Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Pickens" in All Categories

When Diana of the cursed house Bellatrix loses her life, she is forced to admit to the king of the underworld that she had not become the hero she promised him. He did not rage, nor smite her soul where she stood. The king’s only demand for resurrection was her attendance at Afterlife Academy, a rehabilitation center for failed heroes of history. A place where she can learn to control her destructive, bloodthirsty power. As she adapts to her new home, she unexpectedly encounters a godchild of Mars known as Calix.

Mary floated across the room, shaking her hands in frustration. Finally, she turned back to Mike. “When will the men in my life realize that no one is responsible for watching over me?” she asked sadly. “I am a grown woman. I am a former police officer. I am not some hot-house flower that can’t handle my own life and my own safety.” Victoria sighed loudly and rolled her eyes.

Marcie, Maggie, and Diane all have one thing in common: Dan McKenzie, an unscrupulous man who uses women. His motto in life is "Lie, cheat, and steal". He faked his death and tried to frame Maggie's husband with his murder. He blackmailed Marcie to run drugs for him. And Diane, a cop, had to stand by, knowing he was responsible for planting drugs in her partner's locker. He's always walked away scot free. Until now.

Most cops have a past. A past they can speak of. A past they can share. But not Diane.... That is until one night a body is discovered on the highway close to her home. But Diane Larsen, a tough cop chick who has had to prove herself over and over to the cops she works with, is ordered by her new boss to investigate the one case that could be her undoing.

Biography of a Body is a lyrical meander through the development of a messy, flawed, imperfect human and what it means to live in a society that both pulls a person into itself and fiercely pushes back. In personal essays and snippets of verse that shift back and forth through time and place, Lizz Schumer fidgets with the puzzle pieces of a life that are at once starkly unique and glaringly obvious. This is less a narrative than a trail of breadcrumbs through an experience, where strange things whisper from the shadows and draw the listener into the dappled darkness.

Now that Geraldine Porter is retired, she's got time to devote to her favorite craft. You'd think the world of shoe-box-sized Victorian shadowboxes and little ceramic bathtubs would be trouble free. But Gerry's problems are anything but tiny. As chairwoman of the local Dollhouse and Miniatures Fair and babysitter for her precocious granddaughter, Gerry's got enough to think about without the curious behavior of her friend Linda Reed.

Marcie is crazy in love with Dan, who has been using her and promising his love in return. And she'll do anything for him, which is fast becoming a one-way ticket to trouble. But in a freak accident, she loses her memory, landing in the path of sexy DEA Agent Sam Carre. For DEA Agent Sam Carre, when this attractive stranger lands in his path, he just can't resist helping her, even though he's haunted by a past that gives him no peace. But as the sparks fly, so do questions of what she's really involved in. This complex case pushes them both to explain the unexplainable.

What would it take for you to kill someone for money? And if you did, who - or what - would you have become? These are the questions one woman faces when she loses everyone she loves and everything she has. When the opportunity arrives to reinvent herself as a killer for hire, she takes it. She's good at it - and if she doesn't do it, someone else will. Then everything changes when she learns about a serial killer so horrible she vows to find him and kill him until - overcome by self-doubt - she seeks redemption rather than vengeance.

Trying to accept her mother's belief that the women of the Towne family are blessed, not cursed, with supernatural abilities, twenty-seven-year old Alice leaves a disapproving Boston husband to housesit for the summer in tiny Hawthorne, a historic village famous in the 1800s for its peppermint farms and the large, herbal-essence distilleries that flourished around the Massachusetts township. She settles into a beautiful old home with a tragic reputation.

Set over the course of a fateful week, Vivienne deftly weaves surreal prose with a Greek chorus of internet comments and text messages, to ask the questions: what is the cost of vision, what is the price of art? What connects creation and procreation, a life and an afterlife?

It's 1979, and fourteen-year-old Suzanne, who should be enjoying her first year at Denver East High, is instead reckoning with the aftermath of her mother Alex's shooting death during a robbery at Alex's store, Zoe's Records. A clairvoyant since childhood, Suzanne is unsurprised when Alex's ghost appears. But when Alex raises alarm bells about Suzanne's father's new girlfriend, what Suzanne can't foresee is the lifelong repercussions as she heeds Alex's warning.

Every state has an urban legend that evokes fear and curiosity in equal parts, and we've chronicled all of these logic-defying horrors here in the Haunted States of America anthology. From the Jersey Devil to La Llorona, each story included introduces a new chill inducing, stomach churning monster, specter, or poltergeist certain to keep you up at night. A broad ranging collection of authors, including seasoned veterans and some first timers making a fright-tastic debut, have all united to unearth the scariest lore from each state in the US, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Kathryn Walker enjoys an enviable life. Her husband is an accomplished doctor, her children are bright and successful, and she devotes herself to charity work that uplifts her Suburban Colorado community. Settling into a new year, her life couldn’t be better. . . Until April.

Don't You Dare is a compelling story that weaves together a current-day journey of discovery and a true-life love story between two women that took place over a hundred years ago. Newspaper headlines and stories back then didn't mention LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ community loved and lived in the background of society because it was too dangerous to do otherwise. All were hidden, just like the wedding photos belonging to author Gayla Turner's grandmother–Ruby.

In a small, secluded town that thrives on gossip and superstition, Dottie offers plenty of both when the scandal breaks about a missing girl, a ghost, and the affair that started it all. Having suffered a history of miscarriages, reclusive Dottie develops a strange motherly interest in her fifteen-year-old neighbor, Magdalena. Somewhere between fantasy and reality, Dottie finds new life in her relationship with the mysterious girl.

Navigating Grief and Loss is a book for anyone who's experienced the pain of mourning, who's struggled to find a job, who is devastated by a bad breakup—yearning to rest, feel understood, and believe in themselves and the future. It's a guidebook filled with relatable stories and practical meditations to help navigate the profound experience of death and loss, be it an elderly parent succumbing to a lingering illness, the shock following a tragic accident, a divorce after years of conflict, or the euthanasia of a beloved pet.

In this chilling novella from Tyler Jones, author of Midas, Heavy Oceans, Criterium, and Burn the Plans (one of Esquire Magazine's Best Horror Books of 2022), a pediatrician finds herself not only haunted, but stalked by her mistakes. A dark and terrifying exploration of guilt, and the ways in which regrets and secrets can define our lives in unexpected and horrifying ways.

Owen falls ill with food poisoning, leaving Julie to attend a neighborhood holiday party alone. When she wakes up, half-naked in her neighbor's bathtub, Julie doesn't know how to tell Owen, the police, her friends—anyone—that she has been sexually assaulted. So she keeps it secret until she realizes that she's pregnant with her assailant's baby.

Generous Press is a new kind of romance imprint. Someplace Generous—a vibrantly diverse and inclusive anthology of romantic short stories—can be described in one word: yes. Featuring stories by award-winning poets like Richard Siken, Rachel McKibbens, and Brionne Janae; acclaimed fiction writers like Temim Fruchter, Corinne Manning, and Max Delsohn; and popular thinkers like Jessica P. Pryde, Someplace Generous presents voices largely new to the genre of romance, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story.

Inspired by the explosive events of our polarized political climate, Burner is an all-too plausible contemporary thriller that examines the social and personal consequences of the lost sense of identity, trust, and truth itself that characterizes our technology-obsessed culture.