Showing results by narrator "Marisol Ramirez" in All Categories

In August 2020, a group of nurses are working in the ICU at a hospital in San Bernardino at the height of a Covid surge: Larette Embers, whose husband, Grief, is an animal control officer; Cherrise Martinez, whose husband died years ago in a car crash, and whose daughter Raquel has been sent to a Coachella date farm to live with her great-aunt to avoid the virus; and Marisol Manalang, born in the Philippines but based in Sacramento. To safeguard their families, the nurses are living in a makeshift RV camp close to the hospital; they share food and cigarettes yet keep their work private.

The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter, Blanca, embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban.

Two victims of the infamous Cleveland kidnapper share the story of their abductions, their decade in captivity, and their final, dramatic rescue. On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made headlines around the world when she fled a Cleveland area home and called 911, saying: “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry...I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years". A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained in the basement.

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer. Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank.

Teresa Sanchez has always known who she was: a professor, a wife, a mother, and a friend. But when her husband dies unexpectedly, she finds herself completely broken. Taking a leave from the university, Teresa hopes that she can mourn her husband and get back on her feet, but instead, she spends a year consumed by grief. Until the day she levitates.

I've seen him on the news. Followed the stories about what happened in Ohio. John Smith, out there, on the run. To the world, he's a mystery. But to me . . . he's one of us.

Valentina “Vale” Castillo-Green’s life revolves around soccer. Her friends, her future, and her father’s intense expectations are all wrapped up in the beautiful game. But after she incites a fight during playoffs with her long-time rival, Leticia Ortiz, everything she’s been working toward seems to disappear. Embarrassed and desperate to be anywhere but home, Vale escapes to her beloved childhood soccer camp for a summer of relaxation and redemption…only to find out that she and the endlessly aggravating Leticia will be co-captaining a team that could play in front of college scouts.

Una colección excepcional que reúne todos los cuentos de Gabriel García Márquez, ganador del Premio Nobel.

One month short of her wedding day—and her thirtieth birthday—Nadia Palacio finds herself standing up to her infuriating, cheating fiancé for the first time in, well, ever. But that same courage doesn’t translate to breaking the news to her Argentinian family. She’s hyperventilating before facing them when she glimpses a magazine piece about a woman celebrating herself—with a second quinceañera! And that gives Nadia an idea. With a wedding venue already paid for, and family from all over the world with plane tickets, Nadia is determined to create her own happily-ever-after.

An empowering journey through the mechanisms of the mind from one of the world’s leading mental health experts.

"I thought things would change when I found the others. We would stop running. We would fight the Mogadorians. And we would win. But I was wrong. Even though we have come together, we barely escaped from the Mogadorians with our lives. And now we're in hiding, trying to figure out our next move. The six of us are powerful - but we're not yet strong enough to take on their entire army. We haven't discovered the full extent of our Legacies. We haven't learned to work together. And there's still so much that we don't know about the Elders or their plan for us."

Until the day I met John Smith, Number Four, I'd been on the run alone, hiding and fighting to stay alive. Together, we are much more powerful. But it could only last so long before we had to separate to find the others.... I went to Spain to find Seven, and I found even more, including a tenth member of the Garde who escaped from Lorien alive. Ella is younger than the rest of us, but just as brave. Now we're looking for the others - including John. But so are they....

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.

Alex Naranjo and Marlene Vargas, the owners of the biggest metaphysical shop on the West Coast, House of Intuition, have a clear mission: to bring the life-changing experience of magic to a world that needs magic more than ever. Your Intuition Led You Here is an empowering and accessible guide to harnessing the power of ritual and inner knowing. It also shares their personal story as LGBTQ Latinx women and their unlikely journey to becoming champions of magic as a tool of self-care and empowerment.

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother’s fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called “the secrets”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds.

Lizet, a daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in her family to graduate from high school, secretly applies and is accepted to an ultra-elite college. Her parents are furious at her decision to leave Miami, and amid a painful divorce, her father sells her childhood home, leaving Lizet, her mother, and older sister, a newly single mom, without a steady income and scrambling for a place to live.

Leaf Storm is the first book García Márquez wrote. Already we see the colorful historical background that forms the basis for his later work. It covers the history of Macondo from 1903 to 1928, ending the year the author was born. A man dies, and three people reflect on the story of Macondo’s boom and decline as shown in the family fortunes over three generations. As they attend the wake, the members of the family recall the tragedy that involves them all.

Isla Larsen Sanchez's life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her great-aunt each summer, like a piece of forgotten luggage. It is only when Isla turns eighteen, and her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies, that Isla discovers she has a gift. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

Nine Chilean women from vastly different backgrounds have been brought together by their beloved therapist, Natasha, to talk about their lives and help each other heal. From a teenage computer whiz confronting her sexual identity, to a middle-aged recluse who prefers the company of her dog over that of most humans, the women don’t have much in common on the surface. And yet as they tell their stories, unlikely common threads are discovered, bonds are formed, and lives are transformed.