Showing results by narrator "Xe-Sands" in All Categories

Fresh-out-of-a- bad-relationship New York City single, Sofia La Scala, carves out time once a week for happy hour with her best friend Chloe in search for Mr. Right. But when Chloe can’t make it out one night, Sofia meets seductive billionaire, Alex Chambers. The two immediately connect and begin flirt–filled exchanges that heat up rapidly and eventually lead to a steamy romance. The relationship challenges Sofia’s norms and flings her into a world of fantasy, role playing and lust.

The Last Kid Left begins when a car smashes into a sculpture of a giant cowgirl. The police find two bodies in the trunk. Nineteen-year-old Nick Toussaint Jr. is arrested for murder, and after details of the crime rip across the Internet, his 16-year-old girlfriend, Emily Portis - a sheltered teen who's been off the grid until now, her first romance coinciding with her first cell phone - is nearly consumed by a public hungry for every lurid detail, accurate or not.

Nicole Hennessy's life revolves around her Zen practice at the Boston Zendo, seeking spiritual solace in the tenets of Buddhism. After a decade of grueling spiritual practice under her master's tutelage, living on a shoestring as a shop clerk, Nicole has become sexually and emotionally entangled with her mentor. To break free, she must retrace her entire life's journey - from her strict Irish Catholic upbringing to her drug-fueled year as a teenage runaway. Even as she reinvents herself in New York City, her master's intoxicating voice pursues her, whispering dangerously in her ear.

Lexi Stewart’s lineage extends to the founders of the MacInnes legacy in faraway America. A year has passed since she was widowed much too young, but she’s floundering, so she accepts an invitation to escape her beloved Scotland for a needed respite. Surely a visit with her Texas relatives and a stay at Castle MacInnes will put her back to rights. There’s just one problem: Logan Jameson. The handsome personal trainer is getting everyone in Magnolia Bloom on a fitness kick, and he's determined to make her believe she’s not too old or too heavy to find love again.

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?

This debut full-length collection from prose-poet Evan D. Williams comprises two dozen pieces selected from literary journals - including Borderlands and The Mud Season Review - and a further two dozen pieces that appear here for the first time. The audiobook version is narrated by multiple Voice Arts Award winner Xe Sands.

Once Adele, Molly, and Lana were The Darling Songbirds, a world-famous country band. Now they're just three sisters who barely speak. But that's about to change. Middle sister Molly arrives in town, and is immediately drawn to the neglected little café where she worked as a teenager. Could she dare to bring it back to life? As lead singer, Molly had always been the voice of the band. But caught between controlling big sister Adele and demanding baby sister Lana, she never felt heard. If she's going to reopen the café, she'll do it on her own terms, no more being bossed.

Want to know all the secrets to handling your daydreamy Gemini child? Gemini children are easily bored and are always daydreaming. Their minds are incredibly active. As soon as they have a thought, they are on to the next one. That is why it appears that they never listen to you. So how do you get them to pay attention? By understanding how their minds work, by respecting that they are driven more by logic than emotion, by not endlessly lecturing them, and by giving them the freedom to pursue their own interests. This audiobook will show you how to do just that.

Kiki MacInnes has burned more than a few bridges in her time. Now, as a recovering alcoholic, she’s dedicated to helping others avoid addiction. She can only hope her temporary role as the new châtelaine for Castle MacInnes will help her stay on the straight and narrow, too. But even if she’s somehow able to redeem herself for the mistakes of the past, could all the people she’s hurt ever forgive her? Could the handsome small-town pastor, who has her longing for a Christmas miracle?

The MacInnes sisters, different in every way…except for how much they need each other Alyssa’s country music career was a dream come true. But lately, something’s off. The words, the notes, the passion…they’ve abandoned her. Now, it’ll take some serious soul searching - and maybe a little help from her family - to rediscover her muse and figure out what to do next. Bailey won’t be denied what she wants. Not ever again. And, she’ll do whatever it takes to make sure her daughter reaches her full potential, too.

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.

Famed Broadway producer Milo Short steps out of his Upper West Side brownstone on one exceptionally hot morning, he's not expecting to see the impossible: a woman from his life 60 years ago, winking at him on a New York sidewalk. The sight causes him to suffer a stroke. And when he comes to, the renowned lyricist discovers he has lost the ability to communicate. Milo believes he must unravel his complicated history with Vivian Adair in order to win back his words

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.

In the 1960s and 1970s, complaints about a "Jewish literary mafia" were everywhere. Although a conspiracy of Jews colluding to control publishing in the United States never actually existed, such accusations reflected a genuine transformation from an industry notorious for excluding Jews to one in which they arguably had become the most influential figures. Josh Lambert examines the dynamics between Jewish editors and Jewish writers; how Jewish women exposed the misogyny they faced; and how children of literary parents have struggled with and benefited from their inheritances.

Lena, the transcriptionist, sits alone in a room far away from the hum of the newsroom that is the heart of the Record, the big city newspaper for which she works. For years, she has been the ever-present link for reporters calling in stories from around the world. Hooked up to a machine that turns spoken words to print, Lena is the vein that connects the organs of the paper. She is loyal, she is unquestioning, yet technology is dictating that her days there are numbered.

Grace Holm-D’Angelo is at her wit’s end, trying to create a new life from broken pieces. Newly divorced, she is navigating suddenly becoming a single mother to her 14-year-old daughter. Emma, resentful about being uprooted from Chicago to Los Angeles and still reeling from the divorce, is generally giving her mother a hard time. Then Grace’s best friend, Leeza, succumbs to breast cancer after a long battle, and Grace realizes you don’t get a second chance at life. She returns to her hometown of New London, Wisconsin, to try to reconcile with her own mother, Lorraine, from whom she’s been estranged for longer than she cares to remember.

A collection of sweet, tender, poetic, beautiful, heart-wrenching, sensual love stories.

In his second collection of short stories, James Leo Herlihy explores a landscape of people living on the fringes of normal society as the pleasures of daily life fade. Men and women search for the missing fragment of meaning from their existence with Herlihy’s signature humor and deft dialogue. In the titular story, Mary Ellen McClure is trapped in a dull, unfulfilled life in a trailer park, suspecting her husband of having an affair. Together with her neighbor Ivy, she dabbles with a Ouija board which spells out the name Ezra and implies that Mary Ellen will have an affair.

After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great events in New York City, Mexico, and Montreal, 96-year-old Cassandra MacCallum is surviving well enough, alone on her island, when a young Burmese woman contacts her, claiming to be kin. Curiosity, loneliness, and a slender filament of hope prompt the old woman to accept a visit. But Nang’s story of torture and flight provokes memories in Cass that peel back, layer by layer, the events that brought her to this moment - and forces her, against her will, to confront the tragedy she has refused for half a century.

The year 1967. Violet MacInnes resents her genealogy assignment. Everybody knows her great-grandfather was a sea captain. Everybody knows her great-grandmother was the most sought-after debutante in Galveston. Everybody knows they defied society, married, and built an authentic Sottish castle nestled in a magnolia grove.