Showing results by narrator "Jesse Vilinsky" in All Categories

Coa, who was born feral in the North Transatlantic wilds, has just been captured. Now, Coa is subject to public humiliation and execution in a gruesome spectacle known as The Great Hunt. If participants die in the Great Hunt, their entire family will be executed—in front of everyone. The nationalist regime, known as the Allied Force, will not rest until all foreigners are exterminated. Coa’s best hope of survival might be Princess Ife—born of privilege, but newly married into the authoritarian lineage.

It’s been 18 months since the Raxter School for Girls was put in quarantine. The Tox turned the students strange and savage, the teachers died off one by one. Cut off from the mainland, the girls don’t dare wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure as the Tox takes, their bodies becoming sick and foreign, things bursting out of them, bits missing.

Near the dying English seaside town of Ilmarsh, local police Detective Alec Nichols discovers 16 horses’ heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen travels to the scene, the investigators soon uncover evidence of a chain of crimes in the community - disappearances, arson and mutilations - all culminating in the reveal of something deadly lurking in the ground itself.

Nothing will get in the way of Millie Price's dream of becoming a Broadway star. Not her lovable but super introverted dad, who raised Millie alone since she was a baby or her drama club rival, Oliver, who is the very definition of Simmering Romantic Tension. Millie needs an ally. And when an accidentally left-open browser brings Millie to her dad's embarrassingly moody LiveJournal from 2003, Millie knows just what to do—find her mum. But how can you find a new part of your life and expect it to fit into your old one without leaving any marks?

When fourteen-year-old Dorea endured the trial of Mother's Wrath, she hoped to be the recipient of one of its three elemental powers: water, lightning, or wind. To her surprise, she was the first in her village to be gifted all three, making her the most powerful mage of her generation. But outside peaceful Whitecliff, the winds of war are blowing once again.

Firmly rooted in the modern American West, this story collection follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A 74-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird-flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered sage grouse.

Most nights, you’ll find Alison Hunter at The Venue, the kind of sweaty Nashville spot that’s on the circuit for bands like Bon Iver and Death Cab. Sounds glamorous—but not for Al, who stamps hands at the door with Julien, the quiet coworker who treats her like a little sister. When she can sneak off, she bums drinks from the tattooed bartender and watches the bands, wondering if she’ll ever finish a song of her own after her disastrous attempt to play in public.

The Soviet army is sweeping into East Prussia, with their sights set on punishing Germans for the Nazis' reign of terror. Thirteen-year-old Giti and her younger brother, Otto, live with their mother and grandmother. When soldiers arrive and brutally attack the two adult women, killing their grandmother, the farm is set ablaze. The children, along with their severely wounded mother, are loaded into a crowded train bound for the Soviet Union.

Bea dreams of becoming a spy like her mom. Growing up in the Pangean Hotel, a secret sanctuary for spies, she spends her time studying self-defense, languages, codebreaking, and field medicine, preparing for the day when she can follow in her mother’s footsteps. But her mom has a different plan for Bea: She wants Bea to attend boarding school like one of the normal folk. Bea can’t think of a worse fate, the Life is all she’s ever known. But you do not say no to the Pangean League’s top spy.

Riley Thomas is feeling stuck—she’s moved from California to Nebraska, she’s on a weeklong Oregon Trail family bonding excursion, and her luggage is lost. There’s no one her age on the trip except a tall, dark and irksome cowboy who wrongly assumes she has zero ability to handle the great outdoors. She can’t wait for this misery to end—even though going “home” isn’t even possible anymore.