Showing results by narrator "Zura Johnson" in All Categories

As the black sheep of the family, choreographer Cassidy Bliss vowed she'd do anything to get home in time to help with her sister's wedding and avoid family disappointment . . . again. She just never expected "anything" would involve sharing the last rental car with the jerk who cut her off in line at the airport this morning. But horrible times apparently call for here-goes-nothing measures.

In this book, technical strategist Sarah Wells provides practical, in-depth advice for moving to microservices. Having built her first microservices architecture in 2013 for the Financial Times, Sarah discusses the approaches you need to take from the start, and explains the potential traps most likely to trip you up. You'll also learn how to maintain the architecture as your systems mature while minimizing the time you spend on support and maintenance.

Walking home late one night, burned-out barista Nell accidentally incinerates someone. Whoopsie! Now, if this tale began in a fantastic far-away land, or Nell was, perhaps, a wizard, such a mishap might make some kind of sense. But this is not a wondrous fantasy world. This is real life, and Nell just wanted to go home and eat macaroni. As Nell stares at the smoldering corpse, she realizes something with horrifying certainty: She's magic. And not the cute pulling-a-rabbit-from-a-hat kind of magic.

Dancer Beth Spence finally gets a shot at her dream—auditioning for the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. But her audition concludes with a torn Achilles tendon and possibly the end of her dance career. When her sister, Delaney, flies her to Meadow Valley, California, to recuperate, she is reluctant to go but out of options. Beth has no idea that Delaney has set her up with a job managing widower Eli Murphy’s veterinary clinic while staying in the guest house on his ranch.

Solarius has grown accustomed to being unloved, though nothing prepares him for being tasked to marry the one female in Aeramere who loathes him. Granted, he and Narissa have a troubled past, but now they will be forced to endure whatever fate awaits them together. As suspicions toward his mother grow, Solarius knows he should focus on uncovering the truth of his bloodline, yet a new distraction with frosty green eyes has taken hold of his thoughts. Unfortunately for Solarius, he wants the one thing he can't have—his wife.

Humor and heart collide when two fake dates accidentally ruin a wedding and must play matchmaker to fix it, perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Tessa Bailey.

On an isolated island, vampire Nobility run a mysterious laboratory, continuously pumping out a white mist which compels the inhabitants of a nearby fishing village to become the vampire's slaves! When the village tries to retaliate, their fighters never return. The vampire hunter known only as D has been sighted on the island, but how did he come to be there, whose side is he on, and will any mortals survive the brewing conflict?

The book is for when you have absolutely no idea what to do and may indeed suspect your kid is actually a coordinated plot against your sanity.

For her entire life, Rose Maxwell trained to become the next Prima on the Supernatural Council. Now that she’s stepped down, it’s time for this witch to focus on herself—and not think about her impulsive one-night stand with Damian Adams, a half-demon veterinarian who she can’t get out of her head, since neither of them is looking for a relationship. But when Rose is sentenced to community service at Damian’s animal sanctuary, it becomes impossible for them to ignore their sparking attraction.

Lost, frightened, and thousands of feet underground, Isaline is trying to hold herself together. The expedition to find King Faraday’s workshop has begun, and deep in Benemourne’s deadly Adrudian mines, anything can happen. With the help of her companions, Isaline is ready to discover who she is. But lies and forgotten memories are catching up to her.

Haunted by a power she can’t control, Natalie and her friends are determined to reunite their families and uncover the truth of their past. But with Leo missing in action and Uncle Chris out of the picture, Natalie is left harboring a mysterious key and a secret that isn’t hers to tell. Invited to masquerade as a Nautilus recruit, Natalie finds herself in the Helix: Nautilus’s center. Faced with old enemies and locked doors, she hopes to last long enough to find her parents. But Natalie isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

For almost thirty years, Shirley Jackson Award–winning horror author Gemma Files has consistently served up tale after tale celebrating monstrosity in all its forms: the imperfect, the broken, the beautifully alien, and the sadly familiar. Her characters make their own choices and take their own chances, slipping from darkness into deeper darkness yet never losing their humanity—not even when they’re anything but.

Isaline is desperate to keep her identity a secret. In the space of one night, her future as a City Watch has crumbled before her eyes. And now she’s on a train across Benemourne with two complete strangers—dangerous treasure hunters that she can’t trust with her real name.

Blame the booze, her shaky marriage, her troubled son, or a thousand other things, but Jewelann Jordan has one thing on her mind when she attends her class reunion: making sure her old crush Christian Campbell sees exactly what he lost all those years ago. A late night, a hotel room, a rekindled flame that burns even hotter than it did back then—what could go wrong? Everything. The night with Christian isn't the first secret Jewelann has kept from her husband Ken, so one more shouldn't be much harder—except that Christian shows up without warning.

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?

Casey Walsh and Boone Murphy had a bright future together—until tragedy tore them apart. Now, more than a decade later, the beauty-school dropout runs Meadow Valley's family tavern and steers clear of the boy who once stole her heart—no small feat in such a small town. Boone Murphy was finally going to put Meadow Valley in his rear-view mirror, even if that meant selling his business and leaving his family's horse ranch behind. It also meant leaving Casey Walsh. Now, he's back home, and his only dream is winning back the girl he's always loved.

Jez and the crew of the Ungovernable are injured, exhausted, and out of time. Their long-time nemesis, Evka, has finally perfected the weapon the crew has been desperately fighting to stop for months—a protocol that will allow her to track down and kill anyone in the system with the click of a button. And the lives of the crew, and of everyone they love, are on the line. With their backs to the wall and no more tokens up their sleeves, they’ll need every bit of skill and ingenuity they possess.

On the surface of the sea, a burning island beckons a mysterious man called the Collector. Approaching the fire, the Collector bears witness to a vicious crime. When he realizes an innocent life will be lost—a baby, swathed in a bundle and left to die in a floating rowboat—the Collector makes a choice that will change his course forever.

Decades ago, Masha hid under a table and watched her parents die. Now, with war in the streets and chaos in the government, she can at last put the ultimate piece of her revenge into action. But it will involve murder, deception, and cunning on an unprecedented scale, and she's no longer as certain as she once was that she can pull this off. In the meantime, behind the barricades, the rest of the crew is trying desperately to survive as the Svodrani System government brings its full weight to bear. And surviving a war against the entire System might be a step too far, even for them.…

After taking down the two most powerful mafia bosses in the system, ex-smuggler pilot Jez and the crew race back to the capital to head off an impending civil war in the ensuing power vacuum. But to stop a bloodbath, they need to buy themselves time to prepare. So while Masha, Ysbel, and Tanya provide a distraction, Jez and Lev infiltrate a government paralyzed by the news, while Tae goes out into the volatile streets to neutralize the gangs who are more than willing to prove they’re the mafia’s natural successors. But preventing a civil war is more complicated than it sounds.