Showing results by narrator "Casey Holloway"

Half-mermaid Tempest Maguire is trying to have it all: fulfilling her duties as second-in-line to the merQueen Hailana while periodically returning home to the California coastline to be with her family and longtime boyfriend, Mark. Living under the sea and rebuilding Coral Straits is grueling work, while being back home reminds her of everyone she loves and misses. But when her old flame Kona arrives bearing news that Hailana has died and Tempest is now officially merQueen, she returns permanently to Coral Straits - even though it devastates her family and rips her apart from Mark.

When seven-year-old Bethany meets her six-year-old cousin Reana Mae, it's the beginning of a kinship of misfits that saves both from a bone-deep loneliness. Every summer, Bethany and her family leave Indianapolis for West Virginia's Coal River Valley. For Bethany's mother, the trips are a reminder of the coalmines and grinding poverty of her childhood, of a place she'd hoped to escape. But her loving relatives, and Bethany's friendship with Reana Mae, keep them coming back.

Who will be the next to die? They've taken the children. And the son of a general. But that isn't enough. More horrors must come…

In Viking times, Norse myths predicted the end of the world, an event called Ragnarök that only the gods can stop. When this apocalypse happens, the gods must battle the monsters - wolves the size of the sun, serpents that span the seabeds - all bent on destroying the world. But the gods died a long time ago. Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history - because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke. But knowing the legends and completely believing them are two different things.

After fleeing the Branch with Sam, Cas, and Nick, Anna is trying to make sense of the memories resurfacing from her old life. At the same time, she's learning how to survive in hiding, following Sam's rules: Don't draw attention to yourself. Always carry a weapon. Know your surroundings. Watch your back. Then a figure from Anna's childhood reappears. Is it a Branch setup, or could it be the reunion Anna has hoped for? Uncertain of where her loyalties lie, Anna must fight to learn the truth - before she is betrayed again. Ultimately, the answers hinge on one question: What was the real reason her memories were erased?

From Barbies to your first bra, from holding your teddy bear to slowdancing with your first boyfriend, from knowing everyone in elementary school to trying to make new friends in middle school.... When dealing with these changes, it's no wonder preteen girls can freak out from time to time.

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace. For now, we watch from afar. Pressia Belze has lived outside of the Dome ever since the detonations. Struggling for survival she dreams of life inside the safety of the Dome with the 'Pure'. Partridge, himself a Pure, knows that life inside the Dome, under the strict control of the leaders' regime, isn't as perfect as others think.

Desperate to escape the spotlight of her failed marriage to a fellow celebrity-chef, Carly di Matisse left New York City for a tiny town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The restaurant she's running these days may not be chic, but in Pine Mountain she can pretend to be the tough cookie everybody knows and loves. Until she finds herself spending too much time with a way-too-hot contractor whose rugged good looks melt her like butter....

Unexpectedly jilted by her locally famous boyfriend and haunted by a boss who makes Attila the Hun look like a lap dog, Bellamy Blake does what any self-respecting girl in her shoes would do. She rounds up her two best girlfriends and makes plans to get the hell out of Dodge.... But Bellamy's escape plan takes a nose dive on the side of rural route 164 when her transmission self-destructs, leaving her in the middle of a cell phone dead zone with nothing but her wits. Oh, and Shane Griffin, the hottest mechanic who's ever checked under her hood.

Everything about Anna's life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There's Nick, solemn and brooding; Cas, lighthearted and playful; Trev, smart and caring; and Sam...who's stolen Anna's heart. Reserved and always controlled, Sam does everything with purpose. When the Branch decides it's time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape, killing the agents sent to retrieve them.

When the end came, the world was divided. Those considered perfect, the Pure, sheltered inside the controlled Dome. Outside, the Wretches struggled in a destroyed world, crippled by the fusings that branded them after the apocalypse that changed everything. Partridge, a Pure, has left the safety of the Dome in search of the truth. Pressia, a Wretch, is desperate to decode the secret that will cure her people of their fusings forever. Together, they must seek out the answers that will save humankind, and prevent the world's annihilation.

Given life by gods, the Ogres were the most intelligent and beautful of the early races on Krynn, and they reigned supreme in their perfect kingdom.... Until that fabled race was weakened by clan rivalries and evil ambition, their downfall orchestrated by the hand of the Dark Queen, Takhisis.... Until the once-proud Ogres were cursed by their own mistakes and transformed into one of Krynn's most ugly, despised, and villainous species.... All except a small group, the Irda, who learned to accept goodness, fight for their freedom, and escape to build a utopian civilization of their own on a paradise island in the Dragon Isles.

In Tempest Rising, Tempest chose to return to the sea, following in her mother's footsteps and forging a relationship with the selkie Kona. Now many months have gone by, and she yearns to see her family again. Life under the ocean is full of rigorous training to eventually take over the throne, which leads to Tempest's powers growing and manifesting in new ways. When Tiamat, Tempest's power-hungry nemesis, attacks Tempest's brother Moku on land, she returns to his side, which also brings her back to her old flame, Mark. But was the attack calculated to get Tempest out of the way?

Three years ago, the sun began to die. In a desperate attempt to reignite the failing star, the United States joined the rest of the planet in unloading its nuclear arsenal at the flickering ember. When they finally reach their target, it's 30 degrees in July and getting colder. Lisa and her husband, Guy, sit shivering on a South Carolina hilltop, watching as humanity's best hope at survival shimmers faintly...then disappears below the horizon. In a world with little light, nothing is guaranteed - least of all survival.

When storied delinquent Cullen Hickson enters the orbit of the O'Dell siblings, everything changes. Bri and Ray find an alluring, addictive outlet in Cullen, who opens their eyes to a world they didn't know existed. For Ray, that means experiencing the singular thrill of crime - from breaking and entering to grand theft auto - while Bri quickly dives into an all-consuming romance with the enigmatic upperclassman.

Aly Kingston has only ever loved one man: Marshall Wayne. But she put all of those childish dreams behind her ages ago when the Waynes left town. Her father's victory at foreclosing on the Wayne family farm, the betrayal written all over Marshall's face - it all still lingers in her mind and in her heart. But now, years later, when he comes back home to Claiborne, Aly realizes so much has changed since Marshall's been away, and so much remains the same.

Texas in the early 1900s, its inhabitants still traveling by horseback and barely familiar with the telephone, was on the cusp of an oil boom that, unbeknownst to its residents, would spark a period of dramatic changes and economic growth. In the midst of this transformative time in Southern history, two unforgettable characters emerge and find their fates irrevocably intertwined.

The stories in Paper Heart investigate contemporary romance from a wide range of angles, each centering around the timeless topics of love and heartbreak. Stories like "Sunday Morning at Jonseys' Diner" explore both familial and romantic love while stories like "Summer Fling" and "The Idea of the Mask" examine desire in the face of an inevitable end.

Women in 22nd-century sovereign America are expected to be seen and not heard. Caitriona Hayden did not get that memo. As she struggles to make her way in the world after her powerful uncle dies, being "seen" is the least of Cait's problems.

For Ilka Weissnix, everything is new. Having recently arrived in the United States, she is determined to escape the immigrant communities of New York and boards a train headed west to discover "the real America". She finds Carter Bayoux "sitting on a stool in a bar in the desert, across from the railroad."