Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

In ‘Lost But Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives listeners of her novel Prep a chance to see how our beloved character Lee Fiora is doing twenty years later, when she returns for a school reunion and grapples with memories of an incident that happened while she was a student. In ‘Pretzels are for Biting,’ a woman looks up two best friends that she moved away from after her divorce. In ‘Creative Differences,’ a photographer from the mid-west quickly realizes that the ‘documentary’ she stars in is actually a commercial for a multi-national corporation.

“Second place is the first loser” according to Sarah Matell, a heroine who wants nothing more than to wrench on cars and race with the guys. As a talented technician in her father’s automotive speed shop, she’s a whiz at tuning race engines. Winning races also comes easily to her. What isn’t easy is winning Craig Keller, local drag race hero.

Stan's bankruptcy client, Maureen Thompson, is accused of her husband's murder. Her alleged motive is the proceeds of a large insurance policy on her husband's life that would cure her financial woes. Stan assigns the case to his partner, Paula Waters, who at first is excited about getting a new high-profile murder case but her excitement is soon dampened when she learns this isn't the first of Maureen Thompson's husbands to be hacked to death with an ice pick!

Vix Leonard is twelve when she meets dazzling, reckless Caitlin Somers. Invited to spend holidays on Martha's Vineyard with Caitlin and her eccentric, mysterious family, Vix is welcomed into a life totally unlike her own. As days of bold adventure give way to nights of shy discovery, she and Caitlin come together in the complications of growing up; the refuge of belonging; the pact to Never Be Ordinary . . . Until one devastating summer when a local boy changes everything.

Rette was born on a small dairy farm in southern Wisconsin—land with wide pastures bordering on forest and a cold, clear trout stream rimming its edge. From the beginning her parents could see that she was odd, different from other children in the way that she was always listening, often with her ear pressed to a tree or flat to the ground, hearing the sounds of roots at work in the earth, listening to the thoughts of the animals.

Welcome to Magnolia Bloom, where hearts heal and magic happens...in a castle...in East Texas. Magnolia Bloom Beginnings is a compilation of three origin novellas about some of the amazing women who created the magic of Magnolia Bloom. This collection includes Welcome to Magnolia Bloom, Love at Last in Magnolia Bloom, and Sunrise in Magnolia Bloom.

Decades ago in Brooklyn, three girls demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and each followed a distinct path into adulthood. Helen became a violent revolutionary. Val wrote a controversial book, Bright Morning of Pain, which was essentially a novelization of Helen’s all-too-short but vibrant life. And Olive became an editor and writer, now comfortably settled with her husband, Griff, in modern-day New Haven. In Conscience, Alice Mattison paints the nuanced relationships between the palpable personalities of Olive, Griff, and Jean with her signature wit and precision.

Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer would not have been able to imagine her life today: married to a Libyan-born Muslim, raising two children with Arabic names in the American South. Nor could she have imagined the prejudice she would encounter or the profound ways her marriage would change her perception of the world.

If misfortune hadn’t gotten in the way, Sandra Sanborn would be where she belongs - among the rich and privileged instead of standing outside a Hollywood studio wearing a sandwich board in the hope of someone discovering her. It’s tough breaking into the movies during the Great Depression, but Sandra knows that she’s destined for greatness. After all, her grandmother Vira crossed the country during the Gold Rush and established the Sanborns as one of San Francisco’s most prominent families, and her mother Mabel grew up in a lavish mansion.

There comes a time when Emma must face the secret she's kept from Grayson. But she never thought it would be while she stood on stage at Emerald's. The seconds she has to convey that her life is in danger are lost in the devastation that she sees rip through him.

When friends become lovers . . . Firefighter and former Marine Jackson Wilder has tough guy down to an art, but he’s learned the hard way that promises were made to be broken. Abigail Morgan was once his best friend, his first kiss, his first love, his first everything. He’d just forgotten...

In Brooklyn Bones, a crime of the past comes much too close to home when Erica Donato’s teenage daughter, Chris, finds a skeleton behind a wall in their crumbling Park Slope home. Erica - a young widow, overage history PhD candidate, and product of blue-collar Brooklyn - is drawn into the mystery when she learns that the skeleton is of an unknown teenage girl and that it was hidden there within living memory. Erica and Chris are both touched and disturbed by the mysterious tragedy in their own home.

At 26, Maria is holding out for the perfect man to share the rest of her life with. Josh seems to be that man, but after months of dating, their relationship is at a standstill. Maria plans to nudge Josh forward, but when the company she works for is bought out, her new boss Walker seems determined to change Maria’s idea of the perfect man.

When June and her best friends rent a bungalow at a Maui resort, June is charmed by their gorgeous neighbor, Lance. And June has been down enough relationship paths to know that sunsets and beaches are not reality. Okay, so maybe she'll give into one kiss - what can that hurt? Listen to find out more.

Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past. Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life.

It's autumn in Harrow, but something is changing in the town besides the season. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard grows a new sort of apple: strange and beautiful, with skin so red it's nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples and you will you will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But soon your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing - and become darker.

In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet's now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: the surviving humans have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.

The perfect relationship sometimes means letting things get a little messy. Lucy Morley’s older sister is perfect, and her younger brother is nearly there, too. Yet, Lucy can’t even hold down a job, let alone stick with something like college. She drops out and floats from job to job.

The Speed of Mercy captures the unbearable cost of childhood betrayal and what happens when history is suppressed, our past is forgotten - yet finding the truth can change the future. Christy Ann Conlin rips into the myths and stereotypes about older women and those on the edge of conventional society to reveal the timeless gift of mercy in this feminist tour de force.

Fifteen years after her troubled daughter Julie ran away from home, Beth Sawyer stumbles across a newspaper photograph of an up-and-coming teen golfer, who not only shares her last name, but also looks just like her daughter. Sky Sawyer couldn’t possibly be her granddaughter—or could she? With her sort-of-functional life sinking into a full on mulligan—and let’s not get started on her soon-to-be-married ex-husband—Beth meets Barry, a fellow golfer who she accidentally hits with her golf ball and who might just be Mr. Right.