Showing results by narrator "Karissa Vacker" in All Categories

It’s summer in Alaska and the light surrounding the shipping-container-turned-storage shed where Liv Russo is being held prisoner is fuzzy and gray. Around her is thick forest and jagged mountains. In front of her, across a clearing, is a low-slung cabin with a single window that spills a wash of yellow light onto bare ground. Illuminated in that light is the father of her child, a man she once loved. A man who is now her jailor. Liv vows to do anything to escape.

An injured, young dog trudges the city streets, trembling from cold, from fear, from lack of food. Battered by the howling wind, he searches desperately for his lost family, yet day after day, week after week, all he ever finds is heartbreaking loneliness. But then, one magical spring morning....

New friends Sam, Margaret and Diana are thrilled to be getting out of the city for a girls’ weekend - they’ve bonded over their messy divorces, and every mile on the odometer feels like another step towards putting their exes in the past. But when car trouble halfway into their trip strands them in the most unlikely of mountain towns, they come face-to-face with the hurts and betrayals they were so desperate to leave behind. When Diana doesn't return home after a night out, Sam and Margaret's search for her reveals just how little they know about their friend.

Sally Grissom is a top secret service agent in charge of the Presidential Protection team. She knows that something is amiss when she is summoned to a private meeting with the president and his chief of staff without any witnesses. But she couldn't have predicted that she'd be forced to take on an investigation surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the first lady - with strict orders to keep it a secret.

Kazi and Jase have survived, stronger and more in love than ever. Their new life now lies before them - the Ballengers will be outlaws no longer, Tor's Watch will be a kingdom, and the two of them will meet all challenges side by side, together at last. But an ominous warning mars their journey back, and in their rush to return to Tor's Watch, just outside the fortress walls, they are violently attacked and torn apart - and each is thrust into their own new hell.

Dr. Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected pediatric surgeon, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She's determined to keep her nose clean and win back custody of her son. But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a multi-million dollar mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one.

Elisa Wright is a mom and wife, living a nice, quiet life in a nice, quiet town. She’s also convinced her brother-in-law is a murderer. Josh has one dead wife and one missing fiancée, and though he grieved for them he starts dating someone new. Elisa fears for that woman’s safety, and she desperately wants to know what happened to her friend, Josh’s missing fiancée.

Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House - classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe - Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty. Soon after her untimely death in 1965, Jackson’s children discovered a treasure trove of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, many of which are brought together in this remarkable collection.

After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs and slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life, almost like she belonged there from the start. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend's death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it. Because Brianna has questions, too.

From the world's number one best-selling writer - three pulse-pounding novels in one book: The Moores Are Missing, The Housewife, and Absolute Zero.

Writer (and sometime house cleaner) Jennifer is 23 when her beloved father, Wallace, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. This catastrophic discovery sets off Anne Lamott's unexpectedly sweet and funny first novel, which is made dramatic not so much by Wallace's illness as by the emotional wake it sweeps under Jen and her brothers, self-contained Ben and feckless, lovable Randy. With characteristic affection and accuracy, Lamott sketches this offbeat family and their nearest and dearest as they draw ever closer.

When Ava Barnes’s boyfriend, Justin, proposes after a whirlwind romance, the young couple embarks on a quest that will test their love. For generations, engaged couples in Ava’s family have traveled into the Everglades to retrieve the egg of the magnificent frigate bird in order to bake it into a marriage cake. Those who succeed live happily ever after, while those who fail are destined for heartbreak. With Ava’s beloved grandmother gravely ill, never has the marriage tradition meant so much.

Part instruction manual, part someone else's diary, My Morning Routine features interviews with 64 of today's most successful people - including three-time Olympic gold medalist Rebecca Soni, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, and General Stanley McChrystal - and offers advice on creating a routine of your own. Some routines are all about early morning exercise and spartan living; others are more leisurely and self-indulgent. What they have in common is they don't feel like a chore. Once you land on the right routine, you'll look forward to waking up.

Millie is devastated when she discovers that her sort-of-best friend/sort-of-girlfriend has been kissing someone else. Heartbroken and ready for a change, Millie decides to apply for scholarships to boarding schools...the farther from Houston the better. Soon, Millie is accepted into one of the world's most exclusive schools, located in the rolling highlands of Scotland. Here, the country is dreamy and green; the school is covered in ivy, and the students think her American-ness is adorable. The only problem: Mille's roommate Flora is a total princess. She's also an actual princess.

Parenting is full of decisions, nearly all of which can be agonised over. There is an abundance of often conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends and strangers on the internet. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths and offers non-judgemental ways to consider our options in light of the facts.

It’s the summer before senior year. Gabriel, Reese, Sal, and Heath are best friends, bonded in their small, rural town by their queerness, their good grades, and their big dreams. But they have plans for the summer, each about to embark on a new adventure. Gabriel is interning at an environmental nonprofit in Boston. Reese is attending design school in Paris. Sal is volunteering on Capitol Hill for a senator. Heath is heading to Florida, to help out at his aunt’s boardwalk arcade.

Lyla has always believed that life is a game she is destined to win, but her husband, Graham, takes the game to dangerous levels. The wealthy couple invites self-made success stories to live in their guesthouse and then conspires to ruin their lives. After all, there is nothing worse than a bootstrapper. Demi has always felt like the odds were stacked against her. At the end of her rope, she seizes a risky opportunity to take over another person’s life and unwittingly becomes the subject of the upstairs couple’s wicked entertainment.

Wes and Ivy are madly in love. They've never felt anything like it. It's the type of romance people write stories about. But what kind of story? When it's good, it's great. Flowers. Grand gestures. Deep meaningful conversations where the whole world disappears. When it's bad, it's really bad. Vengeful fights. Damaged property. Arrest warrants.

Thousands of miles south of the island of Bliss, day and night last for 72 hours. Here is one of the natural wonders of this world: a whirlpool 30 miles wide and 100 miles around. This is the Drain. Anything sucked into its frothing, turbulent waters is never seen again. Wren has spent most of her life on Edgeland, a nearby island where people bring their dead to be blessed and prepared for the afterlife.

A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide.