Showing results by narrator "Bailey Carr" in All Categories

Jessica and her daughter Emily are touring colleges. For Jessica, this is going to be the chance to reconnect with the daughter she seems to have lost. But for Emily, it's a preview of freedom and the chance to explore a new and exciting future. Yet before any of this can happen, their perfectly planned trip is derailed into a series of off-roading misadventures. With seatbelts fastened, physical and emotional baggage safely stowed away, this mother-daughter duo might be ready to hit the road, but are they ready to reconnect to the person sitting next to them?

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others. With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.

Starting at a new school is scary, especially with a giant hearing aid strapped to your chest! At her old school, everyone in Cece’s class was deaf. Here, she’s different. She’s sure the kids are staring at the Phonic Ear, the powerful aid that will help her hear her teacher. Too bad it also seems certain to repel potential friends.

It’s George and Mara Spencer’s 25th wedding anniversary, and the Spencer daughters are finally back under the same roof again: Lottie, the youngest, Mara’s adored only child, and Lottie’s two older half-sisters, Dinah and Vaughan, the daughters of George’s first marriage - a marriage that ended in a terrible tragedy, with the death of his beautiful young wife. In the years since, their father has found happiness again...but on this hot summer day in Birch Bend, when catastrophe strikes at the anniversary party.

When hopeful fashionista Meg Julliard must return to her hometown of Chicago to manage her late father’s apartment building, she thinks her dreams of making it in the fashion business are over. Ellie Wade, one of the building’s longtime residents, is also not feeling the Christmas joy this year. Ellie and Meg strike up an unlikely friendship, and the story of Ellie’s dress comes out. Ellie gifts the gorgeous dress to Meg, hoping that it will bring her more luck, on the condition that she wear it to the building’s Christmas party.

Merry Wrath has seen dangers galore in her former job as a CIA field agent. But nothing has prepared her for this - an overnight Mommy and Me lock-in with her Girl Scout troop, complete with movies, dodgeball, four cats, a baby, and a dead body. When the mysterious corpse's identity is revealed, Merry and her former handler, Riley, realize they might have a domestic terrorist situation on their hands; one that needs to be diffused quickly before any more dead bodies appear.

It's the start of Jordan Sun's junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, she's an Alto 2, which - in the musical theatre world - is sort of like being a vulture in the wild: She has a spot in the ecosystem, but nobody's falling over themselves to express their appreciation. So it's no surprise when she gets shut out of the fall musical for the third year straight. But then the school gets a mass email.

Head down. Don't look up. Never make eye contact. Those were the words I lived by growing up, the words that protected me in an unsafe home. But words are only letters, and eventually even they couldn't keep his hands off me. Hoping to leave behind the shattered life of my past, I find myself in a boring, small town, with an aunt I've never met, and at a school I loathe. But soon I learn that not everything in this world is as black and white as I've determined.

After her parents' painful divorce, Evie Archer hopes that moving to Ravenglass, Massachusetts, is the fresh start her family needs. But Evie quickly realizes that her new home—known by locals as the Horror House—carries its own dark past after learning about Holly Hobbie, who mysteriously vanished from her bedroom one night. But traces of Holly linger in the Horror House and slowly begin to take over Evie's life. A strange shadow follows her everywhere she goes, and Evie starts to lose sight of what's real and what isn't the more she learns about The Lost Girl.

Summer in Sand Lake isn't complete without a trip to Meade Creamery - the local ice cream stand founded in 1944 by Molly Meade, who started making ice cream to cheer up her lovesick girlfriends while all the boys were away at war. Since then, the stand has been owned and managed exclusively by local girls, who inevitably become the best of friends.

Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.

Fifteen-year-old Jackie Stone's father is dying. When Jackie discovers that her father has been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, her whole world starts to crumble. She can't imagine how she'll live without him. Then, in a desperate act to secure his family's future, Jackie's father does the unthinkable - he puts his life up for auction on eBay. Jackie can do nothing but watch and wait as an odd assortment of bidders, some with nefarious intentions, drive the price up higher.

Tomorrow, the Wildcat varsity field hockey squad will play the first game of their new season. But at tonight’s team sleepover, the girls are all about forging the bonds of trust, loyalty, and friendship necessary to win. Everything hinges on the midnight initiation ceremony - a beloved tradition and the only facet of being a Wildcat that the girls control. Until now. Coach - a handsome former college player revered and feared in equal measure - changes the plan and spins his team on a new adventure.

Juni lives in a world without books. The Blight killed off all the trees, and since then, paper is worth more than just about anything else. Juni’s parents were killed in an archeological dig when she was young, so now it’s just her and her Grandpa Edgar, trying to survive. When she’s not in school, Juni and her friends Doler and Quaze turn to plifting—scavenging in abandoned buildings for any scrap of paper they can find—to earn a little money. If Juni can find enough paper, she can pay for the expensive health care Grandpa needs.

“Relaxing” and “getting a tan” may be high on most teens’ summer activity list, but for chronically freckled and deeply anxious Penny Dexter? Not a chance. Socking money away for college? Of course. Babysitting her siblings? Sure. Becoming a climate scientist and saving the world? She wishes. At least she can tackle the tuition money with the seasonal gig she landed at her local donut shop. But when she finds out that her genderqueer nemesis, Mateo della Penna-Dominguez, will also be working behind the counter, Penny’s summer of mindless labor instantly vanishes before her eyes.

Seventeen-year-old Christmas Miller is looking forward to a summer of sunbathing and waterskiing at her home in Sweet Lake with Lexi, the one friend who gets her completely, ADHD and all. But the day of Lexi's arrival, the girls have an almost-argument and worse, that night, they discover another friend, Lemy, floating face down in the lake. Though reeling from her rift with Lexi, Christmas is determined to find out who attacked Lemy, even if it means she must confront her own mother’s possible involvement in the crime.

Atlantis. They say the gods walked there once. They say they walk there still. An island so rich, men have fought over it for centuries. But those are not the riches I am interested in. I have reason to believe my family — the father and sister I once thought dead - have found shelter there as refugees. I've heard Atlantis is impossible to reach these days, that it is a kingdom steeped in treachery, ruled by a tyrant. But no matter the risk, I know I'll stop at nothing to get there. It's not just kings we have to fear, though. It's gods.

Seventeen-year-old Christmas Miller is looking forward to a summer of sunbathing and waterskiing at her home in Sweet Lake with Lexi, the one friend who gets her completely, ADHD and all. But the day of Lexi's arrival, the girls have an almost-argument and worse, that night, they discover another friend, Lemy, floating face down in the lake. Though reeling from her rift with Lexi, Christmas is determined to find out who attacked Lemy, even if it means she must confront her own mother’s possible involvement in the crime.

A quiet Manhattan street. Kristie Fain is walking to the train when she is snatched by a couple of strangers. Special Agent Shannon Ames has just been reassigned to the New York Field Office, the biggest in the country. Since Kristie Fain is an aide to a US Senator, Shannon and her FBI team are given the case. It’s immediately clear it’s anything but straightforward. Fain’s boyfriend, a rich Peruvian musician, is hiding something. Senator Nickerson’s staff are cooperative, but don’t seem to be sharing all they know.

A young woman, staying in her great aunt’s historical home while in town for a funeral, experiences a ghostly encounter one night but soon realizes it might just be a relative wishing her one final farewell.