Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Jill Araya" in All Categories

Anna's father disappeared months ago. He had to flee the country because the cruel new Communist government wanted to arrest him. The Communists may have arrived like heroes at the end of World War II, saving Czechoslovakia from the Nazis - but since then, things have changed. Now Anna's whole family feels threatened and doesn't know whom to trust, so she and her mother and sister set out to escape, hoping to reunite with Papa.

There’s more to becoming a top chef for 17-year-old Isabella Fields than just not getting chopped...especially when the chances of things heating up with an intriguing boy and becoming a food star in the kitchen are both on the chopping block. Aspiring chef Isa’s family life has fallen apart after the death of her Cuban abuela and the divorce of her parents. She moves in with her dad and her new stepmom, Margo, in Lyon, France, where Isa feels like an outsider in her father’s new life.

Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year. Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did. On the day of Cora’s 12th birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever - and stop him.

Newbery Honor winner Kathryn Lasky, author of the Guardians of Ga’hoole series, delivers a riveting adventure about young British spies on a secret mission in Germany in WWII.

In this witty and delightful follow-up to the “glam and glorious” (Kat Ailes, author of the Expectant Detectives Mysteries) Pomona Afton Can So Solve a Murder, Pom finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery that threatens her up-and-coming charity foundation and—worst of all—her...

For over seven hundred years, the Spartan Republic’s citizens have known one truth: Terra is coming. Descendants of exiles who dared to defy an emperor, the star nation’s 70 billion citizens spent the centuries training, arming…and waiting. Even with the Terran Emperor dead, the so-called “Confederation of Man” still claims sovereignty over all humans…and Sparta would rather die on their feet than subjugate themselves once more.

Café au lait, career epiphanies, and love triangles. Just a typical day at your summer job. When recent business school grad and meticulous ten-year planner, Kat McLauren, takes an unplanned au pair position in the French Riviera to schmooze a future employer, she haphazardly upholds her reputation while rejuvenating a local tourism magazine, grappling with three unruly kids, and avoiding a romance with the host family's eldest son.

Prometheus was more than an asteroid. It was a cosmological time capsule eons in the making, revealing that space is an even bigger mystery than could be fathomed. As a paleoarchaeologist, Dallas was no stranger to ancient mysteries. But after witnessing the destruction of millions of lives, she’ll need more than determination to stop it from becoming billions. Broken, alone, and with nowhere else to turn, she teams up with an unlikely group destined to save mankind.

Eva has never felt like she belonged...not in her own family or with her friends in New York City, and certainly not at a fancy boarding school like Hardwick Preparatory Academy. So, when she is invited to join the Fives, an elite secret society, she jumps at the opportunity to finally be a part of something.

Every day in Clara's world, a dark cloud descends upon her town. The storm comes like clockwork, erasing everyone’s memories. Everyone except Clara. But after Clara’s father mysteriously disappears, things change. The Diviners, captive souls who feed off memories, come for her. With the help of a mysterious figure, Clara escapes the Diviners and flees to Khalom, a city in a parallel world, where she hopes to find refuge. There, Clara discovers that she is a Noble—one of the few people to have knowledge of both worlds, along with the ability to venture between the two.

In 1847, the Donner party resorted to eating human flesh to survive entrapment at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. They became infamous almost instantly, with hundreds of books, stories, and interviews exploring their misery. None of them tell the extraordinary story from the first-person point of view of the female survivors. Until now. Three women yearned to make better lives in California: Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Gravesset out west with her family in search of a home that would be free of disease like the ague that had afflicted her mother and sisters for years.

When the town council hires Chloe Abbington's close friend, famous wall muralist Lana Easton, to paint a mural advertising the return of the floating amphitheater, not everyone in Whisper Cove is happy about the theater or Lana. Naysayers think the noise from concerts and visitors will disrupt their quiet community. It doesn't help that a lot of money taken from the town's budget is being used to pay the muralist for her services. The mood turns even more grim when Lana is found dead, and since Chloe was there alone to discover her body, that makes her the prime suspect.

When a minivan slides off the road into an icy lake, Officer Samuel Miller narrowly rescues a woman and child from certain death. Only, Rachel Harding insists the crash is no accident—it’s eerily similar to how her sister and brother-in-law recently died. As the unexplained attacks escalate, Samuel is determined to protect Rachel and her orphaned niece at all costs. But when they make a shocking discovery, their investigation becomes even more dangerous, and survival may be impossible.

Socorro Security founder Ivy Bardot had dedicated the last two years to taking down a cartel. She’d even sent in her former FBI partner, Carson Lang, as an undercover operative. Now the syndicate was coming for members of her team. Despite having her trusted K-9, Ivy also needed Carson out and by her side. But revealing his true identity could come with a dire price. They’d sacrificed so much, including their own feelings, to seek justice. Were they prepared to risk their own lives?

There’s one building on her island that Halley has never visited: the Mercenary House. Perched atop a mountain, surrounded by unnaturally evergreen foliage, the House is rumored to be a breeding ground for criminals. Mercenaries are liars, cheats, spies . . . and maybe, depending on who you ask, killers. At the Warsafe headquarters in Seattle, Roscoe is beta testing the company’s new video game. It’s her job to track down glitches—but something is different about this one.

The summer of ’88 in Wildcat Springs, Indiana, was supposed to be thoroughly boring. But when Bobbi Sue Baxter’s friend enters her into a sweepstakes (without her knowledge) to make a guest appearance on daytime drama, The Cute and the Cunning, and she wins, the season starts to get complicated. Then, her friendship with Hemingway “Hemi” Miller evolves into something more, and things slide toward complex.

An easy-to-read guidebook to how flow—that feeling we all get when we’re so into what we’re doing that we lose track of time—can change our lives. The Flow Habit is filled with simple exercises and inspiring stories from people around the world who have experienced the life-changing...

One day, Lou notices someone sneaking around the mysterious house. When she hears a crash inside, she runs to help. The body of a man lies inside, unconscious. As Lou arrives on the scene, someone else is leaving in a hurry. Lou stays with the man only to find he’s already dead, and realizes she might’ve just let his murderer run free.

Ruby Malone Gutierrez is running away, although she won't admit that to herself. Suffering from hearing loss after an illness, the former music teacher wants to find a way to retain her independence, but only a wealthy relative offers any hope of that. Put to work in her aunt Nova's Kingsport dance hall, Ruby stumbles upon a mystery when her new hearing aids begin picking up conversations that no one else can hear. As Christmas draws closer, Ruby realizes the voice comes from a hunted man lost in time.

Seventeen-year-old Maddie is left reeling after the unexpected passing of her beloved father. No one has any idea why he betrayed them all so spectacularly, but that’s exactly what his death feels like: a betrayal. With their world shattered, Maddie’s grieving mother sends her to spend a few months with her grandparents, thinking a change of scenery will do her good. Susan and Frank, Maddie’s grandparents, are heartbroken over the loss of their son, but they welcome Maddie as an addition to their long-empty nest.