Showing results by narrator "Caroline McLaughlin" in All Categories

The riveting story of China's rise from economic ruin to global giant in the four decades is illuminated by another, equally fascinating, narrative beneath its surface - the story of the country's emerging artistic avant-garde and the Chinese people's ongoing struggle for freedom of expression. By following the stories of nine contemporary Chinese artists, The Phoenix Years shows how China's rise unleashed creativity, thwarted hopes, and sparked tensions between the individual and the state that continue to this day.

More than a decade ago, six kids witnessed unspeakable horror. Not all of them lived to tell. Riza is no longer that kid - troubled, angry, and filled with secrets. She’s grown up, and when she stumbles upon an on-line forum about the shuttered Northern Michigan Asylum, she tries to pretend it never happened - not the years of experimentation, nor the strange midnight writings, and most of all, not the murders. But someone wants her to remember. Deaths shockingly similar to those that occurred in 1989 are happening again.

Nadine Levitt expected her 28th year of life to include wedding cake and a work promotion, not a three-day stint as a bloodsucker’s all-you-can-eat buffet. She escapes her captor’s swampy lair alive, but not quite human. Turns out, turning into a vampire isn’t an overnight thing. More like a year-long marathon of misery - insomnia, teething, and weird urges. A whole year of struggling, and failing, to come to terms with losing her humanity. To reconcile her goodness with the monster she’ll become. And the only one who can guide her through it isn’t a person at all.

When beautiful and successful Susan Harris jumps from the roof of her apartment building, she sets a tremor through her New York City mothers’ group that forces them all to look at one another with new cynicism: How could this have happened right under their noses? To one of them? Between her death and the harrowing private school admission season on the horizon, these women are forced to explore the hard truths about themselves.

As Liuan Huska went through years of chronic pain, she wondered why God seemed absent and questioned some of the common assumptions about healing. Countering a Gnosticism that pits body against spirit, Huska takes us on a journey of exploring how healing is not an escape from the limits of the body, but becoming whole as souls in bodies and bodies with souls. As chronic pain forces us to pay attention to our bodies' vulnerability, we come to embrace the fullness of our broken yet beautiful bodies. She helps us redefine what it means to find healing and wholeness.

Third grade teacher Heather Carver has had her eye on Levi Rhodes for a couple of years now, but he seems to be blind to her attempts to charm him. She's about to throw in the towel, when an accident on his horse farm finally has him looking her way. Levi, who started his boarding stable from scratch, thinks he has everything he needs. Plenty of money, horses, and his beloved Texas Hill Country. Women have never brought him anything but trouble, and he's not interested.

China, 1700s. Lady Qing has spent the past seven years languishing inside the high red walls of the Forbidden City. Classed as an honored lady, a lowly ranked concubine, Qing is neglected by the emperor, passed over for more ambitious women. But when a new concubine, Lady Ying, arrives, Qing’s world is turned upside down.

Barsalayaa Shefali, famed Qorin adventurer, and the spoiled divine warrior empress O-Shizuka have survived fights with demon armies, garnered infamy, and ruled an empire. Raised together since birth, then forced into exile after their wedding and reunited amidst a poisonous invasion, these bold warrior women have faced monumental adventures and catastrophic battles.

Since she was a child, the divine Empress O Shizuka has believed she was an untouchable god. When her uncle, ruler of the Hokkaran Empire, sends her on a suicide mission as a leader of the Imperial Army, the horrors of war cause her to question everything she knows. Thousands of miles away, the exiled and cursed warrior Barsalyya Shefali undergoes trials the most superstitious would not believe in order to return to Hokkaran court and claim her rightful place next to O Shizuka.

When Se-oh, a recluse still living with her father, returns from an errand to find their house in flames, wrecked by a gas explosion, she is forced back into the world she had tried to escape. The detective investigating the incident tells her that her father caused the explosion to kill himself because of overwhelming debt she knew nothing about, but Se-oh suspects foul play by an aggressive debt collector and sets out on her own investigation, seeking vengeance.

When her sister disappears, the only clue Leah has is a cryptic message: Underground. By the Woods. It's 1989 in the sleepy town of Longview, Texas, when 10-year-old Lucy disappears. Her parents, the police, and the community all brace for the worst, assuming her body will soon be found in Big Woods. Just like the other unsolved kidnappings. But then Lucy's 14-year-old sister, Leah, starts having dreams about Lucy - dreams that reveal startling clues as to what happened. Leah begins her own investigation, and soon she meets a reclusive widow who may hold the key to finding Lucy....

At 35, Leslie Buck made an impulsive decision to put her personal life on hold to pursue her passion. Leaving behind a full life of friends, love, and professional security, she became the first American woman to learn pruning from one of the most storied landscaping companies in Kyoto. Cutting Back recounts Buck's bold journey and the revelations she has along the way.

Nothing good ever happens after dark. Those were the words country singer Daleigh McDermott's father always repeated. Now her father is dead, and Daleigh fears she has returned home too late to make things right. As she's about to flee back to Nashville, she finds a hidden journal belonging to her father. His words hint that his death was no accident.

The ground work has been laid. Justice for Lacy’s husband and the other victims of the attack six months ago would soon arrive. Expert hacker and close friend Aaron Hunter is working with her side by side to help ensure that happens. But when FBI Agent Will Caison returns to Washington, vowing to help Lacy once again, a disruption to their plan changes everything they had been working toward.

As the skies turn red over Los Angeles, Jack the Ripper roams once more. Saucy Jack is back, and women are dying. Caught up in the case, artist Lizzie Stride, whose custom masks are being used in the Ripper murders, is haunted by dreams of the crimes. And even more disturbing? Her name is identical to a victim from 1888. J. R. Damien, a newspaper reporter, is likewise haunted by dreams of the murders, dreams vivid with details only the Ripper could know. Details that later prove true. When he meets Lizzie, he knows something else only the real Ripper would know-she's the next victim. Or will be if he doesn't stop Jack, even if that means stopping himself.

Growing up in the only Korean family in a Minnesota town, Michelle Lee-Barnewall has felt the pain of racial discrimination and the resulting identity confusion that follows. Through the telling of her personal story, she seeks to transcend the current divide between those who emphasize social justice concerns and those who believe these concerns compromise the core of the gospel. A Longing to Belong integrates a biblical worldview and personal experience on the topic of race and race relations.

On the eve of the return of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997, young Ophelia asks her peculiar great-aunt Violet about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II, the disappearance of her uncle Raymond, and whether her grandmother, Emily, was a murderer. Emily’s marriage—three times—to her father’s mortal enemy causes a stir among three very different Hong Kong Chinese families. But the bickering around the scandal of Emily’s marriage is violently disrupted by the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of Hong Kong on Christmas Day, 1941.

Evette Harding's world of maternal bliss is perfect except for one thing: there’s something wrong with her husband. John is a lawyer and loving husband by day. However, ever since the baby, dark habits from the past have been re-emerging. Once, she was fine with playing Bonnie to his Clyde. Now, with the baby to think about, it terrifies her. As she delves into his hidden life and dangerous lies, she begins to fear for her safety. Will she go too far to protect her child? Delivery is a dark domestic thriller with a jaw-dropping twist.

A collection of 15 beloved Chinese myths, legends, and folktales that are rich in tradition and culture. Each story transports the listener back to ancient times and is filled with excitement, adventure, magic, and laughter.

May Sotheby is the heiress to the ritziest restaurant in Grape Seed Falls. In business for over a hundred years, her father wants the restaurant in Texas Hill Country to stay in the family for generations to come, so he lays down some hard news for May: She has one year to find a husband, or the restaurant where she's worked since a teen will go to her already-married sister.