Showing results by narrator "Kimberly M. Wetherell" in All Categories

Vivian Ellenshaw is fat, but she knows she doesn't need to lose weight, so she's none too happy to find herself forced into a weight-loss camp's van with her ex-best friend, Allie; a meathead jock who can barely drive; and the camp owner's snobby son. And when they arrive at Camp Featherlite at the start of the worst blizzard in the history of Flagstaff, Arizona, it's clear that something isn't right. Vee barely has a chance to meet the other members of her pod, all who seem as unhappy to be at Featherlite as she does, when a camper goes missing down by the lake.

In the title story, set five minutes in the future where you not only have a credit score but also a dating score, a woman who’s been banished from all dating apps attends a weekly help group with others who have been “banned for life,” and finds herself falling in love. In “Backwards,” a twist on Benjamin Button, a woman reconnects with her estranged father as he de-ages ten years each day they spend together. In “Welcome to Oxhead,” all the parents in a gated community “shut off” when the power goes out.

Chaos paints the White Kingdom. Missing children, dead nobles, and a daring escape have created an upheaval that threatens the future of the entire realm. The lords and ladies are armed with a powerful secret weapon as they prepare to make a stand against the crown, but the resistance has plenty to overcome before they can claim triumph.

Weston Aldrich is known for his devastating looks and crisp Italian suits. He's been groomed to take over his family business and is on the brink of closing a massive merger. Only two wild cards can derail him.

Alex Rush is ready for the trip of a lifetime. She and her friends have made some creepily awesome films together throughout high school, so with only a few months left before they go their separate ways for college, they’re determined to make the best one yet: an epic short film that reimagines the story of Dracula, filmed on location at a remote castle in Romania.

This tale of a 60-year love affair examines the age-old question of why we love the people we do. A beautiful, charismatic, and wildly successful man is adored by a woman. Even as children, he held the power. Though bound by tragedy and friendship, he defined the terms of their relationship, until finally, in old age, the power shifts. Looking at the roles of beauty, insanity, magic, deceit, consolation, sensory fulfillment and, finally, being seen, Judith explores why she loved Elliot — a relationship that impinged on every other in her life.

When Jill Goodman’s picture-perfect marriage implodes, she’s heartbroken. The only thing she receives in the hasty divorce settlement is the deed to her husband’s sprawling beach house on the New Jersey shore. She hates the sight of it but knows she must face it if she’s to move on. With no other choice, Jill travels to Dewberry Beach intending to sell the house quickly - but the task is not as easy as she expects. Still, she can’t help but be charmed by the little town even the unexpected attentions of a handsome local with dark eyes and a teasing smile.

In her mid-thirties and happily single, Karen Babine hitches up her tiny Scamp camper and sets out with her two unenthusiastic cats on a journey from her home in Minnesota to Nova Scotia to explore the place where her French-Acadian ancestors settled in North America some four centuries ago. As the miles roll by, she wonders: "Why do we carry this need to belong to an established history? What happens when that can't—or shouldn't—happen?"

In the course of her new job as legal assistant for Attorney Ross Cavendish, Brenna is given an antique telephone as a thank you from the daughter of a client for helping her sort through her father's estate after his sudden accidental death. But it turns out there's more to the old phone than its cool vintage quality. To Brenna's surprise, it rings without warning, and a cryptic message leads Brenna to wonder if the man's death really was an accident. But if it wasn't, then that means there's a killer close by.

High school senior Rhonda Glock's life is about to change. After being attacked and bitten by a disgruntled, soon-to-be-ex-cheerleader, the heretofore invisible high school “brainy girl” periodically and eerily transmutes into Ronnie, the most popular cheerleader at Lawrence Talbot High.

What stage of grief is it when your grandmother's ghost keeps popping up on your electronic devices? Denial? For RayAnne that seems to be the stage for launching the second season of Fishing!—in New Zealand. Ready or not, she is taking public television's first all-women fishing talk show on the road, putting the cold Minnesota winter in the rearview mirror—which, it turns out, Gran is haunting, too. RayAnne and her indefatigable producer Cassi set out across New Zealand in search of noteworthy women who fish.

Having fled the testosterone-soaked world of professional sport fishing, thirty-something RayAnne Dahl is navigating a new job as a consultant for the first all-women talk show about fishing on public television (or, as one viewer's husband puts it, "Oprah in a boat"). After the host bails, RayAnne lands in front of the camera and out of her depth at the helm of the show. Is she up for the challenge? Meanwhile, her family proves as high-maintenance as her fixer-upper house and her clingy rescue dog.

Welcome back to Glen Hirshberg country, where griefs are at least as dangerous as ghosts. Where terror and wonder become not just inextricable but often indistinguishable. Where the worlds of imagination and everyday reality color and corrode and sometimes overwhelm each other.

Inside the walls of Arlington Hall, a former women's college in Virginia that has been taken over by the United States Army, hundreds of men and women sit, bent over stacks of paper. Pencils in hand, they labor to decode countless pieces of communication coming from the Axis powers. Justine works among them, handling the most sensitive secrets of World War II. But she isn't there to decipher German codes. She's there to find a traitor.

Rhiain enjoys a charmed life as the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the realm. Spoiled and vain, she has never met a need or want she couldn’t attain. The dark spots in her memory have been tucked away, with all other unpleasant things. Then a terrible mistake brings her entire world crashing down around her. Her life shifts in an instant; her fate, uncertain. Her father’s punishment for her is forcing her to train for a life as one of his prized assassins. But a chance encounter in a familiar tavern will change everything.

In the title story a husband struggles with the grief and confusion of losing two children, and forms an odd bond with the infant spectrals that visit him in the night. "Dancing Men" depicts one of the creepiest rites of passage in recent memory when a boy visits his deranged grandfather in the New Mexico desert.

In the summer of 1966, crammed into a DC hotel suite and passing paper cups of liquor, twenty-eight women hatched a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had quietly pulled away attendees from the State Womens’ Commissions annual conference. Frustrated with government inertia, they laid out a vision for an organization to unite and advocate for all women. Inspired, challenged, skeptical, they debated the idea late into the night and the next day.

Sixteen-year-old Maggie Scott is a little dramatic. Life is just more fun when you’re always putting on a show! But apparently her boyfriend, Theo, disagrees, because he unexpectedly dumps her. She’s so distressed she breaks her foot, has to be rescued by the most obnoxious boy in school, Carson, and can no longer star in the school play. Now everything is terrible and Maggie doesn’t understand where it all went wrong. So when she gets a mysterious text from an unknown number offering her a chance to relive the day when she and Theo met, Maggie can’t help clicking.

Luckily for humanity, scientist Marie Curie applied her brilliant mind and indomitable spirit to expanding the frontiers of science, but what if she had instead drifted toward the darkness? At the cusp of between child- and adulthood, at the crossroads between science and superstition, a teen Marie Curie faces the factual and the fantastic in this fabulous collection of stories that inspire, delight, and ask the question: What if she had used her talents for diabolical purposes?

In desperate need to rid herself of a life lived in bondage to a negative ego, Ameille Zay Marcotte found yoga, or, rather, yoga discovered Marcotte. Through her practice, in conjunction with sobriety, she found the ability to let go and opened her mind to a world of infinity. Marcotte’s deeply personal account demonstrates how the application of spiritual principles unfolded in her life and illustrates the unimaginable healing that occurred through faith and forgiveness.