Showing results by narrator "Jessica Almasy" in All Categories

For twenty-two-year-old Julia, just out of college, Vancouver has become a social wasteland. Her boyfriend has gone off to London to study art history, leaving her feeling abandoned in the not-quite-derelict historic apartment where she is alone - surrounded by people. While working a series of odd jobs, Julia inadvertently befriends Oliver, one of her aloof neighbors.

Kate Fridkis, a neurotic twenty-something writer in Brooklyn makes the seemingly crazy decision to become a mother. This is a memoir about pregnancy, and about making the huge choices that sometimes result in growing up, or at least growing.

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain. Only Em can complete the final instruction. She's tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present - imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside.

It's the feeling your grandma told you was only experienced by boring people. Some people say they're dying of it; others claim to have killed because of it. It's a key component of depression, creativity, and sex-toy advertisements. It's boredom, the subject of Yawn, a delightful and at times moving take on the oft-derided emotion and how we deal with it.

Lys and her family win a chance to be a "real family" on reality TV. That means real money, desperately needed in the rotten economy these days, but they only get that money as long as they stay on the air. What can they do to be real enough to please the viewers?

When 16-year-old Anya learns that her aunt, Queen of the Faerie Kingdom of Chrior, will soon die, her grief is equaled only by her despair for the future of the kingdom. Her young cousin, Illumina, is unfit to rule, and Anya is determined not to take up the queen's mantle herself. Convinced that the only solution is to find Prince Zabriel, who long ago disappeared into the human realm of Warckum, and persuade him to take up his rightful crown, Anya journeys into the Warckum Territory to bring him home. But her journey is doomed to be more harrowing than she ever could have imagined...

This fresh, empowering, and fully comprehensive guide is the must-have handbook for every working mom! Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio have helped readers find their dream jobs, be a boss without being bitchy, and even start companies of their own. But what happens when a career girl becomes a mom and her world turns upside down? Can you maintain your ambition and momentum at work while still being the kind of parent you want to be? Of course you can!

Is playing blackjack in the school cafeteria that bad? Samara Brooks doesnt think so. She isnt out to hurt anybody. She just wants to create some drama. And she does. Drama...and trouble.

When the principal threatens to call her parents, Samara proposes a way to save herself. Shell prove shes not a bad person by conducting a scientific experiment to show that she has the same DNA as one of the friendliest girls at school: class president Lily Frederick.

If only reality could resemble the fantasy of what pregnancy is supposed to be like - the brimming excitement, the feelings of significance, a healthy glow. But for Jenny, a young mother-to-be recently relocated from NYC to the suburbs, pregnancy hasn't done a thing to cure her incessant self-doubt and loneliness.

It's 2067, and the Graves family has transformed Mars from a lifeless rock into a chaotic patch of settlements – equal parts national pride and corporate power grab. Enter Hunter Graves: handsome, ambitious and with spectacularly bad timing. He shows up unannounced at the United Nations base just in time for a toxin alert to set off every alarm they've got. Then the evac pods leave without him. Also stranded: Cleo, a sharp-tongued stowaway with no intention of dying today, and even less patience for overconfident trust-fund boys...

The squirrels Jed, TsTs, and Chai are the very best of friends. So when Jed is snatched up by a hawk and carried away to another realm, TsTs and Chai resolve to go after him. New communities are discovered, new friends are made, huge danger is encountered (both manmade and of the fox and bobcat variety) and mysteries are revealed.

When Kate, a physics grad student recently dumped by her professor boyfriend, gets a frantic phone call from a childhood friend, she's more than happy for the distraction. Though she hasn't seen the luminous Lana in years, she can tell Lana's crisis is genuine: her younger sister's joined the Sisters of the Northern Star. The real story - of forgiveness, friendship, and lost hope - unfolds as the two drive from New York to Nevada to collect Lana's sister from a cult that may not be as dangerous as it seems.

Her father left years ago, her mother is dissolving into gin and cigarettes, and her brother has lost himself to drugs. In these four linked stories, a young woman tries to come to terms with the addiction and desertion that caused her family to crumble.

Leaving behind her strict Mennonite upbringing, Kathryn has moved west. America has just won victory in Japan, and a charming older man begins visiting the diner where Kathryn works, taking her out dancing and around town. With her old soldier boyfriends now scattered, and the country flush with postwar happiness, Kathryn takes a chance on her mysterious admirer and moves to Los Angeles with him. But how much does she really know about this new man?

Two lives... two romantic cities... Meet Teresa Felicia Santana León. In New York, she's Tracy León, a would-be artist and telemarketer who falls for an older tycoon, Bruce Babich. When Bruce's mother sends her to Rome to find a stolen painting, Tracy assumes an alter ego, the zesty Felicia Santana. In Rome, she meets a younger artist named Mario Giordani who helps her on her quest. Before long, she is juggling two romances and two distinct identities.

High school sophomore Daisy Jones is just trying to get by unnoticed. It doesn’t help that she’s the new girl at school, lives in a trailer park, and doesn’t even own a cell phone. But there’s a good reason for all that: Daisy has a secret, unpredictable power—one only her best friend, Danielle, knows about. Despite her “gift” (or is it a curse?), Daisy’s doing a good job of fitting in—and a cute senior named Kevin even seems interested in her! But when Daisy tries to help Vivi, a mysterious classmate in a crisis, she soon discovers that her new friend has a secret of her own.

When an amateur chef attempts to use food as his love language, Landra, who struggles with anorexia, finds his approach off-putting. In fact, she finds Brian to be rather annoying. Undeterred, Brian snags Landra in a friendship that eventually grows into something else, as she finally trusts him enough to sample some of his homemade gourmet treats. But things have not evolved to the level Brian would like, and soon he realizes Landra's issue isn't only with the food he makes.

Fifteen-year-old Kate Steiner is not sure why she is suddenly boarding at an East Coast school for troubled kids, though there is evidence that her lawyer parents are having marital problems. It is the mid-1970s, and at the progressive school where she has landed, Kate is initiated into a stratified society inhabited by kids who fell through the cracks. Kate must grapple with moral ambiguities when she discovers that Patrick, her first boyfriend, is also a slip-sliding drug addict.

For eight years, Loa Sollilja's world ran like one of those mechanical models of the solar system, with her baby sister, Asta, as the sun. Asta suffered from a genetic disorder that left her a permanent infant, and caring for her was Loa's life. Everything spun neatly and regularly as the whole family orbited around Asta. But now Asta's dead, and 16-year-old Loa's clockwork galaxy has collapsed.

A young adventurer must test their skills as a hero while navigating new challenges, friendships, and rivalries in the next blockbuster Minecraft novel. Welcome to Adventure School! Hero Crowe’s Adventure School is the stuff of legends. Every year, aspiring heroes across the Overworld wait to...