Showing results by narrator "Alex Picard" in All Categories

Growing up in a lighthouse on a remote island, Orca Monroe has lived isolated from the world . . . until one day when she finds a cell phone washed up on the beach. Orca has her first conversation with Jack Stevenson, a young man whose older brother, Adam, has gone missing after crashing his seaplane off the coast. Orca becomes Jack's lifeline and his reason to hope that Adam is still alive. One stormy night, Orca finds Adam Stevenson collapsed on her doorstep. As she nurses him back to health, she finds herself spellbound by his inquiring mind and rugged good looks.

An alien spacecraft four times the size of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier enters the solar system. Tensions run hot within the UN, but the alien vessel doesn't approach Earth. Instead, it sits off at L4, over a hundred million miles from Earth, baffling scientists around the world. Chris "Crash" Williams leads an international crew to investigate the appearance of this ghost ship, but he quickly learns that the spacecraft isn't as dead as it seems.

No one ever said being a werewolf was easy. Take Delia, for instance. She’s spent much of her life fighting against her own nature, plagued by nightmares of childhood trauma, and trying to find her place in the world. Many werewolves are just like her: ostracized by their families, forced to live alone and in secret as they await those nights when the Change overtakes them.

Her mother's rules were simple, but Annie Meadows rarely followed them. The rules were required, though, if they didn't want to get caught. Sometimes Annie believed what she and her mother did was wrong, but she was told they were helping the children in the basement. When Annie heard them cry in their locked rooms, it didn't feel that way. As she got older, Annie reflected on what she had done and vowed never to be like her mother. Then she met little Gracie Bradshaw, a child in her daycare classroom. Gracie is special, just like Annie was.

Mary Mulligan has two problems: her wisdom teeth…and everything else. Her only daughter is moving overseas. Her husband would rather go golfing than spend time with her. And Mary’s left to wonder why she abandoned her career ambitions when loneliness is all she has to show for it. Plus her teeth really, really hurt. But that’s one problem she can fix—never mind the stories that say if she gets her wisdom teeth removed, the last thirty years of her life will be erased. In fact, Mary wouldn’t mind if the Mulligan curse were actually true.

Having arrived at recently Dust-bound Colemeno, Trader Padi yos'Galan is essential to Master Trader Shan yos'Galan's plan to recoup Clan Korval's fortunes by establishing new routes for the clan's tradeship. Shan's inner Healer insists Padi come to terms with her as-yet unplumbed psychic abilities, which might place her in the top tier of dramliz, if she can learn control.

Hundreds of years in the future, humans have spread into the stars, with wealthy nation-states settling and colonizing habitable planets, though the deep-seated conflicts of modern humanity have regrettably persisted. Newly appointed Commander Persistence Andrews has to navigate the power struggles of greed, power, and ego, but this woman has grit like no other.

An arcane horror emerges from battle and blood. To stop it, Lily must risk becoming everything she fears. In a Europe devastated by four years of war, a platoon of elite Italian soldiers is horrifically and mysteriously slaughtered. Strangford's occult ability can uncover the truth behind the massacre, but a violent fate stalks him from the trenches. Only Lily stands a chance of changing its course.

Having just survived the most recent assaults, the Royal Navy hopes for a breather. Instead, their enemies have different ideas. They plan a daring attack designed to destroy the Commonwealth's shipbuilding facilities before the Commonwealth's economic might overwhelms them. With two of the Royal Navy's five fleets destroyed, the Admiral of the Fleet must put his life on the line to blunt the enemy attack. If their enemies succeed, the war might drag on for years. The cost to stop them might be his life.

From the opening attack of the conflict, the Royal Navy of the Inter-Planetary Commonwealth has been outnumbered. Unlike their enemies, who had been preparing for this war for years, the Commonwealth was caught flat-footed. Given enough time, the economic strength of the Commonwealth should prevail, but their enemies attack relentlessly. The Royal Navy hopes not for victory but for survival. Hampered by the near-complete failure of their intelligence agencies, time and again they are pushed to the very brink. Innovative approaches and the heroic sacrifices of ships and crews prevent disaster.

Nikki and Kyle Sebastian have a loving and healthy marriage. It’s only missing one thing they want—children. When the couple is diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” and endures several failed rounds of IVF, Kyle, for both their sakes, is unwilling to bury them deeper in emotional and financial debt. Desperate to have a baby, Nikki betrays Kyle’s trust in an attempt to try IVF one more time. The choice fractures their once-stable union. Now burdened with suspicion, resentment, and further grief, their little family is falling apart.

A renowned business innovation leader teams up with a social-personality psychologist to offer that something else—a collection of ten visionary principles to obliterate barriers to change and ignite a whole new level of creative problem-solving. Drawing upon decades of experience working with the world's best-known organizations and their teams, the authors provide practical advice that goes beyond "business as usual" for successfully tackling intractable challenges. The Breakthrough Manifesto explores why these principles are critical for the current times.

I Never Said I Love You is the story of an unlikely love affair between two young people, spanning two decades. Listeners will take a journey across the globe as the couple, years later, unexpectedly reconnect, revisit the past, and ultimately find their own way forward.

A sudden death interrupts what should have been an enjoyable day for Barbara Hollis. Once again, with Craig and Deputy Elwood at her side, Barbara must delve into the unhappy scandals and secrets certain inhabitants of Cobbsville will do anything to hide.

A Solitary Voice, a collection of epic monologues, is now brought to life by a host of incredible actors. From Odysseus returning home to Ithaca to a Necktie pleading not to be discarded, this fantastic collection encompasses an impressive array of styles, characters, and situations.

Piper Woods can't wait to graduate and leave high school—and all its annoying cliques—behind. But when she finds a mysterious notebook filled with the sins of her fellow students, Piper is suddenly drowning in their secrets. And she's not the only one who knows them. An anonymous text invites Piper to choose to punish the cheater, the bully, or the shoplifter. The popular kids with their dirty little secrets. With one text, Piper can make them pay. But the truth can be dangerous . . .

In Book Two (Before She Was Taken), Rebecca Danser went back in time to seek her younger sister, who disappeared when they were children. Still troubled by the growing sense that she should be using her unique ability to save others who have gone missing, Rebecca becomes obsessed by the case of an African-American boy who vanished one year ago.

In this unflinching and riveting coming-of-age memoir, Patricia Grayhall battles sexism in a male-dominated profession. She plunges into a life that is never boring—and certainly never without passion. Tossed around in the rough seas of medical training, chronically exhausted and emotionally drained, Patricia chafes at the toxic masculinity of the culture of medicine facing many of the same issues women face in male-dominated fields today.

How do you mark a quarter century? While parties are great—and we'll have those—I wanted to distill the time in a tangible way. To hold it in my hands, and share with you, dear listeners, in celebration and appreciation. But how? A collection! I dove into my published short fiction. Some I included because they were challenging to write. Several show my growth as a writer. I love them all. There's science fiction, fantasy, and, yes, horror. Plus an all-new story from Night's Edge.

From the moment Teddy Roosevelt's outrageous and charming teenage daughter strode into the White House—carrying a snake and dangling a cigarette—the outspoken Alice began to put her imprint on the whole of the twentieth-century political scene. Her barbed tongue was as infamous as her scandalous personal life, but whenever she talked, powerful people listened, and she reigned for eight decades as the social doyenne in a town where socializing was state business.