Showing results by narrator "Hallie Ricardo" in All Categories

Gia and Abby have been friends since childhood, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. Now thirty, heiress Gia is back in Greece with her shiny new husband, entertaining glamorous guests with champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun, while bookish Abby is working fourteen-hour-days as an attorney. When Gia invites Abby on an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden to celebrate her birthday, Abby’s thrilled to reconnect.

Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about Southern cooking and family, but despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. What is she supposed to do? Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night her sister almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted - so why is she so unhappy?

Five years ago, Tessa Chamberlain was the lone survivor of a beach house massacre that left three of her friends dead—and Tessa with an inescapable, unending dread. Now she’s going back to face her fears. Renting the same beach house where she almost died, Tessa returns to lonely Cassadaga Island off the coast of Maine long after the tourists and summer residents have departed for the winter. But as the fog rolls in and the nights grow longer, she wonders if she made a terrible mistake. There are footsteps on the porch, creaks from the second floor, and an unsettling feeling of being watched.

Every day Zoe struggles to keep going. The cruel winter took her father's life and left her angry and broken-hearted. As she carries her little brother through a snowstorm that could kill him in minutes, her only thought is finding shelter. The cabin beyond the woods is far from the place of safety she hoped it would be, but it is there that she meets a man whose muscular body marked with strange and primitive tattoos hints at an extraordinary story. He has the power to light up the lake, and with it Zoe's world.

With two biological sons and a promising career, Coleman Carter seems set to fulfill his promise as a resourceful trial lawyer, devoted husband, and dutiful father until his wife, Elizabeth, champions their adoption of a Korean orphan. This seemingly altruistic mission estranges Coleman's conservative parents and demands that he now embrace the unknown as fully as he has always entrenched himself in the familiar.

No one at Hollywood High knows who’s behind We'll Never Tell—a viral YouTube channel where the anonymous creators trespass behind the scenes of LA's most intriguing locales. The team includes CASEY, quiet researcher and trivia champ; JACOB, voice narrator and video editor, who is secretly dating EDDIE, aspiring filmmaker; and ZOE, coder and breaking-and-entering extraordinaire. Now senior year is winding down, and with their lives heading in different directions, the YouTubers vow to go out with a bang.

Mellie has always been the reliable friend, the good student, the doting daughter. But when an unspeakable act leads her to withdraw from everyone she loves, she is faced with a life-altering choice - a choice she must face alone. Lise stands up - and speaks out - for what she believes in. And when she notices Mellie acting strangely, she gets caught up in trying to save her…all while trying to protect her own secret. One that might be the key to helping Mellie.

After a post-graduation drive from Iowa City to NYC, Teddy and Marin have both had enough of each other to last the rest of their lives. But that doesn’t stop their paths from crossing over eight rocky years, punctuated by chance encounters and transatlantic visits, on a journey that eventually brings them right back to where it all started.

Alison is mired in loneliness and grief. Freshly twenty-three and mourning the loss of her younger sister, who has drowned at sea, she’s moved out of her hometown and into a cramped apartment on New York’s Lower East Side. Now she’s living the cliché—barely making rent as a restaurant hostess, avoiding her roommates, and watching the bright, busy passersby from her bubble of grief. She doesn’t need originality; she just needs to be alive. So why does she feel she isn’t truly living? Until late one night, when she rounds the corner and sees a shape in the air—a ghost.

A Skinful of Shadows is a dark YA historical fantasy set in the early part of the English Civil War. Makepeace is an illegitimate daughter of the aristocratic Fellmotte family, and as such, she shares their unique hereditary gift: the capacity to be possessed by ghosts. Reluctant to accept her appointed destiny as vessel for a coterie of her ancestors, she escapes. As she flees the pursuing Fellmottes across war-torn England, she accumulates a motley crew of her own allies, including outcasts, misfits, criminals, and one extremely angry dead bear.

Most high school students never have received any instruction in how to write a personal essay. Yet at a time when getting admitted to their dream college is more competitive than ever, the admissions essay may turn out to be the single most important thing they will ever write. The stakes are high. In Writing Tools for the College Essay, veteran journalist and writing coach Roy Peter Clark shows how any student can showcase their unique achievements, intellect, and attributes to stand out from the crowd.

In a land torn between magic and alchemy, Sepha is an exceptional alchemist, able to bend the rules in ways no one else can. But when a slip of the tongue lands her in prison with a mountain of straw, even she has to admit that she can't transmute straw into gold. With the threat of a death sentence hanging over her, she's forced to make a deal with a conniving magician. Sepha escapes with her life - but at a cost: she has one year to alchemically create a body for the magician, or else her firstborn child will be his.

The road trip in the Winnie continues to Otiylo, Greece, but Lily and Romeo are being followed, and a trail of death and trouble lies behind them. Is that strange coin she holds a magical GPS? Nothing can keep Lily from searching for her mother, but she’s going to need help from a local coven.

Seven generations of women in Susana Prather’s family have been lost to the Georgia swamp behind her house. The morning after her eighteenth birthday, she awakens soaked with water, with no memory of sleepwalking. No matter how she tries to stop it, she’s pulled from her safe bed night after night, haunted by her own family history and legacy. Now, the truth feels unavoidable: it’s only a matter of time before she loses her mind and the swamp becomes her grave.

Has anyone seen Greta Antony? Time to get a witch, a werewolf, and a Winnie across the water to follow the next dangerous clue. Lily and Romeo are offered a deal to get them across the sea to Libya and retrieve a needed sacred relic. Heed this warning - magic often comes with a price and an artifact from the God of Dreams is going to be no exception.

Five summers ago, Chelsea Woodridge met, fell in love with, and married ranger Theodore Lapierre in beautiful Bar Harbor. It was perfect, until her father’s manipulations cost her not only the man she loved but their child, spiraling her into a fog that lasted for years. Theo loved Chelsea the instant he saw her and thought the feelings returned. Her visit with her father has him questioning her love when instead of returning, he gets a note of rejection. And several months later, a newborn on his doorstep.

The daughter of a murdered businessman joins forces with a New York City cop in a perilous hunt for history's most coveted treasure. Claire Andrews loved her father dearly, but now he's dead, brutally slain after attempting to sell an irreplaceable, possibly priceless saltcellar encrusted with rare gems. Leaving the Midwest for New York City, she seeks the help of Detective Artie Modelstein of the NYPD's Frauds/Jewels Squad, hoping to recover the lost treasure and clear her father's sullied name.

Lily Antony is a young witch playing in a very dangerous treasure hunt. She’s got to follow the clues her mom left behind after her disappearance trekking the world. Maybe even put the pieces of her life back together with each one. First stop - get that cute guy Romeo to help her out. It never hurts to have a werewolf along for the ride. Especially since Lily thinks her mom is still alive - and no one else does. Doubters are going to hate...and chase Lily and Romeo all over the world. Sounds like these doubters have something to hide?

When Bianca appears late one night at her brother’s house in Santa Ana, she is barely conscious, though not alone. Jubilee, wrapped in a fuzzy pink romper, is buckled into a car seat. Jubilee, who Bianca feeds and clothes and bathes and loves. Jubilee, who Bianca could not leave behind. Jubilee, a doll in her arms. Told in alternating points of view, Jubilee reveals both the haunting power of our lived experiences and the surreal possibility of the present to heal the past.

With only a creepy stone idol as their next clue, Lily and Romeo are off again. This time the clues will take them to Guatemala’s healing temple of Ichacál, where the situation becomes life or death. Someone’s been kidnapping magical children from small villages. The locals don’t know who it is or how to stop them. Lily and Romeo stop in their tracks and instead set out to find the lost children.