Showing results by narrator "Carlotta Brentan" in All Categories

From the bestselling author of The North Wind and The West Wind comes a sizzling fantasy romance novel featuring a fake engagement and second chance romance, inspired by Sleeping Beauty and the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. She's a head-turner: including the heads of infants and dogs. Well that's how Greta imagines seeing her; they haven't actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building.

When Sara Marsala’s beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, she leaves Sara a valuable piece of land in Sicily, but there’s a catch: the locals refuse to acknowledge the rightful owner of the deed, and if Sara wants the land she must first uncover the truth about what happened to her great-great grandmother, Serafina Marsala. Because Rosie didn’t think Serafina died of illness as family lore states... Rosie believed Serafina was murdered, and she wants Sara to prove it.

Wren of Edgewood is no stranger to suffering. With her parents gone, it is Wren’s responsibility to ensure she and her sister survive the harsh and endless winter, but if the legends are to be believed, their home may not be safe for much longer. For three hundred years, the land surrounding Edgewood has been encased in ice as the Shade, a magical barrier that protects the townsfolk from the Deadlands beyond, weakens. Only one thing can stop the Shade’s fall: the blood of a mortal woman bound in wedlock to the North Wind.

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven's arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?

One misstep at a dinner party and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts like a ghost through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake. Taut, sensual and impossible to forget, The Guest captures the latent heat and potential danger of a summer that could go either way for a young woman teetering on the edge.

Emma is house-sitting on the rainy Washington coast with only her golden retriever for company. She likes the isolation, the peace and quiet, and the opportunity to read. But her latest pick, a poorly written and gruesome horror novel, is disappointing and Emma leaves a one-star review. A message dings back - the author, H.G. Kane, has replied and he's furious. Emma brushes it off, until disturbing incidents start to occur. Scratches in the night. A figure crawling around in the shadows.

New ER doctor Alexi Sur always intended to join an aid agency. She'd just expected to work among humans. When the Pax Galactica Corps becomes her only option (don't ask—the debts aren't hers, but the family is, much to her regret), Alexi finds herself traveling the galaxy and learning alien physiology and culture, all while becoming a reality TV star. Being pursued by camera drones and starring in her very own Welcome-to-the-Universe documentary was never on Alexi's to-do list.

1956. A celebrated Russian author is writing a book, Doctor Zhivago, which could spark dissent in the Soviet Union. The Soviets, afraid of its subversive power, ban it. But in the rest of the world it’s fast becoming a sensation. The CIA plans to use the book to tip the Cold War in its favour. Their agents are not the usual spies, however. Two typists - the charming, experienced Sally and the talented novice Irina - are charged with the mission of a lifetime: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago back into Russia by any means necessary.

Brielle of Thornbrook has dedicated her life to the abbey. She spends her days forging iron and her evenings studying the Text, all in preparation of becoming an acolyte. Twenty-one years on this earth and she has never touched a man. And she never will. But when she finds an injured stranger in the forest, Brielle can’t resist the urge to help him. The encounter leads her to the realm of Under, where the air breathes rot, and the fair folk dance and whisper. Where she discovers that the man she helped is actually a god: Zephyrus, the West Wind, Bringer of Spring.

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of Hobby Lobby, announced a purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how could Green acquire such a rare item? The answers, which Mazza spent the next ten years uncovering, came as a shock: the fragment had come from a famous collection held at Oxford University, and its rightful owners had no idea it had been sold.

Christie’s auction house, Beverly Hills. The effects of Hollywood icon Vivian Snow are up for bid. In the collection is a set of hand-drawn postcards spanning six decades. The sender is Antonio Trombello, a soldier, POW, priest, and Vivian’s confidant. Each postcard sheds new light on a deeply private woman the public only thinks it knows.

As a hospice nurse, Zara Mitchell has already seen more death than most people will experience in a lifetime. So when her older sister asks her to help care for their ailing grandmother, Zara agrees - despite strained family relationships. Though pale and tired, Nonna has lost none of her sharp mind. She’s fixated on finding something long forgotten, and she immediately puts Zara to work cleaning out the attic. Amid the tedium of sifting through knickknacks and heirlooms, Zara also reconnects with a man she’s attracted to but whose complicated past makes romance seem impossible.

When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning on the brick wall beside the body, scrawled in coral nail polish: ‘Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.’ After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen?

When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet.

Three weddings. Three funerals. Alessa's gift from the gods is supposed to magnify a partner's magic, not kill every suitor she touches. Now, with only weeks left until a hungry swarm of demons devours everything on her island home, Alessa is running out of time to find a partner and stop the invasion. When a powerful priest convinces the faithful that killing Alessa is the island's only hope, her own soldiers try to assassinate her.

When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia's aunt, Ena, serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place she was born and spent her early years; nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening.

Phonics instruction shouldn't end when students can decode short words. From an early age, they also need to be able to decode "big words"—words with multiple syllables (sound units) and morphemes (meaning units)—to read proficiently. The key is to teach them systematically and explicitly, in developmentally appropriate ways. That's where this audiobook comes in. Dr. Heidi Anne Mesmer shares essential background on how language "works," provides a K-5 scope and sequence to guide practice, and offers abundant research-backed strategies that teachers can put into action immediately.

Camera-shy Elise Branson is different from the other women in her maternal line. Her mother is an award-winning actress. Her late grandmother, Vivian Snow, is a beloved Hollywood icon. But when Elise’s upcoming wedding coincides with a documentary being made about Vivian, Elise can’t escape the camera’s gaze. And neither can her grandmother, even in death.

The world was shocked by playwright Sarah Lingate’s death thirty years ago at an opulent, white-washed villa on the island of Capri. Absolved of the crime, the Lingate family maintains that what happened that night was a tragic accident. And every July they return to Capri to prove it’s true. This time, Helen Lingate - sole heir to the family fortune - has a plan. Tightly controlled by her father, she enlists the help of the family assistant, Lorna Silva, to free herself from her family’s stranglehold on her life.