Showing results by narrator "Fiona Hardingham" in All Categories

Lada Dracul has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she's always had: herself. After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorizing the land. But brute force isn't getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart.

Cello is in crisis. Princess Ko's deception of her people has emerged, and the Kingdom is outraged: The Jagged Edge Elite have taken control, placing the Princess and two members of the Royal Youth Alliance under arrest and ordering their execution; the King's attempts to negotiate their release have failed.

Ava thinks love should be found in the real world, not on apps that filter men by height, job, or astrological sign. She believes in feelings, not algorithms. So after a recent breakup and dating app debacle, she decides to put love on hold and escapes to a remote writers' retreat in coastal Italy. At the retreat, she's not allowed to use her real name or reveal any personal information. When the neighboring martial arts retreat is canceled and a few of its attendees join their small writing community, Ava, now going by "Aria", meets "Dutch", a man who seems too good to be true.

In the vibrant city-state of Castellane, the richest of nobles and the most debauched of criminals have one thing in common: the constant search for wealth, power and the next hedonistic thrill. Kel is an orphan, stolen from the life he knew to become the Sword-Catcher – the body-double of a royal heir, Prince Conor Aurelian. He has been raised alongside the prince, trained in every aspect of combat and statecraft. He and Conor are close as brothers, but Kel knows he has one destiny: to die for Conor. No other future is possible.

There are no reported outbreaks in the UK or Ireland. That's what the government broadcasted. Nilda didn't believe it. Not trusting the authorities, she, and her son, Jay, stay behind when Penrith is evacuated. After weeks of rationing, there is little food left in the small town and many other survivors competing for it. Choosing diplomacy over violence, she attempts to forge a community out of a disparate group. As zombies gather outside their walls, she realizes that they will have to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

Sixteen-year-old Anna Arden is barred from society by a defect of blood. Though her family is part of the Luminate, powerful users of magic, she is Barren, unable to perform the simplest spells. Anna would do anything to belong. But her fate takes another course when, after inadvertently breaking her sister's debutante spell - an important chance for a highborn young woman to show her prowess with magic - Anna finds herself exiled to her family's once powerful but now crumbling native Hungary.

It’s spring, and Headmistress Dowling is organizing an orientation day for the students coming to Alfea next year. Stella volunteers to head the committee to welcome the new students, and she insists that her boyfriend, Sky, help out. But Sky is preoccupied with the bad behavior of his moody roommate, Riven. Incoming students Aisha, Musa, and Terra are nervous about orientation day. Aisha is eager to prove that she can hold her own among the magical talents at Alfea.

December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue the tradition of her late father’s Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must evolve with the times, and the queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change.

Rye O'Chanter was shocked to discover that her father was the leader of the notorious band of outlaws known as the Luck Uglies. Now she too has been declared a criminal in her own village, and she must flee to the strange and remote Isle of Pest while her father faces off against the Luck Uglies' bitterest rivals, the Fork-Tongue Charmers, on the mainland.

Mary is the queen of Scotland and the jewel of the French court. Except when she’s a mouse. Yes, Mary is an Eðian (shape-shifter) in a kingdom where Verities rule. It’s a secret that could cost her a head - or a tail. Luckily, Mary has a confidant in her betrothed, Francis. But things at the gilded court take a treacherous turn after the king meets a suspicious end. Thrust onto the throne, Mary and Francis face a viper’s nest of conspiracies, traps, and treason. And if Mary’s secret is revealed, heads are bound to roll.

Unhappy Penelope Lumley is trapped in unhappy Plinkst! Even the beets for which Plinkst is inexplicably famous fail to grow in this utterly miserable Russian village. Penelope anxiously counts the days and wonders how she will ever get back to England in time to save all the Ashtons - who, she now knows, include herself and the Incorrigible children, although their precise location on the family tree is still a mystery - from their accursèd fate. Her daring scheme to escape sends her on a wildly unexpected journey.

Seventeen-year-old Lady Claire Trevelyan, left alone after the Arabian bubble financial disaster claims home and family, now leads the cleverest gang in the London underworld. Between outwitting a rival gang, inventing a device that will net her and her scientist employer worldwide fame, and keeping her mother from marrying her off, she can almost forget that a powerful lord wants to get closer…and if he succeeds, can destroy it all with a single word…

1950: Margaret Devonshire (Megs) is a 17-year-old student of mathematics and physics at Oxford University. When her beloved eight-year-old brother asks Megs if Narnia is real, logical Megs tells him it’s just a book for children, and certainly not true. Homebound due to his illness, and remaining fixated on his favorite books, George presses her to ask the author of the recently released novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a question: “Where did Narnia come from?”

Having discovered her true heritage, young Gatina is embracing her evolving role as an apprentice shadowthief. It turns out procuring things that don’t actually belong to you can be rather exciting. But the first thing a good thief must learn is how to not get caught. If the evil usurper Count Vichetral snares Gatina or her beloved family, a truly unpleasant fate awaits. So her defiant father has deposited Gatina and her brother in the last place Vichetral’s men would think to look for them: stately Palomar Abbey.

From award-winning columnist and journalist Gillian Tett comes a brilliant examination of how our tendency to create functional departments - silos - hinders our work and how some people and organizations can break those silos down to unleash innovation.

Suzy Smith and her friends have gathered again for the re-launch of the Impossible Postal Express. The celebrations don't last long though, before Trollville is rocked by a violent tremor - one of a series growing more powerful by the day. It's clear something sinister is underfoot. Nevertheless, Suzy's got a long-overdue package that the Express must deliver, and it may just lead her to some answers.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

A full-speed-ahead oral history of the nearly two-decade making of the cultural phenomenon Mad Max: Fury Road—with more than 130 new interviews with key members of the cast and crew, including Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, and director George Miller, from the pop culture reporter for The New York Times, Kyle Buchanan.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a strange book hidden in the library stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to a subterranean library, hidden far below the surface of the earth.

Following her dramatic abduction of Fifer and Thisbe, the dragon woman traps the twins in an isolated, crumbling palace and surrounds them with four killer dragons in an attempt to coerce them to join her side. Hope finally arrives when Dev sneaks into the castle and the threesome reunites, hatching a plan against the Revinir so devious, so horrifying, that it just might work. But when it comes time to act, Thisbe struggles to confront her deepest fears about her inner levels of good and evil and, to her own dismay, questions if she's really been on the right side all along.