Showing results by narrator "Kate Reading" in All Categories

If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power's eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship - between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh - had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names.

"All's fair in love and war", according to airship captain Josette Dupre, until her hometown of Durum becomes occupied by the enemy and her mother a prisoner of war. Then it becomes "nothing's fair except bombing those Vins to high hell". Before she can rescue her town, however, Josette must maneuver her way through the nest of overstuffed vipers that make up Garnia's military and royal leaders in order to drum up support.

The end has come. The Arc of Radiance has been destroyed. Asmodeus, the Prince of Darkness, marches on Tarsynium with an innumerable demon host. It would seem that, at long last, the end of the world is here. The remnants of humanity gather in Tarsys, uniting their forces to make a final stand. A slim hope remains as Zara discovers an ancient spell capable of defeating the demons once and for all. Together, she and Owyn embark on a gambit to save the kingdom before it can be destroyed. Their success hinges on their friends holding back the R'Laar so they can try their desperate plan.

War has torn Tarsynium asunder. However, the true war lies just ahead...After the defeat of the king’s army at Dunmar City, a letter arrives from the Conclave's High Magus seeking a truce. The Nightingales, in desperate need of friends, leave their mountain stronghold to forge a new alliance with rangers and mages, to unite themselves against the king. But when political intrigues lead our young heroes into a trap, they face a punishment reserved for only the vilest of criminals: Exile.

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.

On a stormy night in small-town America, a couple, desperate and soaked to the skin, knock on a stranger's door. When Martha, a retired schoolteacher living a safe and conventional life, answers their knock, her world changes forever. For they are fugitives. Lynnie, a young woman with an intellectual disability, and Homan, a deaf man with only sign language to guide him, have escaped together from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, a brutal institution where people with disabilities are left to languish, shuttered away from the world.

For 200 years Tracato has been the center of enlightenment, as the serrin have occupied human lands and sought to remake humanity anew. But the serrin have not destroyed Rhodaan's feudal families entirely, and as Tracato faces the greatest threat to its survival in two centuries, old rivalries are stirring. Sasha must assist her mentor Kessligh to strengthen the Tracato Nasi-Keth, yet with one royal sister siding with the feudalists and another to be married to Tracato's most powerful foe, her loyalties are divided.

The plans of the desert gods are coming to fruition. Meryam, the deposed queen of Qaimir, hopes to raise the buried elder god, Ashael, an event that would bring ruin to the desert. Çeda and Emre sail for their ancestral home to bring the traitor, Hamid, to justice. To their horror, they discover that the desert tribes have united under Hamid's banner. Their plan? A holy crusade to destroy Sharakhai, a thing long sought by many in the tribes. In Sharakhai, meanwhile, the blood mage, Davud, examines the strange gateway between worlds, hoping to find a way to close it.

The year is 1803 and England and France remain at odds. Hoping to break the English once and for all, Napoleon backs a ring of Irish rebels in uprisings against England and sends the Black Tulip, France's most deadly spy, to the Emerald Isle to help. Meanwhile, not to be outdone by her husband, Letty Alsworthy steals away on a ship bound for Ireland, armed and ready to fight for her spouse and to learn a thing or two about spying for England.

A fascinating and inspiring exploration of the healing power of apology and how to put it to work in your life. While books on the subject of forgiveness abound, until now there have been none focusing on one of the most important aspects of the forgiveness process: apology.

It's the dawn of the twentieth century, post-Reconstruction, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers - the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee - a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton. Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change.

Owyn and Zara, having saved the rangers and the Conclave from certain destruction, return to the capital city by royal summons. The king has a plan to unite his fractured kingdom... and the young heroes of Forest Hill are going to help him. However, when Owyn's master, Elias, returns in a most unexpected way, he brings a troubling message - a secret that's been held for more than 20 years.

A remarkably fresh and engaging account of Britain’s long-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne at 18, in 1837, and died in 1901. Lytton Strachey captures her essential spirit in concise and elegant prose, with an eye and an ear keenly attuned to human nature, and its foibles. Written only 20 years after her death, this biography exemplifies the emergence of modern thought from the Victorian Era.

This book explores the multifaceted character of Nancy Reagan and reveals new details surrounding the tumultuous presidency. The Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty spent four years interviewing the people who knew this couple best and draws on overlooked archives, letters, memoirs, and White House records, compiling the most extensive biography of Nancy Reagan yet. From the AIDS epidemic to tensions with the Soviets and the War on Drugs, this book shows how Nancy Reagan became one of the most influential First Ladies of the century.

Secret agent Augustus Whittlesby has spent a decade undercover in France, posing as an insufferably bad poet. The French surveillance officers can't bear to read his work closely enough to recognize the information drowned in a sea of verbiage. In the ninth installment of Lauren Willig's best-selling Pink Carnation series, the atrocious poet teams up with an American widow to prevent Napoleon's invasion of England.

Ann Blake, a rare-book expert and conservator, was imprisoned for a drunk-driving accident that she doesn't remember, one that resulted in the death of her husband, a famous rare-book expert. But she is freed from prison by CIA undercover agent Tucker Anderson in exchange for her help and expertise on the Library of Gold, a legendary collection of books that have been lost to the world for over a century.

Marj Charlier’s The Rebel Nun is based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church. At that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. By the end of the sixth century, even this is eroding as the church begins to eject women from the clergy and declares them too unclean to touch sacramental objects or even their priest-husbands.

Dorothy Martin and her husband, retired Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, are on holiday in the idyllic English village of Broadway when they stumble across the body of a man who appears to have fallen down a disused quarry. When it is revealed that the man, a local farmer, was probably pushed over the edge, and that the police have failed to find any suspects or motives for the murder, Dorothy can’t help but get involved...

When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.

Having heard Gudrum’s threats and Alys’ warnings, Reinar is desperate to head South, back to his family. Though he must be patient. His army is far behind him, and Reinar knows he’ll need every pair of hands to get their fleet back home. Waiting with his brother, Sigurd is looking forward to his reunion with Raf, unaware that she is now with Gudrum. And though Raf didn’t return to Gudrum willingly, she is still struggling, unable to decide where her true loyalties lie.