Showing results by narrator "Kyla Garcia" in All Categories

Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them.

This timely and powerful novel tells the story of three different children seeking refuge. Josef is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world. Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America. Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe.

When the Bandersnatch steals one of Lewis Carroll’s lost diaries, Celia and Tyrus try to get it back, only to tumble through a magic mirror into the Looking-Glass World, a place where everything—themselves included—is divided in two. Celia’s logic and Tyrus’s imagination now belong to their mirror images, Lia and Ty. Left without their greatest problem-solving skills, Celia and Tyrus must rely on each other as they play a massive game of chess to try to catch their mirror images.

Geeky Ella Reyes is at the bottom of the totem pole at Westwood High. Her ultra-popular stepsisters refuse to be seen with her at school, and every day she comes home to a mountain of chores. Ella's only friend (and maybe crush) lives on the other side of her phone's screen. She and Baller929 know everything about each other, except their real names. When they have a chance to meet at her school's Halloween ball, Ella must figure out a way to get there without her stepmom or stepsisters finding out.

At the Medio School for Girls, distinguished young women are trained for one of two roles in their polarized society. Depending on her specialization, a graduate will one day run a husband’s household or raise his children. Both paths promise a life of comfort and luxury, far from the frequent political uprisings of the lower class. Daniela Vargas is the school’s top student, but her pedigree is a lie. She must keep the truth hidden or be sent back to the fringes of society. And school couldn’t prepare her for the difficult choices she must make after graduation.

Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents’ house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was her sister Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead, and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too.

Willa and her friends have a powerful magic inside of them—they each have the ability to transform into a Glitter Dragon Girl. They can breathe glittery fire, soar through the air, and communicate with all the creatures who live in the Magic Forest. The troublesome Shadow Sprites are after the Tree Queen's magic again, and it can only be saved by a special potion. The Dragon Girls must work together to gather all of the ingredients. Willa is leading their quest, but she's scared of what might happen if they don't succeed.

FBI Agent Nell Flynn is about to work the most personal case of her life. Back home for the first time in a decade, Nell is getting ready to close the family estate after her father's death. But there's one piece of unfinished business. Her father, a homicide detective, was investigating the murders of two young women. Now his partner has asked for Nell's help. Nell soon realises that her father should be the prime suspect, and that his friends on the force are covering for him. 

Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep. When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.

For centuries, the magnificent Throne of Felipe has stood with two empty spaces beside its famous silver arrow - spaces where the silver castle and lion should have been. And now, with the recent discovery of the silver castle within a secret vault in Seville, Spain, the hunt is on for the third silver icon. With all three pieces in the place, the throne will be enormously valuable - making it a hot item on VILE's radar. Now it's up to Carmen and crew to find the silver lion before VILE does, and protect the throne from winding up in the wrong hands. 

Azmina, Willa, and Naomi are thrilled to learn they're Glitter Dragon Girls. Summoned to the Magic Forest by its magnificent ruler, the Tree Queen, the girls quickly find out their dragon-selves have unbelievable abilities. They can soar above the treetops, breathe glitter-y bursts of fire, and roar loud enough to shake the ground. With this newfound magic comes a big responsibility, however. As Dragon Girls, they are sworn protectors of the forest and must help keep it safe from the troublesome Shadow Sprites, who are determined to take the forest's magic for their own.

The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan.

An energizing case for hope about the climate comes from Rebecca Solnit, called “the voice of the resistance” by the New York Times, and climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, along with a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. T

This book is an essential resource for young listeners to learn about the Reign of Terror against the Osage people – one of history's most ruthless and shocking crimes. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, thanks to the oil that was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances, and anyone who tried to investigate met the same end.

Winona is a young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole. Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, she is educated and loved, forging a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of her unlikely family unit, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. 

Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents—neighbours, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial centre of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her flat with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them.

The globe-trotting thief in the red fedora returns! And now, the question isn't where—but who? In the role of Carmen Sandiego, award-winning performer Kyla Garcia reveals, for the very first time, the backstory of the ever-elusive master criminal whose whereabouts captured the imaginations of children everywhere— through educational video games, animated series, and a popular PBS "gameshow" for middle schoolers in the 1990s.

The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple with artistic ambitions. Their neighbour, Hector, a Puerto Rican gay man who was once a celebrated AIDS activist but is now a lonely addict, becomes connected to Milly's and Jared's lives in ways none of them can anticipate. Meanwhile, the couple's adopted son, Mateo, grows to appreciate the opportunities for both self-realization and oblivion that New York offers.

New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Dray's historical fiction series comes to a stunning conclusion as the daughter of Cleopatra risks everything to revive her dynasty. After years of abuse as the emperor's captive in Rome, Cleopatra Selene is now a powerful queen, ruling over the exotic kingdom of Mauretania with her husband, King Juba II, by her side. But when a jealous Augustus Caesar demands that her children be given over to him to be fostered in Rome, Selene is drawn back into the web of imperial plots and intrigues that she vowed to leave behind....

In Colonize This!, Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to the strength of community and the influence of color, to borders and divisions, and to the critical issues that need to be addressed to finally reach an era of racial freedom. With prescient and intimate writing, Colonize This! will reach the hearts and minds of listeners who care about the experience of being a woman of color, and about establishing a culture that fosters freedom and agency for women of all races.