Showing results by narrator "Sandy Rustin" in All Categories

Evie Barnes is a bad girl. So are all her friends. They’re the sort who wear bold makeup, laugh too loud, and run around with boys. Most of all, they protect their own against the world. So when Evie is saved from a sinister encounter by a good girl from the “right” side of the tracks, every rule she’s always lived by is called into question. Now she must redefine what it means to be a bad girl and rethink everything she knew about loyalty.

Hannah Stark takes care of everyone else, from the patients she nurses back to health, to her family, who can never seem to get it together. She'd love to find someone she can trust, someone she can lean on, someone she can love - but that someone will not be Jake McKenna. The ruggedly attractive owner of Adventure Sports might still make her palms sweat, but Jake broke her teenage heart years ago.

June, 1993. Claire has been dumped in rural Indianola, Texas, to spend her whole vacation taking care of mean, sickly Grammy. There's nothing too remarkable about Indianola: it's run-down, shabby, and sweltering, a pin-dot on the Gulf Coast. Except there is something remarkable. Memories shimmer and change. Lizards whisper riddles under the pecan trees. People disappear as if they never existed. And worst of all, a red-lightning storm from beyond our world may just wipe the whole town off the map, if Claire and her maybe-girlfriend Julie can't stop it.

Eleven-year-old Ash McNulty is one of the “gifted and talented” kids at her school, spending most of her day in a special class with a few other advanced students. As the end of fifth grade rolls around, she should be on top of the world. According to everyone, she’s going to rock junior high! But Ash has a secret: She can’t keep up with her advanced classmates anymore.

The best way to understand confidence is to see it in action. That’s why best-selling authors Katty Kay, Claire Shipman, and JillEllyn Riley have collected 30 true stories of real girls, pursuing their passions, struggling, and stumbling, but along the way figuring out how to build their own special brand of confidence. From Bali to Brazil, South Africa to Seattle, Australia to Afghanistan, these girls took risks, doubted themselves, and sometimes failed. But they also hung in there when things got hard.

When the world started to fall apart, the government gave everyone two choices: move into the Bubble Cities... or take their chances outside. Twelve-year-old Maggie and her family chose the latter. They live in the world that was left behind. Deciding it's time to grow up and grow tough, Maggie rechristens herself "Ford Falcon" - a name taken from the beat-up car she finds at a nearby junkyard. This is where Ford's family goes to scavenge for things they can use and barter with.

Twelve-year-old Garnet regrets that she doesn’t know her family. Her mother has done her best to keep it that way, living far from the rest of the magical Carrefour clan and their dark, dangerous mansion known as Crossroad House. But when Garnet finally gets summoned to the estate, it isn’t quite what she hoped for. Her relatives are strange and quarrelsome, each room in Crossroad House is more dilapidated than the last, and she can’t keep straight which dusty hallways and cobwebbed corners are forbidden.

For the audience that made Commencement a New York Times best seller comes a novel about women making their way in the world. Self-doubting Ruth is coddled by her immigrant mother, who uses food to soothe and control. Defiant Francesca believes her heavy frame shames her Park Avenue society mother and, to provoke her, consumes everything in sight. Lonely Opal longs to be included in her glamorous mother’s dinner dates - until a disturbing encounter forever changes her desires. Finally, Setsu, a promising violinist, staves off conflict with her jealous brother.

The insect world is a fascinating place. You may not think so. You may think insects are gross. Or scary. Or dangerous. But there’s so much more to insects than what meets the eye. Told through hilarious prose and packed full of jaw-dropping facts, Brenna Maloney’s first-person narrative presents the big picture on bugs. Insects play a critical role on our planet—as pollinators, garbage collectors, artistic muses, research partners, and even as “dinner.”

The Lawless School provides the right education for kids on the wrong side of the law. M Freeman has been homeschooled her entire life. So M has no idea just how unusual her education has been - not until she leaves home to attend the prestigious (and mysterious) Lawless School. Suddenly, it's very clear to M that her tutors have been preparing her all along for a life of crime. She excels at escape tactics. She's a whiz at spotting forgeries. Her years of piano lessons pay off when picking pockets and cracking safes.

Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies. But Grace wants to finally have a home all their own. Just when she thinks she's found it, her mother says it's time to move again. Grace summons the courage to tell her mother how she really feels and will always regret that her last words to her were angry ones. After her mother's sudden death, Grace is forced to live with a grandmother she's never met.

Sierra has embraced her role as owner of Flower House floral shop. Sierra’s team members are enjoying their new jobs too. At least until everyone realizes their lack of experience might be contributing to their lack of customers.... Sierra decides they need a change in luck, so she creates a special window display featuring lucky bamboo and auspicious flowers. The shop is flooded with customers the next day, including a van full of college students on a horticulture club field trip. Unfortunately, the students’ distracted professor has gone missing.

Fifteen-year-old Jo Chastain is about to take on her biggest con yet - impersonating a missing girl. The Lovecrafts are a wealthy Boston family with ties to the unsolved mystery of Vivienne Weir, who went missing at age nine. When Jo takes on Vivi's identity, the Lovecrafts give her everything she could want: love, money, security, and proximity to their intriguing daughter, Temple. But nothing is as it seems in the Lovecraft household, and as hidden crimes reveal themselves, Jo must choose between an illusion of safety or escaping the danger around her.

Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina's cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather, two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother - a bond Bina thought was unbreakable. Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her.

Twenty-five years ago, a body was discovered in the Turney family barn—and the locals were all too ready to believe that killing blood ran through Turney veins. Every member of the family came under suspicion, their reputations crumbled to pieces, and with no convictions, no one has ever been cleared. Daughter Jill, now a Chicago lawyer, is ready for this case to be solved and for her broken family to be repaired at last.

Delta Douglas is settling into small-town life in Tundish, Montana, and her stationery shop is thriving. But when Delta asks well-known Montana artist Tilly Tay to display a miniature version of a mining town in her shop, Wanted, trouble soon comes into the fold. Tilly is obsessed with getting everything just right before the unveiling, but when her grand reveal showcases a tiny murder, an element Tilly swears she did not add, confusion sweeps the crowd. That's when a body is discovered perfectly mirroring Tilly's display.

Mazie has always longed to be on Broadway. But growing up in her small Nebraska town, that always seemed like an impossible dream. So when an opportunity presents itself to spend six weeks auditioning, Mazie jumps at the chance, leaving behind everything - and everyone - she's ever known. New York City is a shock to the senses: thrilling, but lonely. Auditions are brutal. Mazie's homesick, and she misses the boyfriend whose heart she broke when she left. Nothing is as she expected.

As the female CEO of a tech startup, Dr. Cristal Glangchai was outnumbered 20 to one. At Google, Twitter, and Facebook, women currently fill just 10 to 20 percent of technical jobs. While career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, the achievement gap between men and women has only grown wider. In VentureGirls, Glangchai offers a unique solution based on her own experience as an engineer and entrepreneur as well as the founder of the VentureLab, an academy of entrepreneurship and technology for girls.

Every small town has one unsolved case that haunts its memory, festering for generations below the surface. Over sixty years ago, Daisy Doe was murdered and discarded outside Pineville, Alabama, buried without a name or anyone to mourn her loss. When Star Cavanaugh's father tried to solve the case, he too was killed. Now a cold-case detective with resources of her own, Star is determined to get to the bottom of both crimes. But to do so, she’ll have to face an entire town locked in corruption, racism, silence, and fear—and the same dangerous killer who took two other lives.

Sean Callaway is the black sheep of the Callaway clan, the sibling who refused to follow in the family tradition of firefighting. Instead, he lives his life in music. On the outside, he's a free-spirited rock star, but on the inside, Sean is haunted by the death of a childhood friend, a tragedy no one knows he witnessed. He's kept the secret for twenty years. But nothing stays hidden forever....