Showing results by narrator "Lyssa Browne" in All Categories

Audacity Jones is an 11-year-old orphan who aches for adventure, a challenge to break up the monotony of her life at Miss Maisie's School for Wayward Girls. Life as a wayward girl isn't so bad; Audie has the best of friends, a clever cat companion, and plenty of books to read. Still, she longs for some excitement, like the characters in the novels she so loves encounter. So when the mysterious Commodore Crutchfield visits the school and whisks Audie off to Washington, DC, she knows she's in for the journey of a lifetime.

Summer, set in New England, is a novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1917. The novel details the sexual awakening of its protagonist, 18-year-old, Charity Royall, and her cruel treatment by the father of her child. Only moderately well-received when originally published, Summer, has had a resurgence in critical popularity since the 1960s.

No one's more surprised than Mia Rubie when she unexpectedly inherits her father's elite auto racing team. Mia hasn't been near a race car—or a certain Italian driver—since she walked away from a promising racing career fifteen years ago. But with the racing season about to begin and a letter from her father tugging at her heartstrings, she reluctantly puts her life on hold to travel the world with Rubie Racing . . . and Luca Toscano, the only man she ever loved.

In the middle of the 21st century, life as we know it has changed for all time. Shira Shipman's marriage has broken up, and her young son has been taken from her by the corporation that runs her zone, so she has returned to Tikva, the Jewish town where she grew up. There, she is welcomed by Malkah, the brilliant grandmother who raised her, and meets an extraordinary man who is not a man at all, but a unique cyborg implanted with intelligence, emotions - and the ability to kill.

In a small religious community rocked by a spree of shocking murders, Detectives Salvi Brentt and Mitch Grenville find themselves surrounded by suspects. The Children of Christ have a tight grip on their people, and the Solme Complex neurally edit violent criminals - Subjugates - into placid servants called Serenes. In a town where purity and sin, temptation and repression live side by side, everyone has a motive. But as the bodies mount up, the frustrated detectives begin to crack under the pressure.

Nemo Frisby used to be a detective. Now he drives an Uber between billionaire mansions in California. But he never lost the nose for the case - and when his housecleaner, Trinity Fox, discovers a young woman lying dead in her neighbourhood, she persuades him to help her prove it wasn't suicide. Their investigation leads them to the Bel Air home of a wealthy movie producer, who built his mansion over a Native American burial site. Ancient mythology tells of a demon who, if unearthed, can imbue evil men with terrible power.

"A Hunger Artist" is a short story by Franz Kafka first published in 1922. The protagonist, a hunger artist who experiences the decline in appreciation of his craft, is typically Kafkaesque: an individual marginalized and victimized by society at large. "A Hunger Artist" explores themes such as death, art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure, and the corruption of human relationships.

Ancient Lights, written by Algernon Blackwood in 1912 and published two years later, is the tale of a man hired to remove a standing grove of trees so the owner's house can maintain the direct light and view that it has enjoyed for a number of years. Algernon Henry Blackwood (March 14, 1869-December 10, 1951) was an English writer of tales of the supernatural. Although Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe.

Debby's Debut, written in 1863, is a delightful story that smells of the sea and summer, of joy and youthful innocence, of love, tenacity and courage to claim one's ideas, in which the typical themes of Alcott's production—the construction of female identity, the dignity of work, the importance of honesty and always remaining faithful to themselves, the safeguarding of the good values that modern society risks forgetting—find a lively, ironic and absolutely convincing expression. An unmissable gem for Alcott lovers.

"A Dog's Tale" is a short story, written by Mark Twain, told from the standpoint of a loyal household pet. It first appeared in the December 1903 issue of Harper's magazine. In January of the following year it was extracted into a stand-alone pamphlet published for the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer.

Kicked out of her American boarding school, Evan is sent to live with her estranged father, the King of England. Her existence as his illegitimate daughter is top secret - until someone leaks it to the press. Suddenly she's the focus of a thousand lurid headlines, plus the hatred of her stepmother the Queen and half-sister Princess Maisie.

A mosaic of seven regular townsfolk are going about their days, blissfully unaware their lives are about to interweave, interchange and interact; entangling into such a messy web that, together—and unbeknownst to them—they end up changing the face of America forevermore. In the mold of movies such as Traffic, Magnolia & The Usual Suspects, In the Middle of Middle America follows multiple characters, allowing the listener to become a fly on the wall to observe seven lives as they entangle into such a mess that it all leads to a head-spinning twist.

Audacity Jones and her best friend, Bimmy, are setting off from Miss Maisie's School for Wayward Girls on an extraordinary adventure! In the glittering city of New York, the girls meet Harry Houdini, the world's most famous magician, as he prepares a new spectacle: Houdini plans to make an elephant disappear from a crowded theater. But Audacity and Bimmy discover a nefarious plot that puts Houdini's illusion in jeopardy. Who could be trying to sabotage the master magician?

A Modern Cinderella is a collection of four short stories by Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women. Like her more famous novels, Alcott tells stories of young women interacting with people and events from the late 1800s. Louisa May Alcott bestows a truly amusing and thoroughly modern retelling of The Brothers Grimm's Cinderella. Alcott pokes fun throughout, describing a "cool blonde" as "having many cares those happy little housewives never know."

Anabelle Crisp is fourteen when the Silence arrives, severing all communication between Earth and her new home on Mars. One evening, while she and her father are closing their diner in the colony of New Galveston, they are robbed at gunpoint. Among the stolen items is a recording of her absent mother's voice. Driven by righteous fury and desperation to lift her father's broken spirits, Anabelle sets out to confront the thieves and bring back the sole vestige of her mother.

Time: 2047. Place: Washington DC. A loner. A teacher. A killer. A preacher. On the streets of the capital city, four lives may be about to collide. And if they do, a nation once regarded as “the greatest country in the world” will begin to self destruct. President Sally W. Campbell can see the danger coming. But can her plan to end America's misery come to fruition before it's too late? The power, of course, is not in her hands. The power lies in the hands of those who control the narrative to the American people: the media.

In a small suburb of Connecticut, and totally unaware of each other, four lives are about to collide. But will their lives entangle before experienced cop, Nate Bennett, and rookie cop, Maggie Zucha, complete their investigation of tracking down footage that, if released, will shake America to its very core? Their detective skills are put to the toughest test, but they'll need to be quick because they're not the only ones searching for this story… and whoever finds it first will hold all the power.

You never know when you'll suddenly meet The One! In "The One," Margaret Gordon, a once-prominent surgeon, finds herself back in her hometown after a tragic accident, seeking solace with only her horse as company. Unexpectedly, widowed Joe Wilde arrives one morning with a teenage boy and a horse that needs help, reigniting memories of their past. As they work together to tame the temperamental horse, sparks fly between them, despite Joe's belief that Margaret has always despised him.

Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all. Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.

A series of brutal murders has the homicide division of San Francisco's Hub 9 working overtime. But as the bodies mount, they begin to question whether the attacks are random or somehow connected. When one of their own falls victim, Detective Salvi Brentt and her homicide team join forces with the narcotics and cyber divisions to track down those responsible. They soon discover that a volatile new drug-tech experience, involving black market neural implants, has hit the streets, causing the epidemic of violence and missing persons.