Showing results by narrator "Kyla García" in All Categories

There hasn’t been a winner of the Miss Meteor beauty pageant who looks like Lita Perez or Chicky Quintanilla in all its history. But that’s not the only reason Lita wants to enter the contest or her ex-best friend Chicky wants to help her. The road to becoming Miss Meteor isn’t about being perfect; it’s about sharing who you are with the world - and loving the parts of yourself no one else understands.

For years the Garde have fought the Mogadorians in secret, but now the invasion has begun. John is on the front lines in New York City. The odds are against him, but his best friend, Sam, has just inexplicably developed a Legacy—and he isn’t the only one. As the pair tracks down Five and Nine amidst the chaos, they meet another teen with powers. But is she a friend or foe?

One year ago, a solar flare scorched the Earth and destroyed life as we know it. With their parents gone and their supplies running low, grieving stepsiblings Millie and Rose leave home with their infant half-brother in search of Millie’s grandma, a Seminole elder—who Millie knows in her gut is still alive, even if Rose isn’t so sure. Along the way, they meet a group of other surviving kids calling themselves the Lost Boys and their lone adult leader, who reluctantly agree to help them brave the hostile wasteland to make it to Millie’s grandma safely. But the landscape isn’t the only threat.

Stella is getting ready for her next big step. This year, she's a fifth grader, which means she's not only one of the big kids in her elementary school, but she'll also have to start thinking about middle school. GULP! Luckily, Stella can count on her best friends Jenny and Stanley at her side. But when she has a chance to apply for an art and science program at a magnet school, Stella realizes that her future might hold a lot of big changes.

You might be the kind of person who stands up to online trolls. Or who marches to protest injustice. Perhaps you are #DisabledAndCute and dancing around your living room, alive and proud. Or perhaps you are the trans mentor that you wish you had when you were younger. Maybe you call out false allies or stand up to loved ones. Maybe you speak your truth and drop the mic, or maybe you take it with you when you leave. This anthology features fictional stories—in poems, prose, and art—that reflect a slice of the varied and limitless ways that listeners like you resist every day.

As a talented face-shifter, it’s been years since Finn has seen her own face, and that’s exactly how she likes it. But when Finn gets caught by a powerful mobster, she’s forced into an impossible mission: steal a legendary treasure from Castallan’s royal palace or be stripped of her magic forever. After the murder of his older brother, Prince Alfehr is first in line for the Castallan throne. But riddled with grief, Alfie is obsessed with finding a way to bring his brother back, even if it means dabbling in forbidden magic.

Fashion editor Miranda loves her work, and her high energy life in the hustle bustle of Madrid. Her boyfriend Tristan hates the fast pace, the noise and exhaust fumes, and wants only to get back to Galicia and the seaside, longing for kids and a white picket fence. As explosive as their mutual attraction is, and as deep their love, one of them is going to have to give up their dreams. Finally Tristan admits that even love isn't strong enough to overcome their fundamental differences. The breakup is a shock to Miranda, and the next day she wakes up in the past on the day they met.

Dawn misses the big city. Torn away from her favorite place in the world and shipped off to live with her two cooky aunts in the countryside, Dawn is miserable in her new life. While her parents see this as a chance for her to be away from the bad influences that kept getting her into trouble, Dawn sees her new dumpy town of Moorsland as a sticky and smelly prison with way too many bugs. But no one seems to care what Dawn wants, so she's stuck helping her aunts in their dusty antique shop and finishing the year out in a new school filled with mean girls.

The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart as he tries to care for his father; daughter Dina, beleaguered by fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them―could this be the reason for all their troubles?

Jane Ellison is a “super recognizer” able to identify strangers by the slightest facial details - the curve of a head, the arch of an eyebrow. When she spies human rights activist and heiress Bella Valencia in a crowded Boston airport, Jane’s convinced she’s found the person responsible for her sister Kit’s disappearance and presumed death 11 years earlier. But her attempt to detain the suspect ends with Jane herself fired and humiliated.

Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, "starter witch kits" of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.

In time for the one-year anniversary of the Trump inauguration and the Women's March, this provocative, unprecedented anthology features original short stories from 30 best-selling and award-winning authors - including Alice Walker, Richard Russo, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Mary Higgins Clark, and Lee Child - with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

For Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry, the answer is unequivocally yes. And they’re betting everything that you’ll say yes, too. Welcome to The Future: a computer that connects to the internet one year from now, so you can see who you’ll be dating, where you’ll be working, even whether or not you’ll be alive in the year to come. By forming a startup to deliver this revolutionary technology to the world, Ben and Adhi have made their wildest, most impossible dream a reality. Once Silicon Valley outsiders, they’re now its hottest commodity.

For years the Garde have fought the Mogadorians in secret, but now the invasion has begun. If the Garde can't find a way to stop the Mogs, humanity will suffer the same fate as the Lorien: annihilation. When the Elders sent the Garde to Earth, they had a plan - one which the Garde are finally starting to understand. A group of the Garde travelled to an ancient pyramid in Mexico where they awoke a power that had been hidden for generations. Now this power can save the world or destroy it. It will all depend on who wields it.

Akashic Books’ acclaimed series of original noir anthologies has set a high standard for portraying cities and their neighborhoods in all their dark and violent splendor. Now, Mexico City Noir surpasses that standard with phantasmagorical tales of double-dealing, corruption, violence and self-delusion.... This collection is such a varied literary feast.

Over 20 years ago, the students in first-year teacher Erin Gruwell’s high school class in Long Beach, California, were labeled “unteachable” - but she saw past that. Instead of treating them as scores on a test, she understood that each of them had a unique story to tell. Inspired by books like Anne Frank’s diary, her students began writing their own diaries, eventually dubbing themselves the Freedom Writers. Together, they co-authored The Freedom Writers Diary, which launched a movement that remains incredibly relevant and impactful today.

In Colonize This!, Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to the strength of community and the influence of color, to borders and divisions, and to the critical issues that need to be addressed to finally reach an era of racial freedom. With prescient and intimate writing, Colonize This! will reach the hearts and minds of listeners who care about the experience of being a woman of color, and about establishing a culture that fosters freedom and agency for women of all races.

The autobiographical essays in The Girls in My Town create an unforgettable portrait of a family in Los Angeles. Reaching back to her grandmother's childhood and navigating through her own girlhood and on to the present, Angela Morales contemplates moments of loss and longing, truth and beauty, motherhood and daughterhood.

It's 2004 in Muriga, a quiet town in Spain's northern Basque Country, a place with more secrets than inhabitants. Five years have passed since the kidnapping and murder of a young local politician - a family man and father - and the town's rhythms have almost returned to normal. But in the aftermath of the Atocha train bombings in Madrid, an act of terrorism that rocked the nation and the world, the townspeople want a reckoning of Muriga's own troubled past.

A love triangle plays out over decades on a Montana dude ranch. A hurdler and a gymnast spend a single night together in the Olympic village. Mistakes and mysteries weave an intangible web around an old man’s deathbed in Paris, connecting disparate destinies. On the slopes of an unfinished ski resort, a young woman searches for her vanished lover. A couple’s Romanian honeymoon goes ominously awry, and, in the mesmerizing title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a Hollywood cult.