Showing results by narrator "Lauren Ezzo" in All Categories

Sky Fielder is a typical college student, except that she is a product of the foster-care system, lives in a halfway house, and meets with her caseworker on a weekly basis. While failing to balance her grades and erratic social life, she receives a call from a hospital, asking her to make medical decisions for her brother Ben—who died more than a decade before. The call must be a scam, and besides, Sky has a new life now. None of her classmates know about her desperate and feral childhood in West Texas.

Sex. Horror. Discomfort. In five stories and one poem, you'll find questions and answers, and you might learn something about yourself along the way. Something uncomfortable. Something dark. Come on in and join us. Lean back, open up, and let us take a look at that tickle. We're sure it's nothing serious. Just...something in your mouth.

In an isolated society, one girl makes a discovery that will change everything - and learns that a single stone, once set in motion, can bring down a mountain.

A journalist stumbles onto the story of a lifetime... and finds herself falling in danger. When naive young reporter Jessica Brady is kidnapped and held for ransom by the head of an illegal dog-fighting organization, undercover police officer Ian Cole realizes he's got his hands full. He's on the verge of busting the ring when he's assigned to babysit her, which isn't an easy feat. She's neurotic, feisty, and also happens to be scared to death of dogs. Now he has to figure out a way to get them both out alive.

Chicken Little is not afraid of anything, not even a wolf. No matter how big or bad he is. In fact, she's never even seen a wolf. So when a real wolf shows up and ruffles her feathers, what's a fretful fowl to do: Join the frenzied flock and fly the coop? Or find out if this newcomer is as bad as his reputation? The plucky star of Chicken Little: The Real and Totally True Tale goes toe-to-toe with literature's most famous villain in this brilliant comedy spun with sly wisdom.

After the murder of her ex-husband is solved, visiting nurse Melanie Bass is confident she will never again cross paths with Detective Sunny Cody. She is shocked when the detective suddenly shows up on her doorstep to ask Melanie for a favor. What starts out as an assignment Detective Cody assures her will be quick and simple, instead soon puts Melanie, her dog Bruno, and Detective Cody herself in serious jeopardy. Melanie quickly becomes increasingly enmeshed in an investigation involving drugs, lies, and danger.

Coralline is a mermaid who is engaged to the merman of her dreams. But when an oil spill wreaks havoc on her idyllic village life, her little brother falls gravely ill. Desperate to save him, she embarks on a quest to find a legendary elixir made of starlight. Izar, a human man, is on the cusp of an invention that will enable him to mine the depths of the ocean. His discovery will soon make him the richest man on earth - while threatening merpeople with extinction. But then, suddenly, Izar finds himself transformed into a merman and caught in a web of betrayal and intrigue.

Set on the high prairies of Montana, in small towns scattered across vast landscapes, the distances in Broken Field are both insurmountable and deeply internalized. Life is dusty and hard, and men are judged by their labor. Women have to be tougher yet. That’s what sixteen-year-old Josie Frehse learns as she struggles to meet the expectations of her community while fumbling with her own desires.

When violence descends on Karin Schaeffer and Mac MacLeary's comfortable Brooklyn neighborhood, and their best friend becomes the lead investigator, they are drawn into the bewildering series of crimes. As the mystery deepens, what looks like the work of a garden-variety serial killer turns out to be an evil darker than anyone imagined, with roots shockingly close to home.

It was supposed to be a fresh start for eighteen-year-old Devon Grace and her father, but fate had other, darker plans. The Appalachian town of Millicent, Ohio, is poor and forgotten by the world - the perfect setting for a disgraced cop and his artistic "misfit" daughter to regroup after a tragic mistake upends their lives. Trouble is, the young men of Millicent are disappearing, including Devon's sole confidant and first love.

Pandora Lynch lives in Alaska with her single dad, an online therapist for Silicon Valley's brightest and squirreliest. Homeschooled by computer and a self-taught hacker, Pandora is about to enter high school to learn how to be normal. That's the plan at least. NorCal runaway George Jedson is a hacker too - one who leaves the systems he attacks working better than before. After being scooped up by a social media giant, will George go legit - or pull off the biggest hack ever? Not even his therapist knows for sure, but maybe the headshrinker's daughter....

Christina Phillips, grieving after a personal tragedy, leaves California for Istanbul, hoping the exotic sights and sounds and smells of the ancient city will help her heal. But when she finds herself being stalked by a young Kurdish woman and threatened by a driver who seems to know all about her family and her life, she must correct old injustices by unraveling family secrets before tragedy strikes once again.

In the tradition of Colson Whitehead's Zone One, a visionary debut novel about shelter, escape, family, violence, and dumpster diving. It's the story of a restless group of young squatters. They've run away from their families and their pasts, questing after knowledge of their most wild selves, roaming the half-empty suburbs of America, occupying the homes of the foreclosed or vacationing, never staying in one place long enough to attract attention while shoplifting beer at the local Speedy Stop.

Chicken Little is NOT afraid of anything. Well, okay, maybe a mysterious BONK to the head can produce panic. But only momentarily. It's not as though she meant to send the barnyard into a tailspin, thinking that the sky was falling. How ridiculous! But can she calm her feathered friends with facts and reason?

Seventeen-year-old Anouk has finally caught the break she’s been looking for—she’s been chosen to participate in an exclusive program that includes an all-expenses-paid trip to France and a chance to explore the hidden underground Palais du Papillon, or Palace of the Butterfly. Along with four other gifted teenagers, Anouk will be one of the first people to set foot in the palace in more than two hundred years. But the expedition is not all it seems.

Seven years ago, Dr. Elle Middleton’s world crashed and burned. She has rebuilt her life and found comfort in her work as the medical examiner for TFH. When a new case leads to a cold case, she is beyond excited for the challenge, until she finds out the one man she wants to avoid is her partner on the case.

When a local reporter with fiery red hair and fearless gray eyes marches into his vampire bar, Hawke's first instinct is to bite her tempting lower lip. His second instinct is to get her the hell out of there, sooner rather than later. No matter how sweet her scent or beguiling her smile, his job is to protect his coven, and it's a responsibility he does not take lightly. However, he soon finds this particular human isn't so easy to forget. Something about her has flicked a switch inside of him. One that was better off left alone.

There is a middle world between life and death, and Tess must navigate it to save her brother in this heart-wrenching story infused with the fractured and fantastical realms of Finnish mysticism. Axel and Tess are bewildered when a stranger shows up in their backyard accompanied by a giant brown bear, but before they can investigate the bizarre encounter, something more harrowing happens: their father is killed in a freak car accident.

Former New York City police detectives turned Brooklyn private investigators Karin Schaeffer and her husband Mac survived when brutal terror invaded their lives more than once. Now the offer of $30,000 for one day's work in London, followed by a family vacation in an exotic locale, seems too good to be true. And then they discover that it is.

Free-spirited Grace Sheldon is used to living on a tight budget as a freelance photographer. But nothing short of a miracle could produce the $30,000 she owes on the house she’s inherited. Without steady employment, the bank refuses to give her a loan. Working a temp job won’t give her nearly enough, but she’ll take any little bit she can get until she figures out a solution. Her first day, though, she realizes this is no ordinary office - and her handsome new boss is no ordinary man.