Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

Whitaker Island is more than a getaway. For Tessa Jenkins, the remote strip of land in Washington state is a sanctuary. Fleeing from a shattering scandal, she has a new name, a chance at a new beginning, and a breathtaking new view: Hansen Rye. It’s hard not to crush on Whitaker’s hottest handyman. At six-foot-three and all kinds of fine, he’s also intensely private - and the attraction between them soon simmers dangerously out of control.

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.

To Charles Fort, with Love is award-winning fantasist Caitlín R. Kiernan’s third collection of short fiction, a haunting parade of the terrible things which may lie beyond the boundaries of science, the minds which may exist beyond psychology, and the forbidden places which will never be located in any orthodox globe. A deceptively even dozen, this collection includes Kiernan’s celebrated stories “Onion” and “Andromeda Among the Stones”, as well as a number of more obscure pieces.

From the east came the Bone Giants. From the south, the fire-wielding Hathrim. It was an invasion that sparked war across the six nations of Teldwen. Now the kingdom's only hope is the discovery of a new form of magic - one that will call the wondrous beasts of the world to fight by the side of humankind. In the start of a thrilling new series, the New York Times best-selling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles creates an unforgettable fantasy world of warring giants and elemental magic.

Spanning the years of the first great settlement of the west, The Removes tells the intertwining stories of 15-year-old Anne Cummins, frontierswoman Libbie Custer, and Libbie’s husband, the Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer. When Anne survives a surprise attack on her family’s homestead, she is thrust into a difficult life she never anticipated - living among the Cheyenne as both a captive and, eventually, a member of the tribe. Libbie, too, is thrown into a brutal, unexpected life when she marries Custer.

In Brooklyn Bones, a crime of the past comes much too close to home when Erica Donato’s teenage daughter, Chris, finds a skeleton behind a wall in their crumbling Park Slope home. Erica - a young widow, overage history PhD candidate, and product of blue-collar Brooklyn - is drawn into the mystery when she learns that the skeleton is of an unknown teenage girl and that it was hidden there within living memory. Erica and Chris are both touched and disturbed by the mysterious tragedy in their own home.

When Treat Byrnes walks into her bookstore café, Eve Alexander wants to eat him up. Bad boy isn't her usual flavor, but for the sexy contractor, she's willing to take a walk on the wild side. Treat has a history of falling for damsels in distress, but Eve doesn't need rescuing. Not even when her café is sabotaged. Only when Treat finds out the saboteur is his own mother, he knows he has to do something before things go too far.

This version of the children's classic, read by Xe Sands, will delight listeners of all ages with its story of wisdom and boundless love.

Once a century, for only six days, the bay around a small Washington island glows like a water-bound aurora. Dr. Rachel Bell, a scientist studying the 100-year miracle and the tiny sea creatures that create it, knows a secret about the phenomenon that inspired the region's myths and folklore: the rare green water may contain a power that could save Rachel's own life (and change the world).

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.

This stunning novel introduces Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband's death. Suddenly gifted her great uncle's Pasadena mansion, Susan decides to restore his extensive collection of preserved animals, tending to "the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails." Meanwhile, a menagerie of uniquely damaged humans - including a cheating husband and a chorus of eccentric elderly women - joins her in residence.

When Olivia James receives a phone call just after midnight, she recognizes her brother's voice. But there's a problem: Her brother has been dead for the past nine weeks. Moving back to her old childhood home in Tennessee - the place where her brother has just died - her young daughter, Teddy, seems troubled, telling her mother that she's being visited by a menacing ghost. When another tragic death occurs and her daughter disappears, Olivia must confront the demonic force that has cursed her family.

Anna Brundage is a rock star. She is tall and sexy, with a powerhouse voice and an unforgettable mane of red hair. She came out of nowhere, an immediate indie sensation. And then, life happened. Anna went down as fast as she went up and then walked off the scene for seven years. Without a record deal or clamoring fans, she sells a piece of her famous father's art to finance just one more album and a European comeback tour.

That rat bastard Michael Wallace is back. The last person Olivia Parker expects to walk into her lingerie shop is her high school sweetheart. She's so over him. Mostly. Except that he's hotter than ever and still knows her better than she knows herself. But how can she risk her heart when she knows he's just going to leave again?

At 16 Annabelle Morgan hoped her crush on Jake Wilder was just a passing phase. Now she's 29, and nothing has changed - except Jake. The once-carefree marine has come home with a giant chip on his shoulder. He insists a single mom like Annie deserves more than he can offer.

In the near year and a half following her tragic ordeal in She Dreams of Fire, Agatha “Aggy” Grae and her allies have been hunting the remnants of the Umbra coven. By fighting back against the corrupt witches who imprisoned and killed the Fae for their blood, Aggy and her friends have become beacons of hope. But inner turmoil plagues the team, as the price for freedom is a weight upon their souls.

Jen has reached her early 30s and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when, spurred by the 2008 economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation's ostensible aim is to empower women, but staffers spend all their time devising acronyms for imaginary programs, ruthlessly undermining one another, and stroking the ego of their boss, the larger-than-life celebrity philanthropist Leora Infinitas.

Mark and Maggie's annual drive east to visit family has gotten off to a rocky start. By the time they're on the road, it's late, a storm is brewing, and they are no longer speaking to one another. Adding to the stress, Maggie - recently mugged at gunpoint - is lately not herself, and Mark is at a loss about what to make of the stranger he calls his wife.

Three years after Rory Riordan foiled her own murder, she still trusts no one. Not Dr. Z, the eccentric college professor who has taken her under his wing, not Benji, the endearing, attractive classmate who insists on following her around, and certainly not Cy, the beautifully dark and mysterious boy who sits on the first row in Dr. Z’s Astrobiology class and asks far too many questions.

As a child, Susan Silverman was surrounded by a loving family; although her parents weren't happily married, they were devoted to their kids. In a vibrant, funny, imminently relatable voice (think Anne Lamott meets Katrina Kenison), Silverman tells of a family's evolution - from her parents' devastating loss of their infant son to raising bright and wildly unique daughters. It's also the creation story of her own family - raising her own bright and wildly unique daughters and taking a journey to adopt two boys from Ethiopia.