Showing results by narrator "Lauren Fortgang" in All Categories

It's 1965 in a tight-knit working-class neighborhood in Queens, New York, and Ruth Malone - a single mother who works long hours as a cocktail waitress - wakes to discover her two small children, Frankie Jr. and Cindy, have gone missing. Later that day, Cindy's body is found in a derelict lot a half mile from her home, strangled. Ten days later, Frankie Jr.'s decomposing body is found. Immediately, all fingers point to Ruth. Pete Wonicke is a rookie tabloid reporter who finagles an assignment to cover the murders. He begins digging into the case.

Relos Var’s final plans to enslave the universe are on the cusp of fruition. He believes there’s only one being in existence that might be able to stop him: the demon Xaltorath. As these two masterminds circle each other, neither is paying attention to the third player on the board, Kihrin. Unfortunately, keeping himself classified in the ‘pawn’ category means Kihrin must pretend to be everything the prophecies threatened he’d become: the destroyer of all, the sun eater, a mindless, remorseless plague upon the land.

His iron hand once kept the warring vampire clans of decadent 1920s New York from one another's throats. But now, outcast from his own kind, Dorian Black haunts the back alleys of the city alone...until the night he meets reporter Gwen Murphy and feels something stir within him for the first time in centuries.

On a cold December day in northern upstate New York, the body of high school senior Joy Enright is discovered in the woods at the edge of a pond. She had been presumed drowned, but an autopsy shows that she was, in fact, strangled. As the investigation unfolds, four characters tell the story from widely divergent perspectives.

When Kate Manchester and three friends discover a homeless boy on the streets one stormy afternoon, they have no choice but to help him. Ragged, hungry and as trouble-prone as an unruly puppy, the boy turns the women's lives upside down. But maybe upside-down is exactly what the women need. Kate's husband is cheating on her. Kimbrielle fears the cancer she once beat may be returning. Susanna is coming to grips with sudden widowhood and Micki is struggling with loneliness. As his troubles threaten to overwhelm them, the friends turn to each other.

Chelo Lee, her brother Joseph, and four other young children have been abandoned on the colony planet Fremont. Unfortunate events have left them orphaned in a human colony that abhors genetic engineering - and these six young people are genetically enhanced. With no one to turn to, Chelo and the others must now learn how to use their distinct skills to make this unwelcome planet home - or find a way off it.

Helen, a graduate student on a quest to save the planet, is one of the best minds of her generation. But when her irreplaceable advisor’s student sex scandal is exposed, she must choose whether to give up on her work or accompany him to RIP, a research institute which grants safe harbour to the disgraced and the deplorable. As Helen settles into life at the institute alongside her partner Hew, she develops a crush on an older novelist, while he is drawn to an increasingly violent protest movement.

In the 1960s humans took their first steps away from Earth - and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless. But in a time of austerity, and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger, that dream has ended. In early 2011 Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASA's last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era.

It's the early 1990s, and Agnes is running out of people she can count on. As Agnes sinks into new romance, mines female friendships for intimacy, and struggles to find her footing, she writes letters to her mother, both to conjure a closeness they never had and to try to translate her experiences to herself. When she finds out she is pregnant, Agnes begins to contend with what it means to be a mother and, in some ways, what it means to be your own mother.

When Adeline, a wealthy art student, chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat, the two begin a fiery friendship that propels them through a decade of New York life. In the apartments and bars of downtown Manhattan to the infamous nightclub The Limelight, Adeline is Baby's guardian angel, introducing him to a city not yet overrun by gentrification. They live through an era of New York punctuated by the deaths of Warhol, Basquiat, Wojnarowicz, and Tompkins Square Park.

Margaret "Cuckoo" Clarke recently had a brief stay in a mental institution following an emotional breakdown, but she's turning over a new leaf with her "Operation Happiness". She's determined to beat down the bad vibes of the Haters, the Terror Teachers, and all of the trials and tribulations of high school by writing and drawing in her diary. And when life gets really tough, she works through her own moments of uncertainty through imaginary conversations with her favorite literary characters.

Inspired by Vicky Beeching's coming out, her work with the United Nations, and her fight for LGBT rights in the Church and the world, Outing My Christianity is a story for the curious listener and the ashamed LGBT Christian about a lesbian's life, salvation, love, pain, loss, and survival. It is a story about a walk taken as a quirky flower child, an awkward teenager, an over-enthusiastic 20-something, and a blind adult who can now see.

Evan Ryder is a lone wolf, a field agent for a black-ops arm of the DOD who has survived unspeakable tragedy and dedicated her life to protecting her country. When her fellow agents begin to be systematically eliminated, Evan must unravel the thread that ties them all together...and before her name comes up on the kill list. The list belongs to a mysterious cabal known only as Nemesis, a hostile entity hell-bent on tearing the United States apart.

Last Spring, Claire was framed for the murder of Junior, the Devil's oldest hellspawn. Last Summer, she reawakened the fourth realm, saved the world (after almost destroying it), and wound up with the worst job ever. Now, Claire's been locked out of her realm, given an assistant that doesn't actually assist, and told to handle a small problem in Underworld that might just get her killed. And to top it all off, Mab's made one of the contenders her untouchable. So, yeah, you could say Claire's having one of those days.

A psychological thriller of obsession and betrayal, where three characters are set on a collision course: Natalie, a grieving daughter with a history she dare not reveal; her brother, who has some dark secrets of his own; and a beautiful woman named Catherine with a talent for making people in trouble disappear.

Modern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In 11 stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.

Alexandra McCord's perfect life was crumbling. After stumbling upon the body of a dead woman, she found that her working paradise on Moon Bay Island had turned into a nightmare. Each piece of evidence she discovered seemed to point toward someone on the island - and to herself as the next victim. But who would do this? And why had David Denham, the ex-husband she hadn't seen for more than a year, chosen this moment to reappear in her life?

Eva and her husband, Peter, are in Hong Kong on a romantic getaway from London when Peter wakes up in their hotel room to an empty bed, his wife gone without a trace. His worst fears are confirmed: Eva wasn’t imagining things. Suddenly, he finds himself the number-one suspect in his wife’s disappearance, trapped in a foreign country with no one to turn to. He calls his boss, Forrest "Holly" Holcomb, who enlists the help of Catherine, his ex-flame and the enigmatic operator behind the darknet witness-protection program known as the Burial Society.

Gilly Soloman has been reduced to a mothering machine, taking care of everyone and everything except herself. But the machine has broken down. Burnt out by the endless days of crying children and menial tasks, and exhausted from always putting herself last, Gilly doesn't immediately consider the consequences when she's carjacked. With a knife to her throat, her first thought is that she'll finally get some rest. Someone can save her for a change.

In less than a year, Henrietta has lost her husband and nearly all of her money and is about to lose her hard-won anonymity. After a lifetime spent trying to outrun the humiliation her own book caused her, Henrietta has reluctantly agreed to a reissue of The Inseparables, the salaciously filthy and critically despised best seller she wrote decades earlier.