Showing results by narrator "Gail Shalan" in All Categories

Mimi is not thrilled to be spending her summer in Karachi, Pakistan, with grandparents she’s never met. Secretly, she wishes to find her long-absent father, and plans to write to him in her beautiful new journal. The cook's daughter, Sakina, still hasn't told her parents that she'll be accepted to school only if she can improve her English test score - but then, how could her family possibly afford to lose the money she earns working with her Abba in a rich family's kitchen? 

It's Christmas and there are wedding bells ringing around Coulter's Restaurant as they prepare to celebrate Rosalie and Michael's wedding. But the bride is hiding something, a secret that she won't even share with her fiance, and that secret has Rosalie calling off the wedding. Can Grace, her best friend, intervene in time to save Rosalie from making the biggest mistake of her life?

From the musty corners of libraries to the darkest depths of urban sewers, faeries, boggarts, redcaps, and other fantastical species can be found all around us - but only if we know where to look. And like every other being in the modern world, these wonderous creatures have been forced to adapt to the climate, industrial, and cultural changes of the modern era.

In Privilege Lost, Jessi Streib traces the lives of over 100 youth born into the upper-middle-class. Following them for over 10 years as they transition from teens to young adults, Streib examines who falls from the upper-middle-class, how, and why don't they see it coming. In doing so, she reveals the patterned ways that individuals' resources and identities push them onto mobility paths - and the complicated choices youth make between staying true to themselves and staying in their class position. 

After a year of preparation, 18-year-old Raven Smith has planned out every detail of her summer vacation in Europe. Yet, while still enroute to Italy, Raven finds a letter in her carry-on suitcase that tells her not to go to Europe, that an "evil agent of Hell" is looking for her and he will find her if she disregards the letter's message.

Raised amid the fame and mystique of the Big Top, Charlie Lionheart holds the audience in the palm of his hand. But while his act captivates thousands, it's away from the spotlight where his true heart lies. Here, he humbly cares for his pride of lions as if they were his brothers, a skill of bravery and strength that has prepared him for his most challenging feat yet - freeing an orphaned infant from the dark bondage of a sideshow. It is a trade so costly that it requires his life in exchange for hers, leaving him tarnished by the price of that choice.

When Lena Manning finds herself widowed after World War I, she must build a new life for herself and her infant daughter. With the help of her church, she finds stability and contentment until the arrival of a new pastor turns her quiet life upside down. Turned out of her job at the church, Lena is offered employment and a home with a wealthy family. When the son of the house pursues her, she is drawn into the seductive world of wealth and power. Can she survive the secrets of that world, or will fear drive her back to her church where she can no longer be sure of her welcome?  

There is nothing extraordinary about Tucker O’Shay’s dreams. Go to college. Become president. Fall in love. And pretend like he has enough time to get it all done. Sixteen-year-old Sarah Miller doesn’t expect anything out of the ordinary when she begins her first day at the one-room-school house in her new hometown of Rocky Knob. But when she meets seventeen-year-old Tucker O’Shay she finds herself swept up in a friendship that changes the way she sees the world and a love that changes her life.

In the second of the Hometown trilogy, ex-Afghanistan vet paramedic Frankie McGill and resident deputy Gabe Zantos are caught up in a case of arson. A house at the end of a country road has stood vacant for years; it's occupants mice and the stray raccoon or two. When the derelict house catches fire, the only reason the Hawkesford Fire Department responds is because of the danger to the dry wheat fields surrounding it. But then not only a gunshot victim, but a charred body is found inside the house, along with evidence of a meth cooking operation. Accident, or murder? 

October, 1917 - Lena Garson, 19 years old, daughter of an old-fashioned banker and his wife, thinks of herself as a very well brought up young lady leading a quiet life with a predicable future. When Clarence Muldoon, son of the richest man in town, begins to court her, Lena feels her life is now going in the direction her parents want for her.

Midsummer used to be a day of feasts and bonfires. A day when cares were set aside for the joy of grass between our toes, warm hands in our palms, laughter in our hearts. Our celebrations dimmed with the light. Something upset the balance of our woods. Something so deep that even our bonfires can't lure the sun back. And he has something to do with it. Of that we're sure, which is why I'm being given to him.

Jellybean is a clumsy dragon. As a matter of fact, all dragons are clumsy. So when Jellybean falls from the sky and lands in front of Emma, a 10-year-old astronaut, naturally a series of calamitous events occur forcing Emma to eventually leave her land and meet more clumsy dragons. However, Emma soon learns to live with Jellybean and experience a whole new and exciting life as well as building her vocabulary!

Grace Coulter has been hiding in the kitchen of her family restaurant since she was eight years old. That's when the name-calling began. Stretch, skinny-minny, boy in girl's clothes, all because of the slender height that had her towering over even the tallest boys in the class. Now, nearly thirty years later, Grace is head chef of the failing restaurant and still hiding in the kitchen. Like many businesses during the current recession, Coulter's may have to start laying off employees or even close.

In the early 1800s, Lark and her brother set out to cross the North American continent to settle in the west. In the wilderness, she finally tastes the freedom her restless soul has thirsted for all her life. However, when she meets Charles, a half Crow who feels just as out of place in the world as she does, Lark begins to understand that her wanderlust isn't just a hunt for a new home - it's for someone who can love her independent spirit.

Fall in love all over again. Seventeen-year-old Taylor Lawton has a crush on Timothy Cooper, a boy at her school, and as crushes go, things are normal. He ignores her. She doesn't speak to him. Until their English teacher, Mrs. Walker puts them on a project together. A turn of fate then throws them both for a loop. For an entire week, they will stay beneath the same roof. Will this be too much togetherness? What will Taylor do with Timothy's painful secret? A light audiobook with a touching storyline, this tale is enjoyable for both young adults and grown-ups alike.

How does someone give their heart away when they don't have all of the pieces? Not that Makenna really wants a second chance at love anyway. She is stuck in her tragic past, secretly living every day for her deceased fiancé, while her new boyfriend, Drew, is gently nudging her into the present. Desperate to appear normal again, she slaps on a happy face and goes through the motions of a normal, healthy relationship - but with the exception of even a single kiss.

Historical fact-based fiction about the famous spy who played a key role in Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. This narrative takes place between July 1861 and July 1862 and is the first in a series about the Confederate Secret Service and the women who were its most effective agents. Belle Boyd was the first woman in American History to be formally commissioned an army officer.

Rose Asher believes in ghosts. She should, since she has one for a best friend: Logan, her annoying, Netflix-addicted brother, who is forever stuck at 15. But Rose is growing up, and when an old friend moves back to Laguna Canyon and appears in her drama class, things get complicated. Jamie Aldridge is charming, confident, and a painful reminder of the life Rose has been missing out on since her brother's death. She watches as Jamie easily rejoins their former friends - a group of magnificently silly theatre nerds - while avoiding her so intensely that it must be deliberate.  

 She'd inherited Jack Manning's bold heart, tempered once in a very great while by her stepfather's gentle upbringing and her mother's practical nature. But as far as Jackie Manning Bradshaw is concerned, she'll need that bold heart to work her way onto the Broadway stage, the only place she's ever wanted to be.

Heather Kaminsky returns to Bethany Beach, Delaware with its farms, boardwalk, and freedom and her Great Aunt Ruby Wellington's house. She's there to help her dying aunt, but she doesn't even think she can help herself, after surviving a brutal attack and quitting her corporate job in her 30s.