Showing results by narrator "Julia Whelan" in All Categories

Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside a grim Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation: she becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in. All of them, like her, are lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives.

Just because Mel lives in New Whitby, a city founded by vampires, doesn't mean she knows any of the blood-drinking undead personally. They stay in their part of town; she says in hers. Until the day a vampire shows up at her high school. Worse yet, her best friend, Cathy, seems to be falling in love with him. It's up to Mel to save Cathy from a mistake she might regret for all eternity! On top of trying to help Cathy (whether she wants it or not), Mel is investigating a mysterious disappearance for another friend and discovering the attractions of a certain vampire wannabe.

Angie always thought high school romances were just silly infatuations that come and go. She certainly never thought she would fall in love over one short summer. But then she sees Jack Duluth’s crew cut peek out over a booth in McKnight’s drugstore, and their connection is beyond any childish crush. Suddenly, Angie and Jack are filling their summer with stolen moments and romantic nights. But as fall grows closer, they must figure out if their love is forever or just a summer they’ll never forget.

Ana Robbins was an Olympic star in the making—until tragedy forced her to leave that world behind. At the age of sixteen, she gave up her dream and never looked back. Fourteen years later, she’s a successful defense attorney, revered for her work with minors. But when her former coach turns up dead, Ana lands right back where it all began, and abruptly ended: The Palace, a world-renowned skating facility nestled high in the mountains of Colorado.

When their paths first cross, Ben Livingston is a fledgling screenwriter on the brink of success; Tatum Connelly is a struggling actress tending bar in a New York City dive. They fall in love, they marry, they become parents, and they think only of the future. But as the years go by, Tatum's stardom rises while Ben's fades. In a marriage that bears the fallout of ambition and fame, Ben and Tatum are at a crossroads. Now all they can do is think back....

Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda - four terminally ill patients - have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves - without a single imperfection. Blemishes, scars, freckles, and wrinkles have all disappeared; their fingerprints are different; their vision is impeccable; and, most importantly, their illnesses have been cured.

In her best-selling novel, Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five memorable characters tackling enormous questions: Eden, the preacher's daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze.

Lemoine is a late night radio storyteller. Cali is an OG BASE Jumper, who leaps from his station’s broadcast tower to stick her landing in the headlights of his oncoming car. Set in the clandestine subculture of international BASE Jumping, their story is a free fall into bottomless obsession, and truth or dare sex—with death lurking in the wings. Based on true events.

Several years in the future, an all-female astronaut team circumnavigates the globe once every 90 minutes aboard the International Space Station, prepared to be a powerful presence in space. When a surprise set of "everyday citizens" tags along for the ride, all protocol flies right out the proverbial...airlock.

After their devastating journey from the Anchor to Sophia, Clive and Clover Hamill, Gemma Poplin, and Paz Dedios have all been separated - not only in space, but in their convictions. In the Anchor, Clive would like nothing better than to never speak with Paz again, but when he is tapped to help with her interrogation, the two of them begin to reconcile their differences, which don’t run nearly as deep as they expected. In Sophia, as Clover learns more and more about the city and its enigmatic director, Zeno, his faith in his mission begins to waver.

Kitty Tessler is the winsome and clever only child of self-made hotel and nightclub tycoon Nicolas Tessler. Kitty may not have the same pedigree as the tennis club set she admires, but she still sees herself as every inch the socialite - spending her days perfecting her "look" and her nights charming all the blue-blooded boys. It seems like the fun will never end until Kitty's father issues a terrible ultimatum: she may no longer date the idle rich. Instead, Kitty must marry Andre, her father's second-in-command, and take her place as the First Lady of his hotel empire.

Charles Wallace Murry is old enough to start school, but his sister, Meg, and their friend Calvin know he isn't cut out for school on Earth - Meg worries that he'll be more misunderstood than ever. Luckily, with the help of the three celestial creatures - Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which - there is another place where Charles Wallace can get his education: Intergalactic P.S. 3, a public school in a completely different galaxy.

They said that the first generation of man was brought low by its appetites: for knowledge, for power, for wealth. They said mankind's voracity was so great, the Lord sent his own Daughter to bring fire and devastation to the world. The survivors were few, but over the course of centuries they banded together to form a new civilization - the Descendancy - founded on the belief that the mistakes of the past must never be repeated. Brothers Clive and Clover Hamill, the sons of a well-respected Descendant minister, have spent their lives spreading that gospel.

Fifteen American naval officers unexpectedly seize control of a USS-Ohio class nuclear submarine. In possession of the most formidable war machine ever created, the mutineers form a new terrorist organization that threatens to attack militant extremists and their supporters around the world. In a race against time, the FBI and the US military try to stop the deciphered missile launch codes from reaching the nuclear submarine and unravel a conspiracy that permeates the very foundations of the US government.

Plucked from the Mark Twain archives at the University of California, Berkeley, Twain's notes now form the foundation of a fairy tale picked up over a century later. With only Twain's fragmentary script and a story that stops partway as his guide, author Philip Stead has written a tale that imagines what might have been if Twain had fully realized this work. This is a story that reaches through time and brings us the debut children's book of America's most legendary writer, envisioned by one of today's most important names in children's literature.

Amber Bryant and Tyler Hicks have been best friends since they were teenagers - trusting and depending on each other through some of the darkest periods of their young lives. And while Amber has always felt that their relationship is strictly platonic, Tyler has long harbored the secret desire that they might one day become more than friends. Returning home for the summer after her college graduation, Amber begins spending more time with Tyler than she has in years. Despite the fact that Amber is engaged to her college sweetheart, a flirtation begins to grow between them.

The girls of Devonairre Street have always been told they're cursed. Any boy they love is certain to die too soon. But this is Brooklyn in 2008, and the curse is less a terror and more a lifestyle accessory - something funky and quaint that makes the girls from the shortest street in Brooklyn special. They wear their hair long and keys around their necks. People give them a second look and whisper "Devonairre" to their friends. But it's not real. It won't affect their futures. Then Jack - their Jack, the one boy everyone loves - dies suddenly and violently.

It is said there are 99 Arabic words for love. Bea, an American exchange student, has learned them all: in search of deep feeling, she travels to a Middle Eastern country known to hold "The Astonishing Text", an ancient, original manuscript of a famous Arabic love story that is said to move its best readers to tears. But once in this foreign country, Bea finds that instead of intensely reading Arabic she is entwined in her host family's complicated lives - as they lock the doors and whisper anxiously about impending revolution.

Tess da Costa is a saint - a hand-to-god miracle-producing saint. At least that's what the people in her hometown of New Avon, Massachusetts, seem to believe. And when Tess suddenly and tragically passes away, her small city begins feverishly petitioning the Pope to make Tess' sainthood official. Tess' mother is ecstatic over the fervor while her sister Callie, the one who knew Tess best, is disgusted - overcome with the feeling that her sister is being stolen from her all over again.

Set amid the deep, wild woods of the Yukon, First Light tells the story of Daniel Albrecht and Kerry Egan, young lovers leaving a work trip in Alaska to plan their wedding back home in Chicago. Not long into their trip, both engines of their plane catch fire and send them careening into a mountainside in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. Kerry is seriously injured in the accident, and it soon becomes clear that search-and-rescue teams aren't going to find the survivors in time to save her.