Showing results by narrator "Barbara" in All Categories

Orb is four years old when she first hears the wonderful music of the morning. Gifted with a magic that makes her songs irresistible anytime she sings, she spends her life seeking the source of the mystical music. Orb finally feels she's getting somewhere when she hooks up with the Livin' Sludge, a rock band that could use all the magic they can find. Unfortunately, there's still the pesky little matter of a prophecy to deal with - the prediction that Orb will someday marry Evil, the devil himself.

Though she hopes for a quiet, uncomplicated life for herself, Dorothy Clark wants nothing more than to stir others up. Specifically, she dreams of writing something that will challenge people as much as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin seems to have. But in 1850s Mesquite Springs, there are few opportunities for writers - until newspaperman Brandon Holloway arrives, that is.

Former cop Lily Yu has her sister's wedding to attend, a missing magical staff to find, and now must deal with her grandmother's decision to return to the old country. Lily could turn to the man she's involved with for advice, but for all the passion that flares between them, she doesn't really know Rule Turner - she's just bound to him for life. Rule happens to be a werewolf, and Lily wonders just how far she can trust him.

Thornton Wilder is one of America's most important literary figures. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times - for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth - and is the only person to be awarded the Pulitzer for both fiction and drama. Included here are four of his key works, set in different times and places, but sharing the same fundamental motifs - the universality of human experience and our search for life's meaning.

It's 1892, and Amelia and her now-husband Radcliffe Emerson have settled down in Victorian England after their escapade in Egypt. They're raising their young son Ramses and everything seems normal–until they are approached by a damsel in distress. Lady Baskerville's husband, Sir Henry, has died after uncovering what might be a royal tomb in Luxor. Despite rumors of a curse haunting all those involved with the dig, Amelia and Radcliffe proceed to Egypt and realize that Sir Henry did not die a natural death.

What if the life you're chasing is the one you left behind? This is the story of two strangers who have loved and lost. Her world feels small and hushed, scattered with unfulfilled dreams. His is full of noise and endless, dizzying change. But one day - this day - an extraordinary encounter will force them both to revisit everything that was and everything that could be.

London, 1527. Abducted as a child-heiress, Honor Larke escapes to London seeking justice from the only lawyer she knows: the brilliant Sir Thomas More. With More as her affectionate guardian, Honor grows to womanhood, when the glitter of the royal court lures her to attend Her Majesty, Queen Catherine of Aragon. But life at Henry VIII’s court holds more than artifice for an intelligent observer, and Honor knows how to watch - and when to act.

Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a “contract wife” performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, and she soon took on bigger and more significant roles at the Agency. She parlayed her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA.

Are you tired of bedtime battles and restless nights? Do you wish for a magical solution that soothes your little one into a peaceful sleep while filling their heart with warmth and wisdom? "Bedtime Stories for Kids Ages 2-6" is here to transform your evenings into enchanting moments of connection and calm.

A brisk early November Hyde Park morning is shattered by a child’s scream. How two adults react in those next few desperate moments sets the plot in motion in this Pride and Prejudice alternative focusing on 21-year-old Kitty Bennet.

In Central Park, Assistant DA Alex Cooper and Detective Mike Chapman race to track down a serial killer. Is the body found in the Ramble the first victim of a deranged psychopath, or could other missing women be connected? The sanctuary in the middle of the city for thousands of New Yorkers and tourists who fill it every day, may very well become a hunting ground at night for a killer.

Award-winning novelist Vikram Seth is renowned worldwide for his magnum opus A Suitable Boy. But his dazzling debut, though less well-known, is equally innovative, masterly and ambitious. First published in 1986 and inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, it is written entirely in verse, comprising almost 600 stanzas of rhyming sonnets. This epic poem focusses on the interconnected stories of five young professionals, as they make their way in the 'unfettered city' of San Francisco in the '80s.

Before "Fred and Ginger" there was "Fred and Adele", a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatrical career together, Kathleen Riley traces the Astaires' rise to fame from humble midwestern origins.

Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier, Drayton Conneley, are catering a Victorian Christmas party at a swanky mansion in downtown Charleston. Drucilla Heyward, the hostess, is one of the wealthiest women in town. As the champagne flows and the tea steeps, Drucilla is so pleased with the reception by her partygoers that she reveals her secret plan to Theodosia. However, before she can make the announcement, Theodosia finds her crumpled unconscious in the hallway.

It’s been two years since Ellie and her family left their lives in America behind and moved to a small Welsh village to run her husband’s family inn. Having fought to save it from disrepair, Ellie is shocked when her sister-in-law, Sarah, breaks the news that the inn is facing financial trouble and might have to close after Christmas, a thought that breaks all their hearts.

Sasquatch! That's who Judy looks like in her school picture. Antarctica! That's where Judy's been sent three times in a single sour-ball week to chill out. Can Judy's mood get any worse? Well, duh! Of course it can. Unless…it's Backward Day! That means it's time for Judy to turn that frown upside down, make lemonade out of lemons, and be nice to stinky little brothers. Can she stay in a good-not-bad mood for an entire day? How about seven whole days? Will her friends freak out when they see a tidy, on-time Judy who smells like cupcake lip gloss?

Jessie's Cafe is a staging place for a group of amusing, entertaining, sometimes raucous but always very real people. Each character is wildly unique yet their human yearnings and shortcomings unite them in a common, and uncommonly strong, bond. This unlikely family includes Jessie, the gorgeous, 79 year-old who owns the waterfront dive. Louise is the cook. Willie is Jessie's gay grandson. And Joe Jones is the deeply devoted and continually unfaithful lover whom Louise tries hard to live without.

The half millennium between the creation of the English nation in around 550 and the Norman Conquest in 1066 was a formative one. This groundbreaking series rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of thirty incredible men and women, as told by their contemporary admirers. Nobel...

Former Chief of Staff to President George H.W. Bush and New York Times bestselling author of The Man I Knew, Jean Becker shares touching and pivotal life lessons from a leader that left a mark on people's hearts and souls.

In A Promise for Spring by ACF Book of the Year novelist Kim Vogel Sawyer, Geoffrey Garrett leaves his 17-year-old fiancée in England while he establishes his Kansas ranch and builds her a proper house. But when he sends for her five years later in 1874, it's clear her feelings have changed far more than his. Despite his desire to marry and her wish to leave, they forge a compromise. If she remains as the ranch's housekeeper until spring, he will pay for her trip back home.