Showing results by narrator "Bailey Carr" in All Categories

The Lady of the Lake (job description: hand out mystical swords to youngsters with potential) has her first dissatisfied customer. This humorous fantasy tale will appeal to anyone who has ever landed a glamorous job, only to find out that the gig has grueling requirements (in this case, confinement in a swamp and the company of wise-cracking toads.)

Seven damn years of wondering whether the woman was still alive; whether she'd spent the last 2,555 days wondering if he was still alive. Wondering whether that night was as burned into her memory as it was his. Seven years having his heart tethered to Addison - and now she's back. With even more reasons to run than she'd had then. Only this time, Caine isn't letting the gorgeous little flight risk out of his sight. Regardless of how noble her reasons may be.

Before that night, Addison Milan would never have thought the man she'd been fighting hard not to fall for - her only friend in her new shadow of a life - would be in a position to rip her family apart. Before that night, Caine Spencer would never have believed any woman could make him fall head over heels, let alone make him feel so damn compelled to look the other way when it came to his job. Then that one perfect night changed everything.

Nora Clanton sells caskets. It wasn't her dream job, but it's the family business. She lives in a sleepy town in the middle-of-nowhere, and her only friends are decades older than her. Her life might be comfortable but sometimes she finds herself wanting more. Then Garrett Bishop turns up and sweeps her off her feet. He's handsome, charming and seems to have a good (if vague) job. There is one little thing though . . . death seems to follow him and rumours never stay buried in her tiny town.

For Lenna Gallows, being the daughter of a mortician isn't as weird as people think - at least not until the day her ex-best friend Alicia is the one on her father's table...and her dead body wakes. When Alicia is found dead in the park from a suspected suicide, it shakes the town of Denwood to its core. But no one is as rattled as Lenna, who finds herself in the odd position of being able to hear what actually happened to Alicia from the corpse's mouth. Unfortunately, Alicia doesn't remember a thing from that fateful night but swears she didn't kill herself.

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.

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.

Every year our town celebrates Eros, god of desire, in a special festival. But this year there’s to be a pageant like never before, and out of all the girls in Sikyon, I’ve been chosen to play the part of Aphrodite. They tell me it’s an honor… but I'm about to find out it's a curse. When our tribute goes disastrously wrong, Aphrodite demands a sacrifice... and that sacrifice is me. The king's men bind me to a cliff and leave me there to die. But then a mysterious stranger intervenes, and offers me my life back, for a price. A high one.

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.

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.

On the eve of Kyle's sentencing a year after Jamie's death, all the other "chosen ones" are coping in various ways. But our tenacious narrator is full of anger, stuck somewhere between the horrifying past and the unknown future as she tries to piece together why she gets to live, while Jamie is dead. Now she finds herself drawn to Charlie, Jamie's boyfriend - knowing all the while that their relationship will always be haunted by what-ifs and why-nots. Is hope possible in the face of such violence? Is forgiveness? How do you go on living when you know it could have been you instead?

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.

“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.

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.

In my perfect world I would be selling gourmet donuts, creating art that people loved, be married to my high school sweetheart, live in an adorable dream house. I had big plans for my life once, but nothing was turning out like I thought it would. One day I looked in the mirror and the strong, creative girl of my childhood wasn’t smiling back at me anymore. My aunt must’ve known something that I didn’t, because when she left me her cottage on Sweetwater Island, a tiny spark lit inside me. Could this be a second chance at the life I always dreamed of?

A patch of black ice is all it takes for Ryan “Preach” Armstrong’s perfectly planned future to skid out of control. The car crash shatters his hockey dreams…and injures Woodhaven’s newest student, Grace Milner. Grace can’t believe that all it took was seriously bad timing and a hot but prickly hockey player to threaten her lifelong dream of joining the Air Force. Now, instead of prepping for the track season and the beginning of basic training, she has to complete community service with the last person she would ever want to be stuck with: the guy who shattered her future.