Showing results by narrator "Cassandra Cassandra" in All Categories

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

It's 1836, and 19-year-old Fanny Appleton, a privileged daughter of a wealthy, upper-class Boston industrialist, is touring Europe with her family. Like many girls of her day, she enjoys the fine clothes, food, and company of the elite social circles. But unlike her peers, Fanny is also drawn to education, literature, and more intellectual pursuits. Published author and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is also touring Europe but under much different circumstances....

A battle for the underworld is brewing. Taking the throne might be close to impossible between having a goddess and a secretive human organization bent on the domination of all the realms on her tail. How can Poppy, her hellhounds, and her judges defend it? It doesn't help when one of her judges goes missing while she sleeps. When they fall under attack Poppy must choose between fighting, staying safe, and searching for her missing man.

First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite", A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.

Sam Pritchard, the Highway Killer from Utah, tried to kill her…but failed. Robin Hood, the winter serial killer who terrorized most of the Midwest, did kill her, and technically, Carolyn Ryder, for almost five minutes, was dead. But the woman who surgeons brought back to life on the operating table is not the same woman who was wheeled into the ER without a heartbeat. She has changed. But one thing hasn’t changed. Carolyn Ryder has some unfinished business, and it’s called Sam Pritchard. She wants to find him real bad.

Physician Bess Codman has returned to her family's Nantucket compound, Cliff House, for the first time in four years. Her great-grandparents built Cliff House almost a century before, but due to erosion, the once-grand home will soon fall into the sea. Though she's purposefully avoided the island, Bess must now pack up the house and deal with her mother, a notorious town rabble-rouser, who refuses to leave.

Little more than 200 years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. Its history and peoples were the subject of much myth and speculation: and no region aroused greater interest than Egypt.

Bookstore owner Tricia Miles has put up - and put up with - her uninvited college roommate for weeks. In return, Pammy has stolen $100. But the day she's kicked out, Pammy's found dead in a dumpster, leaving loads of questions unanswered.

The winters in Willow Falls, Iowa are cold, brutal and unforgiving. And so is the town’s newest visitor. Except he’s not passing through. He’s here on vacation, for some fun and he’s going to stay for a while. They call him “Robin Hood”, a winter serial killer who has left a gruesome trail of horror and d ath across four Midwestern states. His grisly trademark is skewering his victims to tree trunks using a hunting crossbow. Now he’s here.

Fifteen-year-old Reed Brennan wins a scholarship to Easton Academy---the golden ticket away from her pill-popping mother and run-of-the-mill suburban life. But when she arrives on the beautiful, tradition-steeped campus of Easton, everyone is just a bit more sophisticated, a bit more gorgeous, and a lot wealthier than she ever thought possible. Reed realizes that even though she has been accepted to Easton, Easton has not accepted her.

Abigail Adams offers a fresh perspective on the famous events of Adams's life, and along the way, Woody Holton, a renowned historian of the American Revolution, takes on numerous myths about the men and women of the founding era. But the book also demonstrates that domestic dramas---from unplanned pregnancies to untimely deaths---could be just as heartbreaking, significant, and inspiring as the actions of statesmen and soldiers.

In her myriad forms, Tara - also known as the female Buddha of Tibet - has the power to protect us from inner and outer negativity, illuminate our self-sabotaging habits, cleanse mental and physical poisons, open us to abundance, give us strength and peace, help us fulfill our life purposes, and more. Here, listeners explore each of the 21 manifestations of Tara, engaging with each through traditional meditations, visualizations, praises, mantra chants, and the author's extensive experience as a depth psychologist.

Spring has come to charming Mayville Heights, and with it, some Hollywood glamour. The little town is abuzz because the reboot of a popular baking TV show is filming there. Librarian Kathleen Paulson is working as an advisor on historical facts for the show, local restaurants are providing catering for the camera crews, and Kathleen's faithful felines, Hercules and Owen, are hoping there is a cat treat challenge. But then Kathleen finds one of the judges dead.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.

Squid Match: More than a mere tale of horror and carnage, this story is a powerful study in class struggles and inequality. Some Body to Love: Join Sally as she embarks on a quest to get chlamydia while helping her classmate's father secure a corpse in time for his sex doll convention . . . and maybe find love along the way. The Lepercorn: Lucy and her father are just like any working-class family trying to make an honest living scamming blind people out of hot dogs. But their lives are turned upside down when a small misunderstanding manifests as a grotesque abomination.

This third entry from the much-loved Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series finds the clever detective and her friends investigating a Houdini of a pony. When a new petting zoo opens in town, Buttons becomes the star by escaping every night and showing up on someone else’s lawn to eat the flowers. Nancy quickly jumps on the case—because even though she’d love to see Buttons on her lawn one morning, it’s more important to keep him safe at the zoo.

Everyone who wishes upon a star, or a candle, or a penny thrown into a fountain knows that you're not allowed to tell anyone what you've wished for. But even so, there is someone out there who hears it. In a magical land called the Haven lives a young fairy named Ophelia Delphinium Fidgets. Ophelia is no ordinary fairy - she is a Granter: one of the select fairies whose job it is to venture out into the world and grant the wishes of unsuspecting humans every day.

Emily Aulenbach is 30, a lawyer married to a lawyer, working in Manhattan. An idealist, she had once dreamed of representing victims of corporate abuse, but she spends her days in a cubicle talking on the phone with vic­tims of tainted bottled water - and she is on the bottler’s side. And it isn’t only work. It’s her sister, her friends, even her husband, Tim, with whom she doesn’t connect the way she used to. She doesn’t connect to much in her life, period, with the exception of three things - her computer, her BlackBerry, and her watch....

Fifteen years ago, I ran away from Whisper Hollow, Washington, a small town on Crescent Lake in the Olympic Peninsula. But truth is, if you were born here, you can never really leave. I'm Kerris Fellwater, and when I returned, I inherited my grandmother's house - and her gift. As a spirit shaman, it's my responsibility to drive the dead back to their graves because around Whisper Hollow, people - and secrets - don't always stay buried.

Hannah and Kate became friends in the fifth grade, when Hannah hit a boy for looking up Kate's skirt with a mirror. While they've been close as sisters ever since, Hannah can't help but feel envious of the little family Kate and her husband, David, have created - complete with two perfect little girls. She and Ben have been trying for years to have a baby, so when they receive the news that she will likely never get pregnant, Hannah's heartbreak is overwhelming. But just as they begin to tentatively explore the other options, it's Kate's turn to do the rescuing.