Showing results by narrator "Emily Rankin" in All Categories

When Penelope O'Shaunessy, "an incoming freshman of average height and lank hair", steps into Harvard Yard for the first time, she has lots of advice from her mother: "Don't be too enthusiastic, don't talk to people who seem to be getting annoyed, and for heaven's sake, stop playing Tetris on your phone at parties." Penelope needs this advice. She is the kind of girl who passes through much of her life with coffee spilled on her white shirt, who can't quite tell when people are joking, and who, inevitably, always says the wrong thing.

The theme that unites these stories in this dazzling first collection by Curtis Sittenfeld is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, this collection shows Sittenfeld’s knack for creating real, believable characters while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit.

Francesca "Chess" Varani is an ultra-bright, sassy, but vulnerable Barnard freshwoman from a blue-collar background in the vibrantly gritty New York City of the mid-'80s. She strikes up a volatile and somewhat toxic friendship with drama-queen classmate Kendra Marr-Löwenstein and falls into the bewitching orbit of her Salingeresque, high-toned family. Upon graduation, she moves into the Marr-Löwenstein house in the West Village as a secretary/girl-of-all-work.

Four girls. Four generations. One family. The third installment of the exquisite new series from Newbery Honor winner Ann M. Martin follows Francie, Dana's daughter, to Princeton, NJ, in the 1980s.

Ellie Larrabee’s life is perfect. She’s thriving at work, living in a fabulous apartment, and engaged to the man of her dreams. To all appearances, Ellie and Rob Beauman are a golden couple—blessed with good looks, success, and romantic chemistry that’s off the charts.

Annabelle has lived in Wolf Hollow all her life: a quiet place still scarred by two world wars. But when cruel, manipulative Betty arrives in town, Annabelle's calm world is shattered along with everything she's ever known about right and wrong. When Betty accuses gentle loner Toby - a traumatised ex-soldier - of a terrible act, Annabelle knows he's innocent. Then Betty disappears.... Now Annabelle must protect Toby from the spiralling accusations and hysteria until she can prove to Wolf Hollow what really happened to Betty.

With little more than a run-down Jeep and their newborn baby in tow, author Micah Perks' parents set out in 1963 to build a school and a utopian community in the mountains. The school would become known as a place to send teens with drug addictions and emotional problems, children with whom Micah and her sister would grow up. This complex memoir mixes a moving celebration of the utopian spirit and its desire for community and freedom with a lacerating critique of the consequences of those desires - especially for the children involved.

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a corrupt baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents - hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's child trafficking.

In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

Writing under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard, Louisa May Alcott wrote a series of what she called "blood and thunder" thrillers for a weekly pulp magazine. In the first, Pauline's Passion and Punishment, she explores the unfair roles of men and women, as well as the societal expectations and forbidden desires that play an important role in this story of love and vengeance.

Heartbroken Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s charming, cash-strapped bookshop and finds herself the carer for her ailing grandfather Andrew. She thinks it’s best to move him to an assisted-living home to ensure his care, but to pay for it, Natalie will have to sell up the bookshop. However, Grandpa Andrew owns the building and refuses to budge. Moving into the studio apartment above the shop, Natalie hires a contractor, Peach Gallagher, to do some repairs. His young daughter becomes a regular at the shop, and she and Natalie begin reading together while Peach works.

True stories inspired by one of the most iconic, beloved, best-selling books of our time. In the 10 years since its electrifying debut, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of people to set out on paths they never thought possible, in search of their own best selves. Here, in this candid and captivating collection, nearly 50 of those people, as diverse in their experiences as they are in age and background, share their stories.

Full of friendship and revenge, each story and setting is more strange and wonderful than the last, brimming with new technologies and beings. And yet, in these futuristic lands, the people must still confront deeply human emotions and dilemmas. Veronica Roth reaches into the unknown and immerses listeners into six short stories that feel startlingly familiar and profoundly beautiful. With two new stories from the Carve the Mark universe, this collection has something for everyone.

The Haunting of Bellington Cottage has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

In 2008, 13-year-old Jon Bronson disappears on his morning walk to school. After even his parents give him up for dead, only his best friend, Chloe, remains certain that he would come back. Four years later, Jon returns with no memory of anything after the day he disappeared. But something’s different about him. His presence seems to cause spontaneous nosebleeds in those around him. When he hugs his father, the older man passes out. The family dog disappears. Jon’s only clue to his missing four years is the battered book left behind by the man he believes abducted him.

Summer, California, 1970s. Sally Samuelson is eight years old and the course of her family's life is about to change. When her golden-boy brother Ellis, just graduated from high school, drives up the coast with his two best friends, he promises to be back in a week. But he does not return. After Ellis's unexpected death, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis again - especially after Julia, Ellis's girlfriend, shows up pregnant on their doorstep.

It's been happening since Min was eight. Every two years, on her birthday, the same man finds her and murders her in cold blood. But hours later she wakes up in a clearing just outside her hometown - alone, unhurt, and with all evidence of the crime erased. Across the valley, Noah just wants to be like everyone else. But he's not. Nightmares of murder and death plague him, too, though he does his best to hide the signs.

Astrid Strick has always tried to do her best for her three children. Now, they're finally grown up - but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Elliott doesn't have any idea who he really is, or how to communicate with his own sons. Porter is, at last, pregnant - but feels incapable of rising to the challenge. Nicky has fled to distant New Mexico, where he's living the bohemian dream. And Astrid herself is up to things that would make her children's hair curl.

When Laura Costello arrives in downtown Los Angeles, her life has somewhat fallen apart. Her apartment building has caught fire, her engagement to her high school sweetheart has been broken off and she's just been caught in a rare LA downpour and has no dry clothes. But when she seeks shelter in Nina Hill's local neighbourhood bookshop, she finds herself introduced to the people who will become her new family. And as Laura becomes friends with Nina, Polly and Impossibly Handsome Bob, things start to look up.

An addictive literary puzzle that introduces an unforgettable young heroine plunged into the twisted world of a secret society with a dark agenda. Lee Cuddy is 17 years old and on the run, alone on the streets of Philadelphia. After taking the fall for a rich friend, Lee reluctantly accepts refuge in the Crystal Castle - a cooperative of homeless kids squatting in an austere, derelict building. But homeless kids are disappearing from the streets in suspicious numbers, and Lee quickly discovers that the secret society's charitable façade is too good to be true.