Showing results by narrator "Karissa Vackers" in All Categories

Jen Hansen, Kittie Spears, and Cynthia Nichols have been friends since childhood. They are now approaching forty and their lives have changed, but their insular East Texas town has not. They stay sane by drinking wine in the afternoons, dishing about other women in the neighborhood, and bonding over the heartache of their own encroaching middle age and raising ungrateful teens.

Parenting is full of decisions, nearly all of which can be agonised over. There is an abundance of often conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends and strangers on the internet. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths and offers non-judgemental ways to consider our options in light of the facts.

Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.

Sage Byrd has lived in the coastal town of Spunes, Oregon (not to be confused with Forks, Washington) her entire life. She's learned to love her small world, with the misfit animals on her hobby farm, and her friendships with the town's inhabitants. But when her 5-year relationship ends and her ex, town-golden-boy Ian, suddenly gets engaged, Sage needs a win - something that will convince everyone to stop pitying her all the time, and to put Ian in his place. The Festival of Spunes, the town's annual summer competition, would be the perfect opportunity. She just needs a partner.

It’s been a year since Isabelle Drake’s son, Mason, disappeared from his bedroom. Since then, she hasn’t had a full night of sleep. Everyone else has moved on – the detectives, the press, her husband – but she can’t rest until she knows the truth. Teaming up with true crime podcaster Waylon Spencer, Isabelle investigates her son’s case. But Waylon has motives of his own and as long-forgotten memories of Isabelle’s past resurface, doubt begins to cloud her sleepless nights.

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn't spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegh­eny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital's entrance by a war vet­eran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

After quitting her job at as a NYC journalist, Claire Campbell heads home to South Carolina, planning to finally face her past. But unable to face her mother’s melancholy, and the eerie stillness of her childhood home, she seeks refuge at Galloway Farm. In exchange for free room and board she agrees to work the summer harvest. But as she gets to know the farm's other inhabitants – an illusive elderly couple and a young man named Liam – Claire begins to realise that she isn’t the only one with a mysterious past. And Galloway Farm has secrets of its own

A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He's turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human. At first, Wren resists her husband's fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms? But as Lewis changes, day by day, Wren begins to make peace with the inevitable. After all, this isn't the first time she's lost a loved one.

Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honour her older brother's dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission - Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren't already at his funeral, she would have killed him for this.

Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple, until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things–both because she loves her husband, and for the sake of their eight-year-old son. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her licence due to controversial methods. If Avery Chambers can’t fix you in ten sessions, she won’t take you on as a client. She helps people overcome everything, from anxiety to domineering parents. Her successes almost help her absorb the emptiness she feels since her husband’s death.

Emmeline Clein's own history of disordered eating began when she was just twelve. In Dead Weight, alongside her own experience and through the stories of other women – famous figures from across time and popular culture, and girls she's known and loved – she traces the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia and binge eating disorder.

For fans of The Rose Code and The Paris Library, The Librarian of Burned Books is a captivating WWII-era novel about the intertwined fates of three women who believe in the power of books to triumph over the very darkest moments of war.

At sixteen, Honora 'Nora' Holtzfall is the daughter of the most powerful heiress in Gammamix; her family controls all the money—and all the magic—in the entire country. But when her mother is found murdered in an alley, the family throne and fortune are up for grabs, which means Nora will be pitted against her cousins in the deadly Veritaz trials to determine the rightful inheritor. But there's a surprise rival in the form of Ottoline, aka Lotte, the illegitimate daughter of Nora's aunt, who was left with nuns as a baby.

In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager here isn’t like being a teenager anywhere else. Ruth has a secret that she can’t hide forever. Dora wonders if she can ever truly escape where she comes from, even when good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to reconcile her desire to dance, with the life she’s always known on her family’s fishing boat. Hank and his brothers decide it’s safer to run away than to stay home - until one of them ends up in terrible danger. Four very different lives are about to become entangled.

Charley Beekman is thriving . . . if you overlook that she's financially strapped, stuck in a dull legal career, and the youngest divorcee at the Ruth's Chris Steak House. After being left by a man she was sure was too boring to ever leave, she's figured out that the key to true happiness is protecting yourself from surprises. So when her free-spirited sister announces she's eloping with an on-again, off-again childhood sweetheart, Charley knows she has to stop the wedding before her sister makes the biggest mistake of her life.

Anna Sullivan has just found out that she has another sister . . . And the news is rocking her world. As she tries to come to grips with her mother's infidelity and the knowledge that Pop wasn't her biological father, she loses sight of the fact that there is another person in this equation. Her half-sister, Nikki, who didn't ask for any of this either. But seeing her is just another reminder that Anna's whole life is a lie . . .

Harriet York is not a Scrooge. She donates to the local toy drive, she helps deliver her neighbors’ packages when misplaced by their errant mailman, and her house looks like a Christmas fever dream. So, when Nolan, the Ghost of Christmas Past, appears in her living room ready to perform his holiday haunting, they’re both more than a little confused. As Nolan leads her through memories of Christmases past, everything feels wrong about his so-called mission. Nothing in Harriet’s past seems to hint at her need for a haunting.

Set in neon-drenched Providence, Rhode Island, circa 1987, just two years after a plane carrying four mafia-affiliated law-firm partners exploded over the Atlantic along with the cushy lives of their once wealthy wives.

Annika has lived a life of comfort and luxury as the Princess of Kadier—but now, after the death of her mother, she’s weighted under the looming threat of a loveless marriage arranged by her cold father. Far outside the palace walls, on the outskirts of the land Annika’s family has long ruled over, Lennox is waiting for his moment. His people displaced, his father gone, Lennox knows that it’s up to him to lead his people into a battle to overthrow the Kadierian monarchy. After Annika and Lennox’s worlds collide, they can’t stop thinking of each other.

Grace can't remember how her sister Maddy disappeared, and even the police think she’s lying. But it’s hard to look innocent with a missing girl’s blood on your clothes…One week earlier, Maddy – rejected for the college scholarship of her dreams, abandoned by her only friend on her birthday – was tired of living in Grace’s shadow. She was ready to be someone new, which was exactly what was promised by an exclusive senior trip at their expensive private school. But eighteen years' worth of awkwardness didn't evaporate just because Maddy was holed up in a mountain lodge with thirty classmates.