Showing results by narrator "Alex Picard" in All Categories

Eva Wingdale gets in over her head when she offers to organize a spring festival at school. Even with her best friend Lucy's help, there is NO way she will get everything done in time. Will Eva have to ask Sue (a.k.a. Meanie McMeanerson) for help? Or will the festival have to be cancelled?

Retirement isn't easy for a former CIA assassin. For fifty-five-year-old Helen Warwick, it may be impossible. Even Helen's family doesn't know the true nature of the work she's done for decades—the secret black ops, the sanctioned executions. But her plan to spend time reconnecting with her grown children has just been blown up-along with her son's house—by hired killers. Why is she being targeted now—and by whom?

In a Europe devastated by four years of conflict, a platoon of elite Italian soldiers is horrifically and mysteriously slaughtered. Strangford’s arcane ability can uncover the truth behind the massacre, but a violent fate stalks him from the trenches. It’s up to Lily to change its course.

The first World War rages across Europe, and in the wreckage of The Refuge, Lily and her allies struggle to find their way through the aftermath of a devastating loss. For Sam Wu, it’s a path that leads him back to Limehouse, where he must face the greatest danger of his own past on a desperate quest for revenge. For Lily, it’s a remote seaside manor where a military officer is strangely and brutally murdered—with Lord Strangford named the only possible suspect. But the dead man wasn’t who he seemed to be.

Eden Miller’s world is crumbling. Her husband blindsided her with divorce, and her daughter barely speaks to her. In an impulsive decision to escape her present and revisit the past, she sends a friend request to her college crush, Justin Ward. One night twenty-three years ago changed the course of her life. It closed the door on Justin and opened the door to her husband, Dave. But what if Eden could have a do-over?

Her mother's rules were simple, but Annie Meadows rarely followed them. The rules were required, though, if they didn't want to get caught. Sometimes Annie believed what she and her mother did was wrong, but she was told they were helping the children in the basement. When Annie heard them cry in their locked rooms, it didn't feel that way. As she got older, Annie reflected on what she had done and vowed never to be like her mother. Then she met little Gracie Bradshaw, a child in her daycare classroom. Gracie is special, just like Annie was.

As an elite assassin for the CIA, Helen Warwick was trained to keep a low profile. But now that she's retired, she's forced to take on a very different, and very public, role—as the proud mother of a rising young politician. At a DC press conference for her son's campaign, she sees the ominous green light of a gun laser fixed on her son's head, and her CIA training kicks in. She jumps into action, pushes her son down, and saves him from a sniper's bullet. In that moment, Helen realizes she will never escape the secrets of her past—or the deranged man she thought she killed.

Bells, Tails & Murder is the delightful first book in the Dickens & Christie Mystery series. If you like spunky literary women, amusing animal sidekicks, and inviting cultural backdrops, then you'll love Kathy Manos Penn's engaging cozy mysteries.

Nikki and Kyle Sebastian have a loving and healthy marriage. It’s only missing one thing they want—children. When the couple is diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” and endures several failed rounds of IVF, Kyle, for both their sakes, is unwilling to bury them deeper in emotional and financial debt. Desperate to have a baby, Nikki betrays Kyle’s trust in an attempt to try IVF one more time. The choice fractures their once-stable union. Now burdened with suspicion, resentment, and further grief, their little family is falling apart.

Leo Zimmerman has had a crush on his curvy friend Kylie Jenkins since forever, so when he discovers the girl with a flair for candy making has a newfound plan to rebel against her overbearing parents, he's determined to be the one to help her carry it out. Who better than himself to show her the ropes of letting loose? Sure, taking her to her first high school party, helping her sneak out of the house, or watching a sunset together isn't exactly a hardship, but much harder is masking his feelings the more time they spend together. 

Anyone who really knows product marketing understands the tremendous value it adds to organizations, but not enough people seem to get it, which can make it notoriously hard for product marketing managers to get the recognition they deserve. Product Marketing Misunderstood helps you apply the tools of your own trade to your job—positioning, messaging, research, personas, and more—helping your entire organization value what you do. This guide arms you with the tools you need to show colleagues past, present, and future that product marketing lies at the heart of your company.

No one ever said being a werewolf was easy. Take Delia, for instance. She’s spent much of her life fighting against her own nature, plagued by nightmares of childhood trauma, and trying to find her place in the world. Many werewolves are just like her: ostracized by their families, forced to live alone and in secret as they await those nights when the Change overtakes them.

Josephine teaches in a high school in a suburb of Paris. Her life is a balancing act between Xanax and Tupperware lunches in the staff room until she walks into a Champs-Élysées strip club. There she learns a secret nocturnal code of conduct; she discovers camaraderie and the joys of female company, and she thrills at the sensation of men's desire directed toward her. Josephine, a teacher by day, begins to lead a secret existence by night that ultimately allows her to regain control of her life.

Ever since the unnamed threat took over, 100-year-old Natália has been stuck inside her Rio de Janeiro apartment, alone. Well, not entirely alone—her loved ones may be gone but they never really left her, plus she’s pretty sure there’s a spy watching her every move through the window.

A dark secret from her past has come back to haunt Barbara Hollis. When Deputy Elwood finds out the truth about her, Barbara flees Cobbsville, returning to the city where all her troubles began. Going undercover, she tries to catch the one person who can prove her innocence and restore her reputation—but tracking down answers won't be easy when pursuing a dangerous villain who will stop at nothing.

This compulsive novel wrestles with vital questions of our time: sentience, purpose, life, death, and how to make a really good commercial. Told entirely through questionably obtained company emails, chat transcripts, TED Talks, training sessions, and more, this all-too-probable future pits emotionally intelligent AI against emotionally stunted humans.

Leta Parker needs a distraction. With her boyfriend temporarily staying in Connecticut, the confident retiree is ready to dive into the design and team-building conference being hosted by her adopted Cotswolds village. But when one of the lead consultants is late to a meeting and she goes next door to wake him up, she’s shocked to stumble across his strangled corpse. Shut out of the case by the stuffy detective inspector, Leta agrees to lend her well-honed mind to keep the teamwork sessions on track.

Barbara expects her life to settle down, now that she has returned to Cobbsville with all her old secrets laid to rest. But instead, she comes home to find an unexpected new member has joined the Hollis household—and brought along a deadly new mystery. Barbara's investigation of a murder uncovers lies and motives that have been buried for years. But can she get to the bottom of it all before finding herself at the bottom of a grave?

The daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, author Bracha Horovitz spent her childhood surrounded by people who worked fervently to establish the fledgling nation of Israel after its 1948 independence. Inspired by their resilience and fortitude, Bracha set her heart on living a life that would honor her family, her community, and her heritage. At eighteen, Bracha joined the Israel Defense Forces. Alongside other female soldiers, she parachuted from planes, marched through hot deserts, and learned to shoot machine guns. Intense military training taught her that women, too, can be fierce fighters.

A renowned business innovation leader teams up with a social-personality psychologist to offer that something else—a collection of ten visionary principles to obliterate barriers to change and ignite a whole new level of creative problem-solving. Drawing upon decades of experience working with the world's best-known organizations and their teams, the authors provide practical advice that goes beyond "business as usual" for successfully tackling intractable challenges. The Breakthrough Manifesto explores why these principles are critical for the current times.