Showing results by narrator "Jessica Almasy" in All Categories

Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, written by 12 best-selling young adult writers and edited by international best-selling author Stephanie Perkins, will have you dreaming of sunset strolls by the lake. So set out your beach chair, and grab your sunglasses. You have 12 reasons this summer to soak up the sun and fall in love.

"Apples, ho!" This delectable tale is a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Daddy has uprooted the family to move to Oregon—but not without his babies—apples, peaches, pears, plums, grapes, and cherries! Will Daddy's precious plants persevere? This tall tale is loosely based on a real-life fruit pioneer who brought his fruit trees along on the Oregon Trail.

Thirteen-year-old Cassidy Drake wants nothing more than to race with her best dragon, Ranga, in the annual Great Texas Dragon Race. Her mother was a racing legacy, and growing up on her family's dragon sanctuary ranch, Cassidy lives and breathes dragons. She knows she could win against the exploitative FireCorp team that cares more about corporate greed than caring for the dragons.

Zoe is back in Ambler after living with her mom in Los Angeles, and she doesn't know what to feel about it. It's fun to be back with the Vet Volunteers, but Zoe misses her mom, who is filming a movie in Canada. Meanwhile, there seems to be a rash of animals being poisoned by antifreeze across the town, and Zoe fears that David's new adopted cat, Rover, might be one of them. So the gang works to raise awareness about antifreeze poisoning, and Zoe's mom has a special surprise in store for everyone.

For years, Briony has lived in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Rosalin, and the curse that has haunted her from birth—that on the day of her sixteenth birthday she would prick her finger on a spindle and cause everyone in the castle to fall into a 100-year sleep. When the day the curse is set to fall over the kingdom finally arrives, nothing—not even Briony—can stop its evil magic.

Jude and Lauren don't have much in common, but maybe that's why they've been best friends since the third grade. Through ups and downs, they've been by each other's sides. But now? They’re broke, single, and do the only thing that makes sense - move in together, just like they talked about when they were teenagers. Except when they were younger, the plan didn't include a five-year-old daughter and more baggage than their new townhouse can hold.

Humans live, fall in love, and return to the dirt from which they came, but for Roseline Enescue, time stands still. Vladimir continues in his ruthless pursuit to destroy her spirit. Plagued by the sinister whispers of his brother, Lucian, her husband turns to new methods of torture that leave Roseline on the brink of insanity. As rumors spread among the humans of vile monsters that inhabit Castle Bran, giving way to wild legend and myth, she is forced to fight alongside the family she despises in order to survive.

Twelve-year-old Sophie Mulvaney's world has been turned upside down after her mom loses her job and breaks up with Pratik. But then: Sophie starts seeing bubbles above people's heads that tell her what they are thinking. Seeing other people's thoughts should be cool, but it's actually just stressful. And when she finds out through the thought bubbles that her best friend Kaya likes her other best friend, Rafael - the very same Rafael that Sophie has her own crush on - Sophie has to find a way to figure out how to deal with knowing more than she should.

Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it's her attitude that's the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she's had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly's forced to help an elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. Just another adult to treat her like a troublemaker.

It's the feeling your grandma told you was only experienced by boring people. Some people say they're dying of it; others claim to have killed because of it. It's a key component of depression, creativity, and sex-toy advertisements. It's boredom, the subject of Yawn, a delightful and at times moving take on the oft-derided emotion and how we deal with it.

I knew from the first time I saw Marc Kirby that I was screwed. Big eyes, scruffy face, brown curls - yes, yes, and yes. The man is wicked hot. He's also my roommate, and since I work nights and he's at class all day - it's like living alone at half the rent. Then an unexpected night off turns into an unexpected morning in Marc's bed, but it turns out we can't even figure out the screwing.

Foster Cruise is sexy as hell and worth billions. But he destroyed my family. He may have gone to prison, but he hasn't paid nearly enough for what I've lost. He has no idea who I am, but I'm determined to prove what the law failed to - and put him back behind bars where he belongs. I'll offer him my body and sell my soul to that handsome-as-hell devil to make things right. Trouble is, I'm afraid he's already stolen my heart.

Inside an enchanted castle, there's a closet - a closet with 100 dresses that nobody ever wears. Dresses like those need a good trying on, and Darling Dimple is just the girl to do it. When she tries on Dress Number 11, something unbelievable happens. She transforms into the castle's Head Scrubber! It turns out that each dress can disguise her as someone else. And Darling is about to have an adventure that calls for a disguise or two, or 100.

Melanie Travis has her hands full with her two young sons, a part-time job, and a half dozen poodles to her name. But even with the busy holiday season approaching, she still has time to sniff out a Christmastime killer.... There's nothing lovelier than Christmas in Connecticut, but Melanie can scarcely find a moment to enjoy the festivities.

Seventeen-year-old Winnie Flynn, a closet horror fan with a starkly realistic worldview, has never known her maternal aunt Mona: a high-profile reality TV producer. Winnie's mom allegedly committed suicide several months ago, and her father has checked out in the wake of the tragedy. When Mona recruits Winnie to spend a summer in their family's home state, working as a production assistant, Winnie figures that she has nothing to lose.

The sister of the pharaoh, Jasilia could easily spend her life at court, being waited on hand and foot. Instead, she and her twin brother Ojan are adventuring archaeologists, scouring Osirian’s deserts for relics of the ancient past, accompanied only by their elite bodyguard Nekhtep. Not all ruins are content to stay buried, however, and when Ojan is captured by the walking dead, it’s up to Jasilia and Nekhtep to free him before the tomb he was exploring becomes his own...

Three lonely riverside dwellers - a boy, a firefly, and a cricket - are all trying to make sense of unexpected changes in their world. Each has a secret dream, but each finds himself trapped. Becoming friends brings them happiness and solidarity, but more changes are in store. Each character stands up to his greatest fear, and, in doing so, finds his greatest strength.

No rest for the wicked... or anyone else! Welcome to the world of Marla Mason, part-time goddess of death and former chief sorcerer of the Felport. It is a world full of snark, violence, weirdness, bad choices with surprising consequences, friendship, betrayal, villainous living severed heads, magic motorcycles, axes made of fragments of moonlight, monsters from beyond the multiverse, and other delights.

When Kate, a physics grad student recently dumped by her professor boyfriend, gets a frantic phone call from a childhood friend, she's more than happy for the distraction. Though she hasn't seen the luminous Lana in years, she can tell Lana's crisis is genuine: her younger sister's joined the Sisters of the Northern Star. The real story - of forgiveness, friendship, and lost hope - unfolds as the two drive from New York to Nevada to collect Lana's sister from a cult that may not be as dangerous as it seems.

For twenty-two-year-old Julia, just out of college, Vancouver has become a social wasteland. Her boyfriend has gone off to London to study art history, leaving her feeling abandoned in the not-quite-derelict historic apartment where she is alone - surrounded by people. While working a series of odd jobs, Julia inadvertently befriends Oliver, one of her aloof neighbors.