Showing results by author "Wendy" in All Categories

When Alyssa must spend the summer with her aunt, uncle, and bratty cousin Emily in Willow Falls she thinks it’s a good time to start over. She’ll be turning 13 after all. What Alyssa doesn’t know is that this charmed town has something big in store for her on her 13th birthday.

It's summer on the Jersey Shore. Children play on the beach. Husbands are off working in the city. And the surf echoes in the night. Here, in this perfect place, a serial killer has no worries in the world - except choosing the next victim. Cam Hastings has come to Long Beach Island with her teenage daughter and the hope that maybe she can save her failed marriage. Cam has never stopped loving her husband, Mike, nor has she been able to outrun her flaws and demons - a vanished mother, a lost sister, and the ugly visions she has of missing children.

Sergeant Frank Hardy is an ex-soldier from Her Majesty's 57th Regiment who is scraping out a living in a small New Zealand settlement by driving a coach and playing rigged card games. But he's haunted by nightmares of things he's seen and done in wartime. When he's asked to find two missing Scandinavian settlers, he refuses - until he catches a glimpse of the cousin of one of the missing men.

The sixth installment of "The Darwin Awards" features all-new stories of the human race's lowest rung on the evolutionary ladder, and is the latest addition to this successful brand. Aside from the bestselling book and audiobook collection that has sold over 1.5 million copies, The Darwin Awards brand includes a website that gets over one million hits per month and a movie starring Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes, T-shirts, greeting cards and much more.

Time no longer exists. At least not to Silene. Serving under the God of Death as a Reaper, she finds herself stepping between life and death every day, collecting souls and guiding them towards the afterlife. When the brother of Death begins interfering in her duties, she begins to question her existence and purpose. And the closer she comes to finding her answers, the further her current reality sinks deeper.

Kelly is taking her twin daughters to their first day of school, ushering them into the classroom, her heart breaking to think they might not need her any more, when she turns around and sees that her newborn baby is gone. As a desperate search ensues, baby Noah is quickly found - parked in front of a different classroom. But when Kelly reaches forward to comfort him, she finds something tucked beside his blanket. A locket that belonged to her sister Freya. A locket Kelly hasn’t seen since the day Freya died.

People travel from afar to a small isle in the Aegean Sea hoping for a single glimpse of Princess Psyche. Their adoration for the mortal woman is so all-consuming that citizens begin to shower her with the very gifts and offerings they once left at the altar of Venus, goddess of love and beauty. But gods are known for their jealousy.

Curl Curl, Sydney, January 1978. Angie's a looker. Or she's going to be. She's only 14, but already, heads turn wherever she goes. Male heads, mainly...Jane worships her older cousin Angie. She spends her summer vying for Angie's attention. Then Angie is murdered. Jane and her family are shattered. They withdraw into themselves, casting a veil of silence over Angie's death. Thirty years later, a journalist arrives with questions about the tragic event. Jane is relieved to finally talk about her adored cousin. And so is her family.

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first Assessment Report. By then, award-winning urban planner Wendy Sarkissian had been singing the climate blues for years. Her colleagues dismiss her fears, so she abandons urban life for a solitary retreat to reconsider her professional and activist directions. With no bush skills, this terrified novice confronts many challenges during her harsh, year-long adventure in the Australian outback. As weeks pass, however, she discovers wellsprings of courage.

Trying to find "The One" is never easy, and engineer Darcy Harris is finding it tougher than most. It doesn't help she's also dealing with a shadowy stalker trying to make trouble for her. But Darcy's determined not to let anyone ruin her life.

Randall Dickson is coping, sort of. An upcoming medical evaluation, one that could end his military career, has him stressed and making bad choices. So when a concerned friend issues a strongly worded “invitation” to Vermont, R. D. is all in, for it’ll be a change of scenery, a temporary job as a bartender, and the opportunity to shake himself out of his self-destructive routine.

Just as a murderer dumps his corpse into the lake across Valley View in Lily Dale, Bella Jordan happens to be at her window, not quite realizing what she's seeing. Jiffy Arden, a neighborhood kid looking for the black cat and stumbling across the killer, begins to have premonitions of being kidnapped during the season's first snowstorm. Sure enough, he vanishes. A body shows up in the lake. Now everyone is pulling out all the stops to find the missing child, identify the victim, and collar the killer - and fast, because he's coming for Bella next in Dead of Winter.

Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights. The government's ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard.

Alex Ryan lives a simple life. She has her farm in the Scottish countryside, and the self-imposed seclusion suits her until a crime that has haunted her for years tears through the calm and shatters the fragile peace she'd finally managed to find. Lori Hunter's greatest love is the mountains. They're her escape from the constant hustle and bustle of everyday life. Growing up was neither traditional nor easy for Lori, but now she's beginning to realize she's settled for both. A dead-end relationship and little to look forward to.

Almost two decades after Sydney's father was imprisoned for being the "Lipstick Killer", she and her family are finally happy. They have new identities, and the secret that her father was a notorious serial killer is one Sydney and her mother will never share, not even with her brother. Sydney has a job she loves, processing crime scenes. Just when she starts to allow herself to think her past might actually be behind her, a woman is discovered murdered, wearing the shade of lipstick her father put on the victims of his brutal killings.

Before Their Crimes: Childhood Trauma, Youth Crime, and the Surprising Journey to Adult Healing is a groundbreaking book that sheds new light on the relationship of childhood trauma and juvenile crime. Wendy Smith uses the framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) to explain how the toxic stress of early childhood trauma can make children vulnerable to committing criminal acts. Smith draws from interviews with twenty men and women from across the racial and social divide who spent years in prison after committing serious crimes as children.

Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised "innovation" is neither sustainable nor always desirable.

Cats have always been wonderful companions and playmates that brighten and enrich our lives but they are also amazing teachers. In this audiobook, cat lovers, both lifelong and reluctant, share what they have learned from their furry companions. Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from the Cat will delight listeners with humorous, heartwarming, and inspiring stories about lessons our feline friends and family members have taught us.

At 24, Harlow Robinson has run headfirst into a quarter-life crisis. Her high school girlfriends have dropped like flies, one wedding after another, forcing her into panic mode. It's fight or flight time, and flight wins - literally. She breaks off a loveless engagement with her childhood sweetheart and abandons a teaching degree to become a flight attendant for Omega Skies.

In the pattern of her popular 40-Day Sugar Fast, Wendy Speake offers you The 40-Day Social Media Fast. This "screen sabbatical" is designed to help you become fully conscious of your dependence on social media so you can purposefully unplug from screens and plug into real life with the help of a very real God. Take a break from everyone and everything you follow online. Disconnect in order to reconnect with the only one who said "follow me."