Showing results by narrator "Julia Whelan" in All Categories

Claudio and Mathilde Simone, once romantic bohemians hopelessly enamored with each other, find themselves nestled in domesticity in New York, running a struggling vinyl record store and parenting three daughters - Natasha, Lucy, and Carly - as best they can. With prose that is as keen and illuminating as it is whimsical and luminous, debut author Christine Reilly tells the unusual love story of this family.

Meg Clark believes in the “hokey pokey” theory of life, Love comes to Meg in the form of Ahmed Bourhani, an exotically handsome Iranian-American who befriends her over a game of chess in a coffee shop. Meg knows that second chances require a leap of faith, and the result is more often a complicated mixed bag than a neatly packaged happily-ever-after. Sometimes in order to heal you have to hurt, but most of all you have to live your life and put your whole self in.

Exquisitely imagined and hypnotically told, The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. Set in the early part of the 20th century, it is an unparalleled tale of abandoned children, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose fortune hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to escape one's origins. It might also take true love.

Running from a hazy past, mother and daughter tread lightly, checking in and out of hotel rooms, leaving all luggage and collected mementos behind when the mother knows they must run again. They make friends with no one and enemies with some. They are singular — a “Moon Unit”. Hotel workers place bets on whether the strange chain-smoking lady stole that beautiful girl away from her real mother, but to the Moon Unit the hotel people don’t matter.

ShadowStrike poisoned the water of Trinity Falls two months ago. Now the Trinity Four, the teens most affected by the poison, have been isolated in a remote mansion under 24-hour medical care while scientists on four continents rush to discover a cure. Meanwhile, US operatives scour the world for the bioterrorists responsible for this heinous crime as two teen virtual spies, also infected, hunt for the criminals on the Internet.

On a hot August night on Cape Cod, when Adrienne was 14, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me. Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention; from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved.

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent Anne to her death in a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how the Franks and four other people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

From the author of the international best seller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a bracing and original look at the tension between our democratic egalitarian political ideals and our recalcitrant biology. Human beings are tribal. We possess a fundamental desire to belong to groups, teams, clubs, a tribe - something larger than ourselves. Political Tribes explores the phenomenon of human groupishness: how identities are shaped and formed by belonging to a group.

Fighting to stop a war that could destroy everyone alive. Kira Walker nearly died searching for the RM cure, but the battle for survival is only just beginning. The genetically-engineered Partials are inextricably bound to a greater plan that could save both races and give Kira the answers she desperately seeks. Venturing deep into the wasteland, Kira’s only allies are an unhinged drifter and two Partials who betrayed her yet saved her life – the only ones who know her secret.

You can spot the girls who will have it easy. I don't even have to describe them for you. You can spot the girls who will get by on smarts. You can spot the girls who will get by because they're tough, or athletic. And then there's me. A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. A story you won't be able to look away from.

Elsie Porter is an average twentysomething and yet what happens to her is anything but ordinary. On a rainy New Year's Day, she heads out to pick up a pizza for one. She isn't expecting to see anyone else in the shop, much less the adorable and charming Ben Ross. Their chemistry is instant and electric. Ben cannot even wait twenty-four hours before asking to see her again. Within weeks, the two are head over heels in love. By May, they've eloped. Only nine days later, Ben is out riding his bike when he is hit by a truck and killed on impact.

At the age of 29, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with her friend Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.

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.

Laney has just finished graduate school in California and sees her cross-country drive as the perfect chance to reflect on the past before facing her future back East. With 3,000 miles ahead of her and a box of mix tapes as her only companion, she envisions a trip spent reminiscing; whether it's her first camp kisses, high school parties and crushes, or college loves and losses, Laney's most treasured memories - good and bad - are all just a song away.

Kate Skylar is an ordinary 17-year-old with an extraordinary destiny. A virgin, Kate suddenly finds herself pregnant with what she believes is the Son of God. But the Catholic Church is convinced Kate is carrying the Antichrist and, assisted by an artificial intelligence known as Grand Inquisitor, will stop at nothing to kill Ethan, her son. Ethan’s only protection is Conversatio, a secret organization dedicated to the Second Coming—which may have its own dark agenda.

The external lives of Clark, a high school guidance counselor, and Charlotte, a bookkeeper, are utterly ordinary, but their interior lives are as bold and complex as abstract paintings colored by imagined possibilities, childhood joys and, more darkly, by deeply buried fears. When Clark rescues a young boy from drowning, a chain of events - some comic, some harrowing - is set in motion, revealing the fault lines of the couple's marriage and individual psyches.

They called the comet Cain, after the astronomer who discovered it. It passed 500,000 miles from Earth. We were spared planetary destruction and granted a light show like no other. But, one year later, Earth span into the debris field left by the comet and a meteor storm struck. Roads, buildings and even a small town were annihilated. It was the night of a mysterious double murder, the deed overshadowed by the discovery that the burning remains of the rock contained an unknown substance more precious than gold.

Two sisters go missing. Only one returns. We believe what we want to believe. We believe what we need to believe. When my sister and I disappeared three years ago, they found Emma's car at the beach. Some people believed she had gone there to find a party or meet a friend who never showed. They believed that she'd gone for a swim. They believed that she'd drowned. Maybe by accident. Maybe a suicide. Everyone believed Emma was dead. As for me, well - it was not as simple as that.

Popular girl Bliss Merino is ready to have the perfect prom. But when she catches her boyfriend making out with her best friend in the back of the limo, she has only one thought: revenge.... Bad girl Jolene Nelson is the last person anyone expected to see at prom. Yet here she is, dressed in pink ruffles and feeling like a fool for believing that he would actually show up.... Meg Rose Zuckerman is ready to stop being a wallflower and start experiencing life firsthand. But when her date stands her up, she finds herself on the outside yet again....

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.