Showing results by narrator "Luci Christian" in All Categories

I’m good at hiding my feelings. Having to pretend I’m not in love with my best friend? Pfft. That’s child’s play. Here’s how I do it: I avert my eyes when he walks out of his room, shirtless in all his toned glory. I squash the butterflies that fill my stomach every time he slowly unfurls a dimpled smile. Not to brag, but Aiden Smith isn’t hard to resist if you’ve been doing it for as long as I have. In fact, we might have continued as best friends forever if not for the fact that I needed him to play the part of my fake boyfriend.

Whispers, rumors, and horror stories abound about The Barrens and the strange creatures that lurk within them. Determined to find the remaining vampires that stood against his father in the war, Braith knows that it’s dangerous to enter the inhospitable land, but that they must if they are to have a chance at gaining allies to help overthrow the king.

Imprisoned by Caleb and at the mercy of the king, Aria is determined not to let them break her. However, the more atrocities she witnesses, the more she realizes there are some horrors no one can withstand, and sometimes survival isn’t always the best option.

In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers", challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small.

Third generation Texas Ranger Tyler Steele is the last of a dying breed - a modern-day cowboy hero living in a world that doesn't quite understand his powerful sense of right and wrong and instinct to defend those who can't defend themselves. Samantha and her daughter, Hope, are on the run from a seemingly inescapable situation. They are in danger, desperate, and alone. Though they are strangers, Ty knows he can help - protecting the innocent is what he does best.

Ian is...just my best friend. We're extremely close, stuck so deep inside a Jim-and-Pam-style friendzone everyone at work assumes we're a couple - that is until one day, word spreads through the teacher's lounge that he's single. Fair game. Suddenly, it's open season on Ian. He should be reveling in all the newfound attention, but to our mutual surprise, the only attention he seems to want is mine. He's turning our formerly innocent nightly chats into X-rated phone calls. Our playful banter sports a new, dangerous edge.  

Scarlet Reed has returned to Polson Falls, convinced that 12 years away is long enough to shed her humiliating childhood identity as the town harlot’s daughter. With a teaching job secured and an adorable fixer-upper to call home, things in her life are finally looking up. That is, until she finds out that Shane Beckett lives next door.

A year has passed since the war against Jack's father freed the humans from their roles as blood slaves and servants to the vampire race. Having left the palace behind to ensure the outer towns are obeying the new laws, Jack struggles to come to terms with the grief and haunting memories that drove him from the palace in the first place. He's content to lose himself in the outer lands and the obscurity they offer him. That is until he encounters Hannah.

Driven by a burning need for vengeance, William sets out in search of the man who ended his mortal life. Determined to kill Kane, no matter what the cost, he travels deeper into the mountains to find him. What he’s not expecting is to discover Tempest. Forced to flee her sheltered mountain town in search of help, Tempest has no idea what to expect from the world outside her valley. At first, she believes it’s a miracle when she stumbles upon William. Until she realizes he has only one thing on his mind, murder.

When they are attacked on their way back to the palace, Aria realizes she must do whatever is necessary to put an end to the threat looking to destroy all those she loves. Braith will sacrifice anything and do whatever is necessary to keep Aria safe. However, there are some things that not even he understands or can stop from happening. Jack will do everything he can to help secure the future of their world and keep the peace. What he’s not expecting is for a new danger to rise from within their allies; one none of them could have seen coming. 

Sylvia's had more than her fair share of hardship. Abandoned by her husband, sold into slavery by her father, and now ruled by a harsh master, she's never felt free. But everything changes when she discovers an injured stranger in the woods. Despite his initial hostility and the language barrier between them, Sylvia decides to help him at any cost. She's determined to save him from a cruel fate...and he's become her new secret. But she never realized that he'd be a prince - or that he would kidnap her as his bride!

Aria is determined to hate the prince, determined not to give into him in anyway, but his strange kindness, and surprising gentleness astonish her. Torn between her loyalties to the rebellion, and her growing love for her greatest enemy, Aria struggles to decide between everything she has ever known, and a love she never dreamed of finding.

Books 1-3 of the Captive series. Blood slave. Captured, taken from her beloved family and woods, Aria's biggest fear is not the imminent death facing her but that she will be chosen as a blood slave for a member of the ruling vampire race.

Leah Smith finally has everything she has ever wanted. Except she doesn't. Her marriage feels more like a loan than a lifelong commitment, and the image she has worked so hard to build is fraying before her eyes. With a new role and a past full of secrets, Leah must decide how far she is willing to go to keep what she has stolen.

Paint your toes. Pick up the wrong coffee and bagel order. Drive from Brooklyn to Jersey in traffic so slow you want to tear your hair out. It’s amazing all the useless things I can accomplish while on hold for three hours with customer service. Three hours when I should be getting the Date-in-a-Box website ready to launch at the big business expo in a few days. Except my shiny new website is glitching, and my inner rage-monster is ready to scorch some earth...when he finally picks up. Not the robot voice I expected but a real live human named Cal.

In Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit takes on the conversations between men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't. The ultimate problem, she shows in her comic, scathing essay, is female self-doubt and the silencing of women. Rebecca Solnit is the author of fourteen books about civil society, popular power, uprisings, art, environment, place, pleasure, politics, hope, and memory, most recently The Faraway Nearby, a book on empathy and storytelling.

I was issued a warning: stay away from Ben Rosenberg. As Clifton Cove's resident "king", he thinks he's entitled to anyone and anything. The trouble is, I've spent my whole life following the rules and playing it safe. I know what it feels like to be the good girl. I'm the police chief's daughter and a librarian - for adorable children, no less. An all-nighter with a fictional hunk is about as exciting as my life gets until one day, fate decides to take pity on me and shove me straight into the path of Mr. Off-Limits himself.

In The Captive Series, the vampire king that decimated the human and vampire races was introduced, but now it’s time to meet the man who existed before he became a tyrannical king. At 25, Atticus is the last surviving member of the most powerful line of vampires and is known as a prince among his kind. The life of luxury and privilege he’s always known is about to change in ways that he never could have seen coming though. Ways that will forever alter the course of his life, the lives of all those around him, and the history of the world.

A full-length standalone romantic comedy from USA TODAY best-selling author R.S. Grey. Beau Fortier starred in most of my cringe-worthy teenage fantasies. I met him when I was a junior in high school, a time that revolved exclusively around bad hair, failed forays into flirting, and scientific inquiries into which brand of toilet paper worked best for stuffing bras. That is, until Beau moved into the small guest house just beyond my bedroom window. A 24-year-old law student at Tulane, Beau was as mysterious to me as second base (both in baseball and in the bedroom).

Life as an ENFP is no walk in the park. Despite the happy-go-lucky attitude they exude, only those who share the specific preference for extroversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator can truly understand the unique form of chaos that governs this type's restless mind. Embodying a profoundly strange stack of cognitive functions, ENFPs approach the world with both the enthusiasm of a child and the wisdom of an old soul.