Showing results by narrator "and Soneela Nankani" in All Categories

One of the brightest stars of Hollywood’s golden age was Lily Adams, the beloved picture of all-American innocence. Why she suddenly vanished from the spotlight was a mystery even to those closest to her. Upon Lily’s death seventy years later, her granddaughter, Carolyn Prior, struggles to understand a woman she loved but never really knew. Then, sifting through the memorabilia of a once-glamorous career, Carolyn comes across a letter from her grandmother.

The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders live in a luxurious, climate-controlled biodome. Outside, the poor and forgotten scrape by with black-market robotics, in slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly superbugs. Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm. As a smuggler with the best robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the slums can offer, her cargo includes the city’s most vulnerable abandoned children.

Tophet County's Midnight Carnival has it all: a mesmerizing (literally) Phæras Wheel, the racy delights of Sphinxter's All-Archonic Peep Show, and the lip-smacking lure of "things which never should have been fried." It's the perfect prelude to the witch's romantic night with her boyfriend, Chad . . . until a creepy fortune teller makes dire predictions with an enchanted deck of Garbage Pail Kids cards, an otherworldly pyromaniac sets the moon on fire, and a shipload of pasta-faced beasties from Lovecraft's backlist lands on the Dunwich Park softball field.

In a world where females are scarce and are hunted, then bought and sold at market for their breeding rights, 15-year-old Aya has learned how to hide. With a ragtag bunch of other women and girls, she has successfully avoided capture and eked out a nomadic but free existence in the mountains. But when Aya's luck runs out and she's caught by a group of businessmen on a hunting expedition, fighting to survive takes on a whole new meaning.

Montgomery, Alabama 1955. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin is tired. Tired of white people thinking they’re better than her. Tired of going to separate schools and separate bathrooms. Most of all, she’s tired of having to give up her seat on the bus whenever a white person tells her to. She wants freedom NOW! But what can one teenager do? On a bus ride home from school one day, young Claudette takes a stand for justice and refuses to get up from her seat—nine months before Rosa Parks will become famous for doing the same.

The celebrated museums of the Fairfleet Institute are known for curating the mysteries of humanity. But they don’t solve mysteries. Luckily, twelve-year-old friends Alex Foster and Asha Singh of the AA Detective Agency do. Or they will … once they get a real case to test their skills as sleuths.

How many decisions do we make in a day? How many do we second-guess, regret, wonder what the other option would have meant for us? What’s the first step to solve any problem and make inspired choices? Focus on your perspective. Here’s a simple mantra: Troubled? Feeling uninspired? Stuck in a loop? Step back, and widen your perspective. Confused? Zoom in to a narrower focus. These techniques can help find an optimal perspective to focus on.

Relationships fall apart and come together. But through it all, there's one thing the Singhs can count on: Their family will always be there for one another.

In Ghana and some other west African countries, when a baby is born, the extended family prepares for a whole week to welcome the little one at a celebration called an outdooring. Andani can't wait to meet her new baby cousin, but a week is so long! As her aunties and uncles prepare cassava, tuo zaafi, fufu, and other delicious foods for the outdooring, Andani will have to patiently (well, okay, sometimes not so patiently) wait to perform the most important job of all: being the first to greet the little one by name.

The wedding of Radhika Singh and Raj Joshi, a weeklong affair at a luxury resort in Cabo, isn’t just going to be the event of the season—it will also mark the union of two highly influential and wealthy Indian-American families. No expense will be spared for what Radhika and Raj have coined “R&R,” a week of rest, relaxation, and celebrating their love.

Perfect for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link, Jo Paquette’s Stories I Told My Dead Lover contains eight searing tales of psychological horror that probe the darkest and most deeply buried parts of the human psyche. A child is forced to grow up too soon. A woman trusts her doctor too much. An abandoned woman isn’t as alone as she thinks. An idyllic holiday masks an unspeakable act of violence. Driven, desperate, fighting for the power to choose their own fate, Paquette’s characters dare to push back at the walls that hold them in.

Sunshine incarnate Bhanu brings big UX energy to whatever she does, including going for the promotion where her only serious competition is her work nemesis, AKA Sunny, the grump with the Denzel voice. She expected to get a reprieve from him while visiting her family in Hawai’i, but the universe has other plans. When Bhanu runs into Sunny at the hotel and witnesses his ex criticizing him about being single, Bhanu does the first thing that comes to mind: she impetuously claims to be Sunny’s girlfriend just to get some peace and quiet.

Amni wakes up one morning to find the sky taken over by a huge brown cloud. Even as she and her friends start to discover more, their city of Mumbai starts reeling from the changes the cloud brings to the weather. Bhura Cloudus (as the media calls it) causes scalding rain to fall, makes birds flee the city, and suffocates every living thing. As chaos continues to build and the climate changes brought by Bhura become disastrous, there are several questions on everyone’s mind: What will the powerful politician, Mota Bhai, do now?

At eight, Nira had only one over-powering wish—to pee standing up like a boy. In fact, to be a boy. Join Nira as she steps into her brother’s clothes and becomes the self-appointed Al Caponesque gang leader of the neighborhood boys. Her oddball yet madly loving family shapes her personality, and a poignant relationship with her brother’s best friend shapes her life. She uses uninhibited candor to detail her coming-of-age journey from Calcutta to London, from tomboy to reluctant woman-in-progress … always trying to fit in, but always failing.

A flight from New Delhi to New York. Two strangers, seat 7A and seat 7B, who have nothing in common. Absolutely nothing. Except they are both hoping the seat next to theirs remains empty. It doesn’t. Mid-flight turbulence and infant incontinence forces them to interact, the cool Wall Street guy and the mom with the drool-stained sweater and ordinary aspirations. Blistering wit, opposing views, and some unexpectedly poignant admissions keep them addictive, engaged, and hopelessly sleep deprived through the fifteen-hour journey.

When their Republic was ravaged by plague and fell into chaos, a monastic order of girls called the Daughters of Zahra took up arms and became known as Warmaidens. Fifty years later, the plague has passed, and the Republic survived, but the Warmaidens live on, training for battle since childhood and providing protection to their communities. 

Former means once-upon-a-time. Nina tried as hard as she could to keep track of everything, but somehow she still forgot about her school project. And her friend Jay is mad at her. With little sister Kavita’s birthday party right around the corner, and her longtime friendship with Jay on the rocks, there’s a lot going on.

For most kids, catching fireflies is a fun summer activity. For twelve-year-old Serwa Boateng, it's a matter of life and death. That's because Serwa knows that some fireflies are really adze, shapeshifting vampires from the forests of Southeastern Ghana. Adze prey on the blood of innocents, possessing their minds and turning them into hulking monsters, and for generations, slayers like Serwa and her parents have protected an unknowing public from their threats. 

Seventeen-year-old Alexandria White only wants to go home, a wish that would be easier to pull off if home weren't thousands of years in the future and halfway across the world. Since her twin sister, Portia, touched an artifact during their history class, she's been stuck in ancient Egypt, surrounded by the unknown. Alex has been hiding in plain sight and putting her skills to use as a royal tutor in the Nile Delta, an area on the brink of war. When tensions rise, everything Alex left behind—the magic that is her birthright, the danger of the Scorpions—is arriving at her door.

In June of 2017, psychology professor Dr. Melissa Dawn hurriedly departs Tokyo on a flight bound for San Francisco, where she intends to win back her lover, whose marriage proposal she recently rejected. But during the flight, mysterious out-of-this-world events envelop the aircraft, and upon landing at SFO, she and her fellow passengers find themselves detained by the military. The secretive government agency overseeing their internment soon reveals the startling truth. Dr. Dawn finds she has traveled 20 years into the future, and has arrived in 2037.