Showing results by narrator "Nicol Zanzarella" in All Categories

Twenty-five years ago, Monica Stanton gave up a baby girl for adoption. Now, the thing Monica didn't dare hope for has happened: Jessica has reentered her life...and brought a little drama and competition with her. Jessica is willing to meet her birth mother, but she wants the reunion to air on a reality TV show. Monica would rather chew glass than appear on TV. But she'll swallow her pride - and a few other unsavory items - if that's what it takes to reconnect.

It’s the age of whaling and beachcombing, and life is hard on Sylt - especially for women forced to get by on their own. Ever since the death of her parents, Jordis has lived with her grandmother in the village of Rantum. The two of them survive by beachcombing and by secret fortune-telling, using the oracle runes that are a crucial part of the ancient Norse religion. Under the local minister’s skeptical eye, Jordis befriends his daughter, Inga. Jordis confides her love for the young blacksmith, Arjen, to her new friend, only to discover that Inga, too, hopes that Arjen will propose to her.

How do you fight a supernatural battle without the most secret and ancient of powers? This is precisely the question that Frost must answer when she is given the awesome task of delivering the Book of the Last Battle to those who have work in good magic. Frost must rely solely on the physical strength of her sword and the magic contained within her beauty to succeed in her quest and regain her powers.

Ida is a married woman in her late 30s, who lives in Rome and works at a radio station. Her mother wants to renovate the family apartment in Messina, to put it up for sale and asks her daughter to sort through her things - to decide what to keep and what to throw away. Surrounded by the objects of her past, Ida is forced to deal with the trauma she experienced as a girl, 23 years earlier, when her father left one morning, never to return.

Seeing more birds than you ever imagined and witnessing exciting avian drama is possible-whether you're on the go or in your own neighborhood, local park, or backyard. As Heather Wolf explains, it all comes down to how you tune in to the show happening around you, the one in which birds-highly skilled at staying under the radar-are the stars. In Find More Birds, Heather shares her very best tactics.

From the outside, Vanya’s childhood of riding horses with her father in the solitude of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and attending flamboyant operas with her mother in the city looked idyllic. But life for Vanya was more about learning to gauge and survive her parents’ unpredictable actions - from being left to lie in her own blood-soaked diaper while her Christian Scientist mother prayed, refusing to get medical help, to watching her father writhe on his bed in the detox ward, his hands and feet tethered with leather straps.

When precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were 12 years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly 20 years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the exposure of their secret history and confront the unspeakable truths that haunt them still.

Ellie Beltrami and Cristiano Conte have known each other their entire lives. Both families hail from Chiavari, a small city on the Italian Riviera. Their grandparents are friends. Their parents are friends. They were friends. And for one brief moment fourteen summers ago, they were almost more than that. After years apart, Ellie and Cris are headed back to Chiavari as generations of Beltramis and Contes gather for the unlikely second marriage between her grandmother and his grandfather.

Over twenty years ago, after an ultimatum from his pregnant ex-wife, Will was forced to assume a new identity and to fake his own death to get out from under his dealer and user-friends once and for all. Now Will is counseling Thea, a young woman who has been diagnosed with a pathological addiction to creating fake social-media identities and who founded a start-up company, Alibis, that created false internet identities for clients, many with suspect pasts.

After losing his parents and sister in a fire, Jake is raised by his grandparents. As he transforms from a traumatized boy to an exceptional student athlete and finally to an ambitious assistant DA, he learns to hide a crippling fear behind a stony mask. Until she turns 13, Bettina (Tina) Berenson is a shy, bookish girl rejected by both parents. But her life radically changes when her father starts taking her to the places he frequents: racetracks, prizefights, nightclubs, and the occasional company of gangsters he admires.

Throughout America's history as an industrial nation, sizable countercultural movements have chosen to forgo modern comforts in pursuit of a simpler life. In this illuminating alternative American history, Margot Anne Kelley details the evolution of food-centric utopian movements that were fueled by deep yearnings for unpolluted water and air, racial and gender equality, for peace, for a less consumerist lifestyle, for a sense of authenticity, for simplicity, for a healthy diet, and for a sustaining connection to the natural world.

Michael Chabon once said, “I scan the tables of contents of magazines, looking for Antonya Nelson's name, hoping that she has decided to bless us again.” And now she has blessed us again, with a bounty of the stories for which she is so beloved. Her stories are clear-eyed, hard-edged, beautifully formed. And in Funny Once, their flawed humanity is made beautiful, perfectly observed by one of America’s best short story writers.

When an abstract sculpture made from human body parts shows up in front of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC homicide detective Lucky Strickland and her partner are called in to catch the killer. Little do they know that this murder is only the opening gambit of a madman hell-bent on revenge. The sweltering city streets become a killing field as a new body is discovered on another block each day, with no end in sight. Can this psychopath be stopped before he reaches the end game, or has Lucky's luck just run out?

The fierce swordfighter Frost has lost her supernatural powers and must travel to the pit of hell and back in order to save herself and the kingdom. Doing battle with all the forces of Hades: demons, sorcerers, vicious spiders, and the most vile of all beasts, Frost must quest to save the princess and the world to which both are accustomed before evil is left to dominate for all eternity. Even without her amazing powers, Frost and her trusty sword are always ready to raze Hell.

It’s 1965, and thirteen-year-old Gia, along with her older brother and cousins, are desperate to escape their sleepy, tree-lined neighborhood where nothing ever happens. The only thing Gia would miss is the surrounding marsh, where she feels at home among sea birds and salt water. But when one of Gia’s cousins brings drugs into their neighborhood, it sets off a chain of events that quickly turn dangerous. Everyone will be caught in the ripples, and some may be swept away entirely. Gia is determined to keep herself and her family afloat while the world is turned upside down.

Tara has it pretty good: a nice job, a writing career, a forgiving boyfriend. She should be happy. Yet Tara can't stay sober. She's terrible at monogamy. Even her psychiatrist grows sick of her and stops returning her calls. She spends most of her time putting out social fires, barely pulling things off, and feeling sick and tired.

Equal parts information and inspiration, After You Vote: A Woman's Guide to Making an Impact, from Town Hall to Capitol Hill is both a primer and call-to-action for women of all ages who want to exercise their voices and engage more fully in civic life. It's the ultimate guide to political engagement, filled with practical (and proven) tactics to make your voice heard and have an influence on the issues you care about most - whatever those may be.

When John Nelson abandoned his government job to join a scrappy band of activists, he didn't realize trying to save the world would be so hard. His ideals remain strong, but his optimism is wearing thin. Parts per Million, Julia Stoops' socially conscious, fast-paced debut novel, is set in Portland, Oregon, in 2002. As the trio dives into antiwar protests and investigates fraud at an elite university, Nelson falls in love with an unlikely houseguest, Deirdre, a photographer from Ireland - and a recovering addict.

After decades apart, the five siblings find themselves together again at their ailing mother’s bedside, caught in a deadlocked feud over her hospice care. Into the morass steps Murron Teinetoa, one of their bastard children, who carries an idealistic hope of finally fitting in among her estranged relatives.In an interweaving narrative, Malae portrays the Felices in their formative years of the fifties; he excavates the personal lives of the siblings in the eighties and nineties; and he follows Murron in the present as she raises her son as a single mother.

When English teacher Emily returns to Prague to visit her former students, married couple Milos and Olexa, she expects a tourist's welcome. But as she reflects upon arrival, "When you revisit a place you've once lived, it isn't a vacation; it's a haunting." As the tension builds between Emily and Milos, so too does the understanding between Emily and Olexa.