Showing results by narrator "Emily Rankin" in All Categories

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a corrupt baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents - hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's child trafficking.

On the Ark, a colonyship bound outward across the stars, not everyone is a volunteer - or even human. Lovelock is a capuchin monkey engineered from conception to be the perfect servant: intelligent, agile, and devoted to his owner. He is a "witness", privileged to spend his days and nights recording the life of one of Earth’s most brilliant scientists via digital devices implanted behind his eyes. But Lovelock is something special among witnesses. He’s a little smarter than most humans: smart enough to break through some of his conditioning, smart enough to feel the bonds of slavery - and want freedom.

Here on Earth, Danny North is still in high school, yet he holds in his heart and mind all the stolen outselves of 13 centuries of gatemages. The Families still want to kill him if they can’t control him - and they can’t control him; he is far too powerful. On Westil, Wad is now nearly powerless - he lost everything to Danny in their struggle. Even if he can survive the revenge of his enemies, he must still somehow make peace with the Gatemage Daniel North, for when Danny took that power from Loki, he also took responsibility for the Great Gates.

Heartbroken Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s charming, cash-strapped bookshop and finds herself the carer for her ailing grandfather Andrew. She thinks it’s best to move him to an assisted-living home to ensure his care, but to pay for it, Natalie will have to sell up the bookshop. However, Grandpa Andrew owns the building and refuses to budge. Moving into the studio apartment above the shop, Natalie hires a contractor, Peach Gallagher, to do some repairs. His young daughter becomes a regular at the shop, and she and Natalie begin reading together while Peach works.

Cent has a secret. She lives in isolation, with her parents, hiding from the people who took her father captive and tortured him to gain control over his ability to teleport, and from the government agencies who want to use his talent. Cent has seen the world, but only from the safety of her parents' arms. She's teleported more than anyone on Earth, except for her mother and father, but she's never been able to do it herself. Her life has never been in danger. Until the day when she went snowboarding without permission and triggered an avalanche. When the snow and ice thundered down on her, she suddenly found herself in her own bedroom.

Emery Blackwood's life was forever changed on the eve of her high school graduation, when the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her best friend, Lily. She'd once dreamt of running away with August, eager to escape the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and chase new dreams together. Now, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence among this tight-knit community steeped in folklore and tradition, ruled by the seasons and ancient superstitions.

Danny North is the first Gate Mage to be born on Earth in nearly 2,000 years, or at least the first to survive and claim his power, for families of Westil in exile on Earth have a treaty that requires the death of any suspected Gate Mage. The wars between the families had been terrible until at last they realized it was their own survival in question.

True stories inspired by one of the most iconic, beloved, best-selling books of our time. In the 10 years since its electrifying debut, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of people to set out on paths they never thought possible, in search of their own best selves. Here, in this candid and captivating collection, nearly 50 of those people, as diverse in their experiences as they are in age and background, share their stories.

Astrid Strick has always tried to do her best for her three children. Now, they're finally grown up - but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Elliott doesn't have any idea who he really is, or how to communicate with his own sons. Porter is, at last, pregnant - but feels incapable of rising to the challenge. Nicky has fled to distant New Mexico, where he's living the bohemian dream. And Astrid herself is up to things that would make her children's hair curl.

Generations of twin goddesses have long ruled Aeon - until one sister’s betrayal split their world in two. A Great Abyss now divides two realms: one cloaked in eternal night, the other scorched beneath an ever-burning sun. While one sister rules the frozen fortress of Aranth, her twin rules the sand-locked Golden City - each with a daughter by their side. Now those young goddesses must set out on separate, equally dangerous journeys in hopes of healing their broken world. No matter the sacrifice it demands.

It's been happening since Min was eight. Every two years, on her birthday, the same man finds her and murders her in cold blood. But hours later she wakes up in a clearing just outside her hometown - alone, unhurt, and with all evidence of the crime erased. Across the valley, Noah just wants to be like everyone else. But he's not. Nightmares of murder and death plague him, too, though he does his best to hide the signs.

In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

The tide is turning against the colonists in the Revolutionary War, and 18-year-old Elizabeth Morris cannot sit by idly. Quietly disdainful of her Tory parents, who drag her along to society events and welcome a British soldier into their home during their occupation of New York City, Elizabeth decides to take matters into her own hands. She realizes that, as a young woman, no one around her believes that she can comprehend the profound implications of being a nation at war - she is, effectively, invisible. And she can use this invisibility to her advantage.

All seems lost as a giant comet hurtles toward Earth, while Robbi’s Laddertop is thrown into chaos by the unleashing of Energy Spiders that now prowl the Power Web. As Robbi races against time to save the Laddertop and reveal its final secret, Azure and the rest of her research team discover the horrible truth about the comet and the existence of a different, malevolent group of aliens: The Takers.

In this powerful debut novel set at the US Military Academy at West Point, three women - a nationally ranked point guard, the granddaughter of an Army general, and a rebellious homecoming queen - are brought together in an enthralling story of friendship, heartbreak, and resilience. On the eve of 9/11, as Dani, Hannah, and Avery face four grueling years ahead, they realize they’ll only survive if they do it together.

World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there. At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life. When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war.

Ray Bradbury warned of a world where our literary history is taken from us. In Burn the Ashes, some of the best science-fiction authors working today continue to explore the dystopic worlds they introduced in Ignorance Is Strength.

When Laura Costello arrives in downtown Los Angeles, her life has somewhat fallen apart. Her apartment building has caught fire, her engagement to her high school sweetheart has been broken off and she's just been caught in a rare LA downpour and has no dry clothes. But when she seeks shelter in Nina Hill's local neighbourhood bookshop, she finds herself introduced to the people who will become her new family. And as Laura becomes friends with Nina, Polly and Impossibly Handsome Bob, things start to look up.

Cent can teleport. So can her parents, but they are the only people in the world who can. This is not as great as you might think it would be - sure, you can go shopping in Japan and then have tea in London, but it's hard to keep a secret like that. And there are people, dangerous people, who work for governments and have guns, who want to make you do just this one thing for them. And when you're a teenage girl things get even more complicated. High school. Boys. Global climate change, refugees, and genocide. Orbital mechanics.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm's most important client....