Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Aquino" in All Categories

One drop of blood for a chance at a multimillion-dollar windfall. Is it a philanthropic gesture from a billionaire widow? Some suspect a darker motive behind the DNA lottery—one tied to the eighteen-year-old mystery of an infant’s unidentified remains that mars the history of idyllic Rosemary Hills, Iowa. Right after the blood lottery is announced, three local women fall under suspicion of knowing something about that night, and their carefully kept secrets threaten to spill out too.

Narra Jal is one of the cursed, cast aside her whole life, considered unlucky. But with her mother's life on the line, she will return to the city where she was born to face the trials: a grueling, bloodthirsty series of challenges designed to weed out the weak, the greedy, and the foolish. Trials to select the next ruler of Tigang. Narra has nothing. No weapons. No training. No magic. No real chance of leaving with her life. Just her fierce grit and a refusal to accept the destiny she's been handed.

You wake up floating. Not in the air, but horizontally in a coffin-sized chamber filled with blue gelatinous fluid. You do not remember what this is. You do not remember why you are here. You do not remember who you are.  

After dedicating her entire life to figure skating, Rei Mitchell-Nagasaki is ready for a little bit of normal. And what's more normal than attending college? Zane West has had a rough life, but he's found his way out of Ashton Heights and he isn't about to lose it all when the demons of his past come knocking at the door. Rei has one semester to show her father that she can have it all—a normal life and making it to the Winter Games—but it's not so easy when there is a broody hockey player standing in her way.

The Minerva Sierra Challenge is a grueling spectacle, the cyborg’s Tour de France. Rich thrill seekers with corporate sponsorships, extensive support teams, and top-of-the-line exoskeletal and internal augmentations pit themselves against the elements in a daylong race across the Sierra Nevadas. Marmeg Guinto doesn’t have funding, and she doesn’t have support. She cobbled her gear together from parts she found in rich people’s garbage and spent the money her mother wanted her to use for nursing school to enter the race.

Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don't Even Exist Yet offers listeners a fascinating glimpse into a near-future where careers last 100 years, and education lasts a lifetime. The book makes the case that learners of the future are going to repeatedly seek out educational opportunities throughout the course of their working lives—which will no longer have a beginning, middle, and end. Long Life Learning focuses on the disruptive and burgeoning innovations that are laying the foundation for a new learning model.

Fiona and Violet Seng were just children when their family’s Cessna crash-landed in the Washington wilderness, claiming the lives of their parents. For twelve harrowing weeks, the girls fended for themselves before being rescued. Twenty-five years later, they’re still trying to move on from the trauma. Fiona repurposes it into controversial works of art. Violet has battled addiction and failed relationships to finally progress toward normalcy as a writer. The estranged sisters never speak about what they call their Alone Time in the wild.

Adair MacLaine was sunshine and the storm. Emerald-green eyes and attitude, I fell for her the moment we met and hated her just as quickly. Five years ago, tragedy brought her to my door and sparked a love that consumed us like wildfire - hot, unpredictable, and impossible to control. We raged together until her father made her choose between me and the family name.

Meet Amy, the daughter of the Earl of Northland. Her entire family has been reincarnated as the aristocratic Northland family. In an attempt to amicably remove herself as a candidate for the Third Prince’s fiancée–which would certainly cement her position as the game’s villainess—Amy has taken drastic measures: eating tons of food and just enjoying life (at her mother’s suggestion). With this reincarnation, Amy has been given a precious second chance at life, and this time, nothing—not even an otome game—is going to stop her from fulfilling her dream: Amy wants a cat!

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, renowned marine biologist and co-founder of the All We Can Save climate initiative, compiles the best science and nature writing of the year. 

Lito Val Lucius has no faith, and no loyalty. An elite Icarii soldier of Venus, he was thrown into disgrace after the sudden disappearance of his partner, Hiro. Then Hiro is discovered alive, and a traitor, and Lito is offered a shot at redemption: but only if he hunts down and kills his former partner in cold blood. As the war between the Geans and the Icarii reaches a head, Lito and the First Sister must decide what—and whom—they are willing to sacrifice in the name of duty, or for love.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Röschenberg has inherited a ghost train and its members of the undead are very lively! And it's a suspenseful time for our young Ghostsitter: Vlarad the vampire has consumed too much hamster blood and has now turned into one, and Wombie the Zombie's hundredth deathday is coming right up. But the ritual for celebrating Wombie's deathday is no easy task: It requires a voodoo dagger, a magic ring, and an enchanted cauldron, and if Tom and his undead friends don't perform the ritual in time, Wombie will turn to dust.

They say better the devil you know, and I know Sterling Ford. I know his body like my own, I know his mind, and, now, I'm certain I know his heart. I can forgive the blood on his hands. I can choose him, but will he stand by me when he finally discovers the secret I've kept hidden for years? Can our love survive the truth, or will it rip us apart again? Adair MacLaine is mine, and I'm not giving her up. Our pasts forged an unbreakable love, but my sins might cost me everything, even her.

Border tensions between rival samurai clans escalate into war over a hidden valley, in this fantasy epic from the breathtaking world of Legend of the Five Rings

Everleigh “Lee” Farrows thinks she finally has life all figured out: a handsome fiancé named Roland, a trust in her name, and a house in Bronxville waiting for her to fill it with three adorable children. That is, until Roland brings her out to the Hamptons for a summer that will change everything. Most women could only dream of the engagement present Roland unexpectedly bestows on Lee—a beachside hotel on the prized Gin Lane—but Lee’s delight is clouded by unpleasant memories of another hotel, the Plaza, where she grew up in the shadow of her mother’s mental illness.

Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she's returned to her mother's imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria's royal palace. Thanh's new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh's home.

Starting at a new school is scary, especially with a giant hearing aid strapped to your chest! At her old school, everyone in Cece’s class was deaf. Here, she’s different. She’s sure the kids are staring at the Phonic Ear, the powerful aid that will help her hear her teacher. Too bad it also seems certain to repel potential friends.

Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of investing into tedious discourse that would put even Warren Buffett to sleep. Investing 101 cuts out the boring explanations, and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you learn how to build a portfolio and expand your savings. From value investing to short selling to risk tolerance, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts that you won't be able to get anywhere else.

Into our trash cans go dead batteries, dirty diapers, bygone burritos, broken toys, tattered socks, eight-track cassettes, scratched CDs, banana peels.... But where do these things go next? In a country that consumes and then casts off more and more, what actually happens to the things we throw away? In Garbage Land, acclaimed science writer Elizabeth Royte leads us on the wild adventure that begins once our trash hits the bottom of the can.

Veteran teacher and counselor Delaney Frost accepts a job at Havenhart Academy and soon learns that not only are her new charges “gifted," but that within her resides a power so rare and precious, it can be used to heal others. When danger arrives at the academy gates, Delaney and her mysterious yet alluring boss will fight to protect the children from a megalomaniac out for revenge and the destruction of all she holds dear. Welcome to Havenhart Academy.