Showing results by narrator "Sarah Welborn" in All Categories

An orphan with a tragic past and a penchant for wicked deeds, Rose Wolff has never been accepted by her people. She's learned to live in the darkness, content with her Alchemy magic and her quiet apothecary. When a terrible curse sweeping the land forces her to enter the Decemvirate, a magical tournament among the strongest of the empire, Rose is pulled from the shadows and thrown into a world of power games, deadly trials, and entanglements with a handsome, mysterious rebel. With divisions in the empire worsening, there may be more at stake than becoming the champion.

The email arrives Sunday night: Do exactly what I say, when I say it, or I will reveal your secret. On Monday morning, seventh graders Owen, Gemma, Ally, and Todd, who have nothing in common and barely know each other, must work together and follow the instructions of an anonymous blackmailer. None of them want to go along with the blackmailer's strange instructions, but each of them have a secret they must protect at all costs.

Written by cohosts of the hit Death Panel podcast and longtime disability justice and healthcare activists Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie, Health Communism first examines how capital has instrumentalized health, disability, madness, and illness to create a class seen as "surplus," regarded as a fiscal and social burden. Demarcating the healthy from the surplus, the worker from the "unfit" to work, the authors argue, serves not only to undermine solidarity but to mark whole populations for extraction by the industries that have emerged to manage and contain this "surplus" population.

Hope Chambers has a major problem. She's spent the entirety of her four years of high school focusing on being perfect—perfect grades, perfect extracurriculars, perfect essays—to the point that she forgot to get a life. And now she's perfectly boring. She's got exactly two weeks before her admissions interview for MIT to spice up her life and get a personality, dammit. And she knows exactly who can help her: soccer star and Mr. Popularity himself, Landon Watkins.

What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? And what can we learn from the plants and creatures who mother at the edges of their world's unraveling? Becoming a mother in this time means bringing life into a world that appears to be coming undone. Drawing upon ecology, mythology, and her own experiences as a mother, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder confronts what it means to "mother": to do the good work of being in service to the living world. What if we could all mother the places we live and the beings with whom we share those places? And what if they also mother us?

Star football player Jace Rovers has a secret. And not just any secret—a shocking secret.... He writes romance. The kind with swords. And dresses. And kissing. Nobody knows. Not the other kids at Twin River High. Not his overbearing parents. And certainly not the millions of fans who've read his book on the writing platform Scribbles. And that's the way he plans to keep it. Except suddenly one of the other football players grabs his notebook in jest and starts reading a kissing scene out loud...and Jace knows he's busted.

The holidays are Holly Brown’s favorite time of year. There’s nothing she loves more than the fun, festivities and the company Christmas party . . . namely because it means she gets to spend time with Lucas Brooks—her coworker and her boss’s son. When she learns that the party is getting canceled thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Brooks’ impending divorce, Holly takes it upon herself to save the party. And if she just so happens to bring her boss and his wife back together in the process, that’s just more cause for celebration.

Are you an overachiever who feels unfulfilled despite your success? For those driven by ambition, perfectionism, and a relentless pursuit of more, it's easy to lose sight of what truly matters. In Gilded, Keren Eldad explores why so many high performers—whether C-suite executives or go-getters—feel trapped by the very success they sought, finding themselves unfulfilled despite outward achievements.

In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners' bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar.

Vivien Leigh was one of the greatest film and theatrical stars of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Her Oscar-winning performances in Gone With the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire have cemented her status as an icon of Hollywood. Behind the scenes, however, Leigh's personal life was marred by manic depression. Largely misunderstood and subjected to barbaric mistreatment at the hands of her doctors, she would also suffer the heartbreak of Olivier's infidelity. Unlike previous biographies, Where Madness Lies begins in 1953 when Leigh suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized.

Corey Chaos, teen YouTube sensation, just needs a break from his hectic schedule. Ever since his musical talent was "discovered" by the right person at the right time, his life has been a steady stream of interviews, screaming fans, TV shows, screaming fans, Instagram lives, and did he mention the screaming fans? He'd give anything to be a normal teen again, even for five minutes. So, when his agent suggests staying at his pool house for a month to get away from the stress, Corey is on the next plane to snowy Twin River, Wisconsin.

While all five Chinese elements are contained within our energy system, we each embody a primary element, which defines our natural strengths, and a weak or missing element, which reflects our untapped potential. When you embrace your missing element—water, wood, fire, earth, or metal—you can pull yourself out of a rut and bring more harmony and success into your life and work.

It's the opening weekend of deer season in Gunthrum, Nebraska, in 1985, and Alma Costagan's intellectually disabled farmhand, Hal Bullard, has gone hunting with some of the locals, leaving her in a huff. That same weekend, a teenage girl goes missing, and Hal returns with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of, as rumors fly and townspeople see Hal's violent past in a new light.

Johnna LaGrange photographs death for a living. But when she gets the call that her younger sister Ori has vanished from their hometown of Sweetwater, North Carolina, the decay she's drawn to becomes chillingly personal. Returning to a town that never forgave her for surviving, Johnna finds her family in tatters—her mother drowning in vodka, her brother partying like nothing's wrong. Only Shannon, her ex turned detective, is willing to help. But as they dig into Ori's disappearance, buried memories start to surface.

Returning to her birthplace of Ketchikan, Alaska, after her mother's sudden death, a socially anxious teen must discover the truth of her newfound magic abilities and her mother's veiled past before the powers governing the forest destroy her.

For archaeologist Emilia Flores, landing a fellowship to work at the ancient ruins of Pompeii in Italy is a dream come true. The only catch? She’ll be digging alongside her infuriating nemesis, TJ Mayer, who’s been a constant thorn in her side. TJ isn’t about to pass up the Pompeii project. Sure, he’ll be stuck working with Emilia, but he thrives on challenging her. And he hasn’t forgotten that secret kiss they shared at an archaeology conference last winter. Though unearthing Pompeii’s treasures might be a dream, student debt is a nightmare that never takes a vacation.

"If you're not strong enough to swim fast, you're probably not strong enough to swim 'pretty," said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario Billy Rose. Since the nineteenth century, tensions between beauty and strength, aesthetics and athleticism have both impeded and propelled the careers of female swimmers—none more so than synchronized swimmers, for whom Williams is often considered godmother. In this riveting history—the first of its kind—Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville and dime museums to the Olympic arena.

In Small Teaching K-8, a team of veteran educators bridges the gap between cognitive theory and the K-8 classroom environment, applying the same foundational research found in author James Lang's bestselling Small Teaching to the elementary and middle school setting. The book demonstrates how to integrate simple interventions into pre-existing pedagogical techniques to dramatically improve student outcomes.

As Rebecca is about to turn twelve years old, she begins to realize that Joe, her father, is not the most supportive of parents. Rather he seems to want to turn her away from friendships, from involvement with others, from anyone who might intrude on their two lives. When it seems their affectionate neighbour is becoming too inquisitive, Joe abruptly arranges for himself and Rebecca to make a quick move to another place in the city. And as she reflects on things, Rebecca realizes that this is what has always happened.

Diana Oestreich, a combat medic in the Army National Guard, enlisted like both her parents before her. But when she was commanded to run over an Iraqi child to keep her convoy rolling and keep her battle buddies safe, she was confronted with a choice she never thought she'd have to make. Torn between God's call to love her enemy and her country's command to be willing to kill, Diana chose to wage peace in a place of war. For the remainder of her tour of duty, Diana sought to be a peacemaker—leading to an unlikely and beautiful friendship with an Iraqi family.