Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

When Maurie Ledbetter moves back to her hometown to open her dream shop, she calls a local construction crew for help. Former teenage crush Grant Shelton shows up on her front porch, answering the call for the construction job. Seeing Grant again brings back Maurie’s memories of her troubled childhood, and she doesn’t know if spending time around Grant is the best way to move on. But when she discovers Grant has gone through difficulties of his own, Maurie realizes that he might be the key to her own healing.

It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for 30 years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it - the Southern Reach - has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking.

Some secrets are meant to be revealed...or so you'll discover in three sexy, unforgettable Valentine's Day stories from New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Jennifer Ryan and contemporary romance stars Candis Terry and Jennifer Seasons.

These 10 classic tales attest to the growing depth of Gurganus's genius. Offering characters antic and tragic, Gurganus charts the human condition as we live it now. His parables recall William Faulkner's scope and Flannery O'Connor's corrosive wit. We encounter a seaside couple fighting to save their dog from Maine's fierce undertow; a mortician whose dedication to his departed clients exceeds all legal limits. A virginal 78-year-old grammar-school librarian has her only erotic encounter with a Joe Exotic-like polyamorous snake farmer.

When Sydney's engagement ends with Rian, his brother Jake is there to save the day...in more ways than one. Sydney has been the perfect friend, the perfect daughter, and Rian checks off on her perfect fiancé list. But when Sydney notices a strange truck parked in her fiancé’s parking spot, she’s in for the surprise of her life.

This collection of 22 short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow.

AI is everywhere. It powers the autocorrect function of your iPhone, helps Google Translate understand the complexity of language, and interprets your behaviour to decide which of your friends' Facebook posts you most want to see. In the coming years, it'll perform medical diagnoses and drive your car - and maybe even help our authors write the first lines of their novels. But how does it actually work? Scientist and engineer Janelle Shane is the go-to contributor about computer science for the New York Times, Slate and the New Yorker.

Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past. Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life.

When their world-famous band, The Darling Songbirds, split up acrimoniously, sisters Adele, Molly, and Lana went their separate ways. A decade on, Adele and Molly have finally reconciled. However, Lana has remained stubbornly estranged - until now. Lana Darling’s bank account is finally filled to the top, thanks to the song she sold to another singer, but she’s never made it as a solo artist. Is it finally time to give it all up?

At 26, Maria is holding out for the perfect man to share the rest of her life with. Josh seems to be that man, but after months of dating, their relationship is at a standstill. Maria plans to nudge Josh forward, but when the company she works for is bought out, her new boss Walker seems determined to change Maria’s idea of the perfect man.

Consider this glowing debut from Paige Lewis a menagerie of near-extinction. Space Struck explores the wonders and cruelties occurring within the realms of nature, science, and religion, with the acuity of a sage, the deftness of a hunter, and a hilarious sensibility for the absurd. The universe is seen as an endless arrow “...and it asks only one question: How dare you?” The poems are physically and psychologically tied to the animal world.

In this award-winning collection, listeners will find spellbinding stories of loss, absence, and the devastating effects of chance - of what happens when the unthinkable bad luck of other people, of other towns, becomes our bad luck, our town. Taut, lucid, and engrossing, provocative and dark - and often darkly funny - these stories have much to offer the lover of literary fiction as well as the listener who just loves a great story.

Bounty hunter Trinity Smith had one goal in life: to track down criminals and bring them to justice. And he was going after one of the most infamous of them all: Victoria Davidge, a cold-blooded seductress accused of murdering her husband. Trinity took up as a hired hand at her Arizona ranch, never expecting to find himself attracted to the fiery-haired fugitive, but the passionate beauty ignited his senses and tempted the hard-bitten loner to forget his lawful duty.

Max Davenport craves a break from the press. Constantly on the run from paparazzi and over-enthusiastic women, the football star takes to the small town of Green Hills to embrace a simpler lifestyle with his sister. But his pulse unexpectedly quickens when he discovers his sibling’s usually frumpy-dressed friend swimming in his backyard pool…opening his eyes to her breathtaking beauty.

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And, like Shana, there are other 'shepherds' who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

Kaylee Heart would rather run through a roaring fire than endure even a minute of public speaking. Put in an 80-hour work week? No problem. Shut down her grandfather’s gold-digging girlfriend? Easy peasy. Stand in front of an auction crowd and call for bids? Show her the exit. So she has no idea how Gerald, the golden-voiced auctioneer she’s been crushing on at the local auction house, can find the courage to stand on stage every week, with all those eyes on him. But as cruel fate would have it, she is about to find out.

Seattle event planner Allison Lane is an expert at delivering the perfect wedding - even if she might not exactly believe in the whole"'til death do us part" thing. When her father decides to tie the knot with a woman he barely knows, Allison heads to Sweet, Texas, to make sure his new honey is the real deal. What she didn't expect to find at the local honky-tonk was a sexy Southern man as bent on charming her pants off as he is on blowing her "true love doesn't exist" theory all to hell.

With Freya just hired to redesign the top adult website in the country, her creativity couldn't have chosen a worse time to disappear. Determined to get her sexy back, Freya puts an ad online, hoping to find the right man to inspire her. Unfortunately, all roads point back to her upstairs neighbor, Greg Cavanaugh. He's everything she doesn't want: a playboy and a scumbag lawyer. Except if he's so wrong for her, why does being with him make her believe anything is possible?

Magic is real, and hungry - trapped in ancient texts and artifacts. Only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Join Detective Sal Brooks, newest recruit to a black-ops magic hunting team backed by the Vatican, as she travels the world to keep the supernatural in check. Just remember: watch your back and don't touch anything.

Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer would not have been able to imagine her life today: married to a Libyan-born Muslim, raising two children with Arabic names in the American South. Nor could she have imagined the prejudice she would encounter or the profound ways her marriage would change her perception of the world.