Showing results by narrator "Elena Rey" in All Categories

Aidan Thomas is a hardworking family man and a respected member of his community. He's also a kidnapper and serial killer who has murdered eight women. And there's a ninth, a woman he's renamed Rachel, imprisoned in a backyard shed where she fears for her life. When Aidan's wife dies, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Cecilia, are forced to move. Aidan brings Rachel along, introducing her to Cecilia as a family friend who needs a place to stay. After five years of captivity, surely Rachel is too brainwashed to attempt to escape.

In the summer of 1877, Bridget is orphaned when her unreliable father succumbs to a snakebite as they're crossing the Kansas prairie. Arriving in Dodge City as a penniless orphan, she's quickly recruited for work at the Buffalo Queen brothel and befriends her bookish mentor Constance, securing her home and employment as the favorite of Sheriff's Deputy Jim Bonnie. As winter creeps in from the plains, female gunfighter Spartan Lee rides into town, and Bridget falls in love with her the moment their paths cross.

Visit the Antidote of Uz – a prairie witch who can keep your memories safe. Speak into her emerald-green earhorn, and your secrets, your shames, your private joys, will leave your mind and enter hers. Until the Black Sunday storm, which flattens wheatfields, buries houses and vaporizes every memory stored inside the Antidote. She wakes up empty – as bankrupt as America. If her customers ever discover the truth, her life will be in danger.

Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating – and each other – to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and rollercoaster relationship. Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

Eight students walk into an exclusive writers’ retreat, but only one will walk out with a life-changing opportunity to realize their creative dreams. Effy is piecing together a story about the tragic betrayal that led to her mother’s death. Arlo hopes to publish a novel – but he’s also trying to start a new chapter with Effy after he broke her heart and ghosted her three years earlier. Their mentor is Meredith Graffam, enigmatic writer, director and actress, whose compelling accounts of her own near-death experience on the same retreat decades before continue to spark controversy.

As next-door neighbors and best friends, Claudia and Rachel share everything. But in Claudia’s mind, that means recipes and clothes—not husbands. So it’s a huge shock when Rachel runs off with hers. If that weren’t enough, her mom shows up at her door with heavy suitcases in tow. She intends to stay until Claudia has pulled through this. But behaving like a typical mother or grandmother isn’t Gloria’s style, and Claudia wonders why she’s really there.

When the first letter appears in Kay Anderson's locker, it carries one instruction: dye your hand blue. She definitely shouldn't follow it. Kay doesn't have time for secret societies: as a scholarship student at up-and-coming Manhattan prep school Davison High, she knows her job is to work hard, get into Northwestern, and ignore her wealthy classmates' fun-filled Instagram stories. Besides, her first and only real friend at Davison died suddenly last year.

Between chronic health issues and an overprotective mother, twenty-two-year-old Oriah Pera feels like she’s stuck waiting for her life to begin. But when her mother’s job takes them to Majora, Ry’s ready to break free and make this summer hers. In her first small act of rebellion, she escapes to explore the island on her own – only to run into an infuriatingly charming Spaniard who sees her as nothing more than a sheltered tourist. With unexpected tension simmering between them, Ry isn't sure if she should start listening to her head or her heart.

Since the last war between humans and dragons left the leaders of both species slain—the last human king of Andrath and the legendary dragon queen—both queendoms have been living under a tentative truce: only women will sit on the throne of Andrath, the dragons will have free passage through the human lands...and if men ever try to retake the throne, the draconic realm will retaliate.

Blood Sex Magic is an invitation and an awakening—a guide toward a life of connection to self and spirit, to the seen and unseen realms, and to magical traditions past and future. Bri Luna honors traditions from her African American and Mexican roots and celebrates magic that is “from dirt and blood, jewels and bones, moon and sun.”

When Anna and David adopt twelve-year-old Mia, it feels like their family is finally complete. She's polite, intelligent, and eager to please—everything they'd hoped for. But when Mia's behavior toward Anna turns cold and unsettling while remaining perfect for David, cracks begin to show. Small accidents around the house, strange conversations, and moments that don't add up leave Anna questioning her own sanity. As the tension builds, she realizes that bringing Mia into their home wasn't just a mistake—it might destroy their family forever.

Western psychotherapy views our practice as a way to bring clients back to baseline “normal.” But our society’s “normal” is profoundly unwell: our ways of being reflect the same unsustainable systems that erode our ecosystems, accelerate global destruction, and ultimately extract our humanity. Moving toward healing and purpose in uncertain times means evolving the way we do therapy and the way we think about mental health.

Grace, Henry, and Ally grew up together on the same block. They used to be best friends--until Grace's testimony put Henry's brother, Jake, away for killing their English teacher. Now, two years later, Ally and Henry hate Grace, and Grace is doubting what she thinks she saw that night.

A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young Jesuit Jesuit into crisis. A boy’s mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the angry young man, and innumerable others.

Iselia “Seelie” Graygrove looks just like her twin, Isolde…but as an autistic changeling left in the human world by the fae as an infant, she has always known she is different. Seelie’s unpredictable magic makes it hard for her to fit in—and draws her and Isolde into the hunt for a fabled treasure. In a heist gone wrong, the sisters make some unexpected allies and find themselves unraveling a mystery that has its roots in the history of humans and fae alike.

Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a little resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in an area where she feeds her favorite stray—a black cat named Cat. Like most felines, he is both curious and observant, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

When Lexi receives an invitation to participate in a brand-new escape room, along with her best friend Tess, she’s thrilled. They could both use the distraction after a recent tragedy. But once inside, they learn that they must compete against one another. What do you do when your best friend suddenly becomes your biggest adversary, and every choice you make puts her in danger? How far will you go to win?

From the Man Booker-shortlisted author of Fever Dream comes a hotly anticipated new collection of eerie short stories. Playful and unsettling, teeming with the energy of barely contained violence, Seven Empty Houses dismantles the neat appearance of domesticity to expose the darkness and discomfort that lies beneath.

Sixteen-year-old Lola Boyd suffers from a mysterious disease. Her doctors have no explanation for the chronic lethargy, migraines, and lightheadedness that plague her. But when Lola and her mom and stepdad move to Claret Creek, a small rural Colorado town, to live in her late father’s family home, it’s a chance at a new start. Until her condition becomes even more complicated. Lola begins having memories that aren’t her own—visions from another time that suggest a conspiracy of lies stretching back over one hundred years.

Barcelona, 1964. Exiled from Cuba after the revolution, Isabel Perez has learned to guard her heart and protect her family at all costs. After Isabel’s sister, Beatriz, disappears in Barcelona, Isabel goes to Spain in search of her. Joining forces with an unlikely ally thrusts Isabel into her sister’s dangerous world of espionage, but it’s an unearthed piece of family history that transforms Isabel’s life.