Showing results by narrator "Kristen Sieh" in All Categories

In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.

The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano follows the butterfly effect of one life-defining choice - nine times over. Winding through all the paths and decisions that shape a life, it cuts to the heart of what it means to be a woman. Every expectation, every choice, every path, every outcome - every piece of oneself that’s lost and found along the way.

For a decade and a half, Rachel Cunningham has chosen to lock herself away in a psychiatric facility, tortured by gaps in her memory and the certainty that she is responsible for her parents' deaths. But when she learns new details about their murders, Rachel returns, in a quest for answers, to the place where she once felt safest: her family's sprawling log cabin in the remote forests of Michigan.

After a college party, two boys drive a girl home: drunk and passed out in the back seat. Rumours spread about what they did to her, but later they'll tell the police a different version of events. Alice will never remember what truly happened. Her fracture runs deep, hidden beneath cleverness and wry humour. Nick - a sensitive, misguided boy who stood by - will never forget. That's just the beginning of this extraordinary journey into memory, fear and self-portrayal.

The Core Four have been friends since college: four men, four women, four couples. They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some fortysomething zombie virus, simply inescapable?

It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all together at their beloved family home on the eastern shore of Long Island. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by an accident on their brother Topher’s boat: A friend’s brother was killed, the resulting lawsuit nearly bankrupted their parents, and Topher spiraled into depression, eventually taking his life. Now the Ryan women are back for Thanksgiving, eager to reconnect, but each carrying a heavy secret.

One summer, a teenager disappears from Deep Valley, Pennsylvania. She is beautiful, intelligent, richer than most in those parts - and black. The cops search for her, but not as hard as they would if she were a white girl. Watching this drama unfold is Cindy, a younger girl from a white trash family. She has idolised Jude for years, yearning for her glamour, her popularity, her loving home and decent chance in life. And so, in the absence of anyone to give a damn where she goes or what becomes of her, Cindy starts to slip out of her own skin and into the space Jude left behind....

Gretch Wolgast still can’t forgive Shaq for abandoning her beloved Orlando Magic, but she is moving on with her life. Two years after she helped foil a plot to destroy her and her fellow OP - the telekinetics born in Orlando in the early 1980s - she's become a federal agent investigating OP-related crime. But her boss really doesn’t seem to like her. And now she’s being forced to attend a dinner on a mysterious billionaire's yacht in South Florida. Gretch barely has time to dive into the appetizers before things get weird. And deadly.

Sera loves true-crime podcasts. The mysteries become an unlikely comfort for her, and then an obsession. So when Rachel, her favourite podcast host, goes missing from a small rural town in Northern California, Sera decides to act. She heads to the isolated ranch where Rachel disappeared, determined to discover what's happened to her. But the more Sera digs into this unfamiliar world, the more off things start to feel. Because Rachel is not the first woman to vanish from the ranch, and she won't be the last.... Rachel did try to warn her.

Meet the Bang-Bang Sisters: Brea, Jessie, and Flo. Together, they’re a killer rock band with an unbreakable bond. But that’s only half the story. Offstage, they’re highly skilled vigilantes, traveling the country in their beaten-up tour van to exact justice on criminals who have slipped through the system. Part rock stars, part assassins, they’re a force to be reckoned with.

Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances? I went home, of course.

Brynn Larson owes a lot to reality television and professional athletes. Her bar hit new heights of success after becoming a local haunt for the Denver Mustangs players and their WAGs. But although she’s grateful, that doesn’t mean she’s crazy. And that’s exactly what she would be to ever consider dating a professional athlete. Even if it’s Maxwell Lewis, whose shy smile makes her wonder what going on behind those beautiful brown eyes.

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for a quick, idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They'll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into the local dive bar like old times. But it's soon clear that this getaway only gets Kit closer to something dire and unfathomable that's been building inside her for years, ever since her sister Julie died.

In modern-day London, architectural historian and recovering alcoholic Annie Kendall hopes to turn her life around and restart her career by locating several long-missing pieces of ancient Judaica. Geoff Harris, an investigative reporter, is soon drawn into her quest, both by romantic interest and suspicions about the head of the Shalom Foundation, the organization sponsoring her work. He's also a dead ringer for the ghost of a monk Annie believes she has seen at the flat she is subletting in Bristol House.

Robin and Ellie have been best friends since childhood. They’ve been through everything together, from Robin coming out to the death of Ellie’s dad. But when Ellie asks Robin to be her maid of honour, Robin is reluctant. It’s not that Robin isn’t happy for Ellie; she just hates everything about weddings and marriage—plus the guy Ellie’s engaged to. There’s also the matter of the crazy (not to mention dangerous) wedding rituals that couples are resorting to in the hope of securing a lifetime of happiness.

Estranged for a decade, sisters Leslie and Robin must reunite if they are to claim the fortune their father left them. Leslie desperately needs that money, but when she arrives at her sister's apartment, she finds her body instead. Leslie needs another plan. Without Robin, she won't see a penny. Mary, an aspiring actress, spends her nights slinging beers at a seedy restaurant. She'd do anything to start her life over. When Leslie offers her a huge sum of money and the chance to be someone else - to be Robin - she takes it.

It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all home together at their family’s beloved house on Long Island. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by a tragic accident on their brother Topher’s boat that drove him to suicide. Now, the Ryan women are back for Thanksgiving, but each carries a heavy secret. The eldest, Cait, is still holding guilt for the role no one knows she played in the boat accident, when she rekindles a flame with her high school crush, Topher’s best friend.

Intelligent but isolated recent physics graduate Annie Fisk feels an undeniable pull toward space. Her childhood memories dimmed by loss, she has left behind her home, her family, and her first love in pursuit of intellectual fulfillment. When she finally lands a job as a NASA secretary during the Apollo 11 mission, the work is everything she dreamed, and while she feels a budding attraction to one of the engineers, she can’t get distracted. Not now.

Sixteen-year-old Honor Augustine never set out to become a felon. As an academic all-star, avid recycler, and dedicated daughter to her PTSD-afflicted father, she's always been the literal embodiment of her name. Coloring inside the lines is what keeps Honor's chaotic existence orderly. But when she discovers her father's VA benefits drying up, coupled with a terrifying bank letter threatening the family's greenhouse business--Honor vows to find a solution. She just doesn't expect to spot it on the dry erase board of English lit--"Nature's first green is gold."

Melissa Levin, Priya Chowdhury, Tara Taylor, and Suki Hammer were going places when they graduated high school in 1997. Their yearbook superlatives were Most Likely to Win the White House, Cure Cancer, Open a Michelin-Starred Restaurant, and Join the Forbes 400, respectively. Fast forward twenty-five years and nothing has gone according to plan. Reunited at their reunion, the women rethink their younger selves. Is it too late to make their dreams come true?