Showing results by narrator "JULIA WHELAN" in All Categories

Philippa Fisher is just your average eleven-and-a-half-year-old girl - she’s a bit shy and not the most popular girl at school. But all that changes one day when a new girl named Daisy arrives at school and reluctantly confesses that she is Philippa’s very own fairy godsister. Unfortunately for Philippa, Daisy is one fairy who is not too fond of humans, and so she isn’t pleased about having to help Philippa. In fact, she wants nothing more than to grant Philippa her three wishes quickly so that she can move on to a new assignment. However, things aren’t that simple.

It is said there are 99 Arabic words for love. Bea, an American exchange student, has learned them all: in search of deep feeling, she travels to a Middle Eastern country known to hold "The Astonishing Text", an ancient, original manuscript of a famous Arabic love story that is said to move its best readers to tears. But once in this foreign country, Bea finds that instead of intensely reading Arabic she is entwined in her host family's complicated lives - as they lock the doors and whisper anxiously about impending revolution.

Meet Ivan and Prue: a married couple - both experts in language and communication - who nevertheless cannot seem to communicate with each other. Ivan is a tightly wound philosophy professor whose reverence for logic and order governs not only his academic interests, but also his closest relationships. His wife, Prue, is quite the opposite: A pioneer in the emerging field of biolinguistics, she is bold and vibrant, full of life and feeling. Thus far, they have managed to weather their differences. But lately, an odd distance has settled in between them.

Nell worships her older sister, Layla. They're one unit, intertwined: Nellayla. As Nell and her best friend, Felix, start their freshman year in high school, on Layla's turf, there's so much Nell looks forward to: Joining Layla on the varsity soccer team. Parties. Boys. Adventures. But the year takes a very different turn. Layla is changing, withdrawing. She's hiding something, and when Nell discovers what it is, and the consequences it might have, she struggles. She wants to support Layla, to be her confidante, to be the good sister she's always been. But with so much at stake, what secrets should she keep?

After the drama of discovering that she’s a member of the Storks, an ancient order of women endowed with mystical abilities, Katla Leblanc is finally settling in to life in chilly Minnesota. The ex–California girl even hopes for a white Christmas. So when the snow starts to fall on a romantic sleigh ride with her boyfriend, Jack, it seems like the perfect present. However, before she knows it, Katla’s wintry wish spirals out of control, turning into the snowstorm of the century. The unusual weather draws unexpected attention. Scientist Brigid Fonnkona is far too interested in Jack....

The sides have been chosen and the battle lines drawn. Echo awakened the Firebird. Now she is the only one with the power to face the darkness she unwittingly unleashed...right into the waiting hands of Tanith, the new Dragon Prince. Tanith has one goal in mind: destroy her enemies, raze their lands, and reign supreme in a new era where the Drakharin are almighty and the Avicen are nothing but a memory.

Moving from LA to nowhere Minnesota, 16-year-old Katla Leblanc expected the local fashion scene to be frozen in time. What she didn’t expect was induction into the Icelandic Stork Society, an ancient order of women charged with a unique mystical duty. Not only is Katla the youngest member, but Hulda, the society’s omen-guided leader, immediately bestows the coveted Second Chair on her - a decision that ruffles a few feathers.

Three young Americans captured by Iranian forces and held in captivity for two years tell their story. In summer 2009 Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourdwere hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan when they unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by a border patrol. Accused of espionage, the three Americans ultimately found themselves in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, where they discovered that pooling their strength of will and relying on each other were the only ways they could survive.

Growing up in a world of wealth and pastel-tinted entitlement, 15-year-old Carly has always relied on the constancy - and authenticity - f her sister, Anna. But when 14-year-old Anna turns plastic-perfect-pretty over the course of a single summer, everything starts to change. And there are boys involved, complicating things as boys always do.

In this hopeful, humorous, and astonishingly deft debut, Allison Winn Scotch explores what happens when a young woman thinks she's lost everything that matters' and ends up discovering what's truly important. This is a novel that will leave you taking stock of what's important in your own life . . . and never letting it go.

The first time violinist Julia Ansdell picked up the Incendio Waltz in a darkened antique shop in Rome, she knew it was a strikingly unusual composition. The minor key and complex feverish arpeggios have a life of their own. But when she plays the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her small daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence.

Critically acclaimed and award-winning - but hardly best-selling - author Georgina Jackson can’t get past the first chapter of her second book. When she receives an urgent email from her agent, Georgina is certain it’s bad news. Shockingly, she’s offered a commission to complete a newly discovered unfinished manuscript by a major 19th-century author. Skeptical at first about her ability to complete the manuscript, Georgina is horrified to learn that the author in question is Jane Austen.

Vera Bellington has beauty, pedigree, and a penthouse at The Angelus - the most coveted address on Park Avenue. But behind the sparkling social whirl, Vera is living a life of quiet desperation. Her days are an unbroken loop of empty, champagne-soaked socializing while her nights are silent and cold, spent waiting alone in her cavernous apartment for a husband who seldom comes home.

In The Island of Excess Love, Pen has lost her parents. She’s lost her eye. But she has fought Kronen; she has won back her fragile friends and her beloved brother. Now Pen, Hex, Ash, Ez, and Venice are living in the pink house by the sea, getting by on hard work, companionship, and dreams. Until the day a foreboding ship appears in the harbor across from their home. As soon as the ship arrives, they all start having strange visions of destruction and violence. Trance - like, they head for the ship and their new battles begin.

The author of the highly acclaimed The Fates Will Find Their Way returns with a novel about a far-flung family reunited for one weekend by their father's death. Five minutes before her flight is set to take off, Kate Pulaski, failed screenwriter and newly failed wife with scarcely a hundred...

Enthusiastic, spunky, and positive, Punky Brewster was the quintessential eighties kid. Nearly thirty years later, Soleil Moon Frye---the adorable girl who played her on TV---is all grown up. Now she's a married mom of two, an entrepreneur who parlayed her successful kids' clothing line into a partnership with Target, and a social media whiz with millions of followers.

Hayden was born a werewolf, a Dark Guardian. But her ability to sense the feelings of fellow werewolves has made her life unbearable. She runs away, only to be tracked by charming, mysterious Daniel, a newcomer to the pack and the one Shifter immune to her powers. As she reluctantly follows him home, Hayden finds herself falling dangerously in love....

Assigned to the same suite during their freshman year at Quincy-Hawthorn College, Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice, and Margaret quickly become inseparable. The leafy green campus they move through together, the idyllic window seat they share in their suite, and the passion and ferocity that school and independence awakens in them ignites an all-encompassing love with one another. But they soon find their bonds must weather threats that originate from beyond the dark forests of their childhoods, and come at them from institutions, from one another, and ultimately, from within themselves.

Several years in the future, an all-female astronaut team circumnavigates the globe once every 90 minutes aboard the International Space Station, prepared to be a powerful presence in space. When a surprise set of "everyday citizens" tags along for the ride, all protocol flies right out the proverbial...airlock.

Bebe Baker is an ex-everything: ex-stripper, ex-Christian, ex–drug addict, ex–pretty girl. It’s been one year since the car accident that killed her boyfriend left her scarred and shaken. Flanked by an eccentric posse of friends, she is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house while trying to finish cosmetology school.