Showing results by narrator "Carlotta Brentan" in All Categories

Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she’s in charge.

Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants—until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look at Keri Vellis's struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Listeners get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen.

After a rough year at NYU, aspiring writer Lora Ricci is thrilled to land a summer internship at ELLE magazine where she meets Cat Wolff, contributing editor and enigmatic daughter of a clean-energy mogul. Cat takes Lora under her wing, soliciting her help with side projects and encouraging her writing. As a friendship emerges between the two women, Lora opens up to Cat about her financial struggles and lost scholarship. Cat’s solution: Drop out of NYU and become her ghostwriter.

Evan Taft has plans. Take a gap year in Alaska, make sure his brother and single mother are taken care of, and continue therapy to process his father's departure. But after his mum's unexpected cancer diagnosis, and as Evan's plans begin to fade, he hears something - a song no one else can hear, the voice of a mysterious singer... Shosh Bell has dreams. A high school theatre legend, she's headed to performing arts college in LA, a star on the rise. But when a drunk driver takes her sister's life, that star fades to black. All that remains is a void - and a soft voice singing in her ear.

Louis XIV transformed from the Sun King into the King of Shadows when he embraced immortality and became the world’s first vampire. For the last three centuries, he has been ruling the kingdom from the decadent Court of Shadows in Versailles, demanding the blood of his subjects to sate his nobles’ thirst and maintain their loyalty.

Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father's arrest. Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart.

Proud grandmother Matelda Cabrelli always has something to say. But, as she faces the end of her life, she worries she's failed to tell the stories that matter. Most of all, she finds herself needing to tell the tale of her mother Domenica's two great loves. First, Domenica's childhood sweetheart: a boy from her own small coastal town of Viareggio. Second, a mysterious captain: an infatuation forged in the midst of WW2, and the father Matelda never knew.

Occupied Italy, 1944. In the mountain regions south of Bologna, Liliana Nicoletti’s family finds escaped POW James Foley behind German lines. Committed to the anti-Fascist cause, they deliver him to a powerful band of local partisans. But when the SS launches a brutal attack against the Resistance, Liliana’s community is destroyed. Forging an unbreakable bond, James and Liliana's only hope of survival is to make it to the Allied lines. Twelve years later, fate reunites Liliana, newly widowed, and James, now a journalist for a New York magazine.

From award-winning sommelier Shelley Lindgren, who has long been recognized (and now knighted!) for her promotion of lesser-known Italian wines, and acclaimed cookbook author Kate Leahy comes a user-friendly and beautiful guide to Italian wines two decades in the making. The dynamic storytelling duo takes you through a beautifully photographed and delightfully comprehensive journey to understand what Italian wine looks like today: the makers shaping the industry, the innovative ways farmers are adapting to climate change, and the history that paved the path for this current movement.

Best friends Ava, Madison, and Chelsea made a pact to reunite for each other’s weddings when their careers sent them in different directions. But after one of them makes a choice that tears the group apart, an upcoming wedding might be their last chance to heal old wounds. As they return to Italy’s gorgeous coast, the three women revisit their life-changing first trip to Lake Como during college. When Madison comes face-to-face with the college sweetheart who was at the heart of one of the most pivotal times of her life, can they forge a new way forward?

In 1946, Eva leaves behind the rubble of Berlin for the streets of New York City, stepping from the fiery aftermath of one war into another, far colder one, where power is more important than principles and lies are more plentiful than the truth. Eva holds the key to a deadly secret: Project Bluebird - a horrific experiment of the concentration camps, capable of tipping the balance of world power. Both the Americans and the Soviets want Bluebird, and it is something that neither should ever be allowed to possess.

As intrepid human journalist Elif Moora stalks the levels and voids of Artha Station, camera drones on alert, interview subjects reveal the inner workings of Universal Society and offer terrifying hints regarding the existence of a mysterious mastermind, one intent on destroying humanity. Kirk Tormod, pict rogue and undercover USIA agent, has spent the past three years in pursuit of the mastermind. When Elif crashes Kirk's investigation, damage control means recruiting her as his girlfriend.

Madison Cardinal knows some mysteries are best left buried—like her past. But there's a new multi-species exploration team in town and their proposed expedition is stirring up trouble. If Madison's new business as a human pilot in Hantu space is to survive, she needs the exploration team to get in, get out, and leave her cargo route intact. So, she agrees to drop them off.

It's 1948, and Irene Willard has had five miscarriages. She's desperate to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and, now pregnant for the sixth time, checks in to an isolated house-cum-hospital run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure, they say, to 'rectify the maternal environment'.

Spanning more than 30 years of Adriana's life, Alyssa Palombo's The Violinist of Venice is a story of passion, music, ambition, and finding the strength to both fall in love and to carry on when it ends.

Six months after Divorando, Alessa is returning from a diplomatic trip, eager to embrace her post-battle life and live happily ever after with Dante. But as the ship nears shore, a premonition of danger strikes. Little does she realise that the battle of wills between the gods is just beginning.

Mary used to be such a nice girl. She was the resident whiz kid of Liberty Lake, Minnesota—the quiet, chubby teen with the scholarship to an Ivy League school. But three years later, “Ivy League Mary” is back—a thinner, cynical, restless failure who was kicked out of Cor­nell at the beginning of her senior year and won’t tell anyone why. Taking a job at the local grocery store, Mary tries to make sense of her life’s sharp downward spiral.

"Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . " So begins the wish that changes everything—for Geppetto, for the Blue Fairy, and for a little puppet named Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy isn't supposed to grant wishes in the small village of Pariva, but something about this one awakens some long-buried flicker within. Perhaps it's the hope she senses beneath the old man's loneliness. Or maybe it's the fact that long ago, before she was the Blue Fairy, she was a young woman named Chiara from this very village, one with a simple wish: to help others find happiness.

From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies comes an exquisitely crafted work of fiction. Jhumpa Lahiri sets her gaze on the eternally beautiful city, illuminating the frailties of the human condition and dissecting lives lived on the margins.

When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia's aunt, Ena, serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place she was born and spent her early years; nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening.