my 21st birthday, the last thing on my mind is meeting a new guy. I'm not the kind of girl who gets wrapped up in a stranger on a sweaty dance floor. Except, that's exactly what happens.