Showing results by narrator "Natalie Naudus" in All Categories

The nine stories in Morgan Thomas’ shimmering debut collection, Manywhere, witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, at whatever cost. As each character traces deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery.

Moving to New York City is supposed to prove cynical twenty-three-year-old August right: magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist. But then, she meets this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane is displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help Jane.

Join mother and daughter as they wade through the trenches of flowers and favors, grueling gown decisions…and the cold, cruel realities of a budget. With luck, love and loads of patience, they come out on the other side, bloodied but unbowed, replete with life lessons - and closer than ever before.

On the run from the king who banished her and the allies who betrayed her, Enebish travels with Serik and a band of rebels to find the deposed king of Verdenet, who is their only hope of uniting the Protected Territories and bringing peace to Ashkar. Meanwhile, the Sky King’s patience with Ghoa has run its course. Enemy forces are bearing down on the Sky Palace, and when Ghoa throws all her power into a last-ditch effort to prove herself, the Sky King and her fellow warriors abandon her. Captured by enemy Zemyans, Ghoa is imprisoned and tortured by the merciless Kartok.

Before the massacre at Nariin, Enebish was one of the greatest warriors in the Sky King’s Imperial Army: a rare and dangerous Night Spinner, blessed with the ability to control the threads of darkness. Now, she is known as Enebish the Destroyer - a monster and murderer, banished to a monastery for losing control of her power and annihilating a merchant caravan. Guilt stricken and scarred, Enebish tries to be grateful for her sanctuary, until her adoptive sister, Imperial Army commander Ghoa, returns from the war front with a tantalizing offer.

Just as Kelly Winters starts to get a handle on juggling magic, life, and love in the mysterious coastal town of Haven, an invitation to an exclusive dinner party goes awry, and someone turns up dead. It's now up to Kelly to weave her magic and crack the case before an innocent guest is arrested. Only one problem: Logan and her are listed as suspects. It also doesn't help that someone is trying to sabotage her efforts; Detective Hazel Roberts has Kelly in the crosshair, and the ultra-hot River Hudson is playing games with her heart.

Throughout Reduce, Reuse, Re-imagine, Beth Porter provides a great resources about recycling, explaining the complexity, guiding individual action, and contextualizing its history. This book reveals how we arrived at this state of dysfunction, and what steps we need to employ to be an active participant in strengthening our recycling system. Nature knows how to recycle itself, decomposing waste back into the soil to continue the circle of growth. We should follow its lead.

Ellie Kobata has spent most of high school on the sidelines, keeping her art Instagram private and shying away from the world. She can’t even tell her only friend, Lia, who she really is: Ellie is part of a secret magical community, and no one outside of it can know it exists. The only person Ellie could fully relate to was Jack Yasuda—her childhood friend who mysteriously started to snub her a few years ago. But before senior year, Ellie is ready to take some risks and have a life-changing summer, starting with her Anti-Wallflower List.

Olivia Sutton has every reason to be happy - she’s met the love of her life, her Nana has recovered from her stroke, and she’s painting again. And yet...her best friend is leaving her cryptic messages, a rebellion is forming at the church luncheon committee, and her recently deceased friend, Eddie Spaghetti, has started talking to her. But even bigger problems are brewing in the idyllic town of Stafford Falls. For one thing, Angie’s business is struggling, and for another, Olivia can’t seem to bring herself to actually work on the heartbreaking portrait of Eddie Spaghetti.

The half-fae outcast, desperate for acceptance. The tempestuous Fury, exiled and hellbent on revenge. The dutiful prince, determined to earn his place. The brooding guardian, burdened by a terrible secret. Each holds a key to solving a series of ritualistic murders that threaten to expose faeries to the human world. But they cannot do it alone. To track down the killer, they will have to form a tenuous alliance, putting their differences - and conflicts - aside. Failure risks the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike. And time is running out.

The emperor is dead. Long live the emperor. Lin Sukai finally sits on the throne she won at so much cost, but her struggles are only just beginning. Her people don't trust her. Her political alliances are weak. And in the northeast of the Empire, a rebel army of constructs is gathering, its leader determined to take the throne by force. Yet an even greater threat is on the horizon, for the Alanga - the powerful magicians of legend - have returned to the Empire. Lin may need their help to defeat the rebels and restore order.

It’s the summer before senior year and Claire Kemp, a closeted bisexual, is finally starting to admit she might be falling in love with her best friend, Sophia, who she’s known since they were four. Trying to pay off the fine from the crash that totals her beloved car, Lars, Claire takes a job at the local nursing home up the street from her house, where she meets Lena, an eighty-eight-year-old lesbian woman who tells her stories about what it was like growing up as gay in the 1950s and '60s.

After a failed marriage, Kelly Winters moves to the strange Californian coastal town of Haven to join her younger brother, expecting nothing more than a quiet life, new beginnings, and perhaps a little love. Instead, she enters a world of magic and murder. Not only does she learn she's a witch and has a powerful destiny linked to her long-lost parents, but she soon discovers the quaint town is full of secrets, lies, and an underlying darkness.

Many highly successful people are backed long before they are qualified. We tend to view these people as lucky. But the decision to back them is neither an accident nor a mistake and rarely the result of good luck. Drawing from his own business experience, countless interviews with some of tech's biggest innovators and compelling case studies of classic success stories such as Howard Schultz and Elon Musk, Gupta breaks down the qualities of backable people.

The West has taken to meditation with great enthusiasm. We contemplate. We concentrate. We embrace mindfulness techniques and a multitude of mantras. We have undertaken to “do” meditation. The Aspects of Meditation series is comprised of brief, precious texts in which Osho shows us the core of meditation is not about sitting silently or chanting a mantra. It is, instead, a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. In Book 4, Osho examines health and illness, disease and well-being as outgrowths of our sense of self and connection to our mind.

Since the dawn of humankind, mental illness has been one of our greatest causes of suffering as a species. But for the majority of our history, its causes have remained a mystery. Professor Karl Deisseroth shares his breakthrough discovery, optogenetics, a biological technique that allows us to decipher the brain's inner workings using light. With moving and revelatory stories from both personal and professional experience, he reveals what mental illnesses really are, why we suffer from them and the unexpected role they have played in our evolution.

Calla escaped Morbeth only to find herself fighting for her life once more. Incendia seemed the perfect sanctuary of escape. The stories told of the mystical island claim all inhabitants were annihilated. Those tragic tales...were lies. Desperate to keep their truth hidden, the islanders take Calla and her friends prisoner. Despite her dire situation, something about that beautiful—yet deadly—paradise speaks to Calla’s soul, whispering the powerful secrets pulsing through her veins.

Gigi Rutherford loves love stories. She reads them, she sells them at her romance bookstore, and she could spend hours imagining the meet-cutes of every couple she encounters. But when it comes to her own love interests, Gigi is out of stock. Instead of enduring bad date after bad date, these days she’d rather curl up with her favorite audiobook and the only man who makes her heart skip a beat: Zane Wilkenson, the smooth-voiced narrator Gigi is convinced is her soulmate. Then, she’s presented with the chance of a lifetime: a ten-day bus tour through the English countryside.

An unspeakable terror is sweeping across the realm as the Celestial Emperor tightens his grip on power. The fragile peace Xingyin fought so hard for when freeing her mother is under threat. Forced to flee her home, Xingyin ventures into the unexplored lands of the Immortal Realm to seek aid in her fight, but, with alliances shifting quicker than the tides, she has to overcome past grudges and enmities to forge a new path forward, seeking aid where she never imagined.

The West has taken to meditation with great enthusiasm. We contemplate. We concentrate. We embrace mindfulness techniques and a multitude of mantras. We have undertaken to “do” meditation. The Aspects of Meditation series is comprised of brief, precious texts in which Osho shows us the core of meditation is not about sitting silently or chanting a mantra. It is, instead, a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. In Book 2, Osho explores the purpose of meditation: to discover the self.