Showing results by narrator "Renata Friedman" in All Categories

James Acton has come to the village of Upton to begin again. As his grief over the death of his wife eases, he hopes to find new purpose as the vicar of this small Hampshire parish, still emerging from the long shadow of the war. James’ own war was in the Western Desert, where he fell in love, first with the thrill of being a hurricane pilot and then with Yvette Haddad, the captivating, enigmatic young Alexandrian with a penchant for dangerous driving.

A lavish party. An isolated mansion. Two hosts who will do anything to protect their secrets. When husband and wife Henry and Claudine organise their company's Christmas party in a remote mansion, they expect it to be a night to remember. But the festive mood quickly turns sour when a sinister gift is unwrapped in the Secret Santa gift exchange. As heavy snow traps the guests inside the mountainside lodge, it quickly becomes clear that one of the party is out for revenge. It’s no longer just about enduring the evening. It’s about making sure you get out alive....

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart, and three years on, Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Michael and Megan Fitzgerald are siblings who share a troubling past. Both adopted, and now grown - Michael is a long-haul truck driver, Megan a college student majoring in psychology - they trust each other before anyone else. They've had to. When a young woman is found murdered in Michael's LA apartment, he is the chief suspect and quickly arrested. But then there's another killing that is strikingly similar. And another. And not just in LA - as the spree spreads across the country, the FBI become involved in a manhunt for a cold-blooded serial killer.

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop.

Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorced dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancee and her kids. The fiancee's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great. Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard.

Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, "All at the very same time!" Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often. But no one knows what happened to him the night he went missing more than twenty years ago. When the jacket is unexpectedly uncovered, the cold case reopens, and Davy's family is thrust into yet another media storm. But at the heart of the story are four people forever changed by one single night.

Camille Prescott has it all. A doting husband, two children, a charming home in a seaside enclave, and a beautiful, fixed smile that exudes normalcy. But behind her polished mask lurks a much different Camille—one with a padlocked vault of secrets. Raised by a vindictive and psychotic woman, Camille has gone to great lengths to bury her past and for good reason: if her mother ever finds her, she will kill her.

Rhoda West has the world at her feet. As the luminously charismatic CEO of Radical, a fast-growing start-up, Rhoda has built a wellness company whose core mission is the betterment of women’s lives. But just as Radical announces the latest fundraising round that will take it over the top, an anonymous Twitter account begins revealing the company’s secrets and starts questioning its beliefs and approach, and Rhoda herself. Is Rhoda really the nurturing leader that she presents to the world, or a fraud on a mission to exploit the women she claims to want to help?

Lilly Bly desperately wants to have a baby. She is struggling with infertility and bad spending habits when her husband, Jack, gets a new job that moves them from Chicago to a small town in Wisconsin. Impractical Lilly falls in love with a decrepit mansion well out of their price range—she is convinced that she will finally get pregnant and have a baby in this house—and Jack agrees to it. But when Lilly learns that her dream house was the site of a gruesome triple homicide/suicide in the 1950s, she begins to experience strange occurrences that soon lead her to believe the house is haunted.

On paper, Jazmine, Judith, Erin, and Sara have little in common - they’re very different people leading very different lives. And yet at book club meetings in an historic carriage house turned bookstore, they bond over a shared love of reading (and more than a little wine) as well as the growing realization that their lives are not turning out like they expected.

In the lush and magical Pacific Northwest live two best friends who grew up like sisters: charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora, and the devoted, watchful narrator. Each of them is incomplete without the other. But their unbreakable bond is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most.

Eighteen-year-old Tally is absolutely sure of everything: her genius, the love of her adoptive family, the loyalty of her best friend, Shane, and her future career as a Nobel prize-winning astronomer. There's no room in her tidy world for heartbreak or uncertainty - or the charismatic, troubled mother who abandoned her soon after she was born.

Maia is a teenage piano prodigy and dutiful daughter, imprisoned in the oppressive silence of her adoptive parents' house like a princess in an ivory tower. Cass is a street rat, witch, and runaway, scraping by with her wits and her knack for a five-fingered discount. When a chance encounter brings the two girls together, an unlikely friendship blossoms that will soon change the course of both their lives. Cass springs Maia from the jail of the only world she's ever known, and Maia's only too happy to make a break for it.

An eight-year-old trauma victim is enlisted as an underground courier, rushing frozen organs through the alleys of Eastern Europe. A young janitor transforms discarded objects into a fantastical, sprawling miniature city until a shocking discovery forces him to rethink his creation. A brazen child tells off a pack of schoolyard tormentors with the spirited invention of an 11th commandment. A wounded man drives eastward, through tears and grief, toward an unexpected transcendence.

Thirty diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators - including Renee Watson (Piecing Me Together), Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Meg Medina (Merci Suarez Changes Gears), and Adam Gidwitz (The Inquisitor's Tale) - engage young people in frank discussions about racism, identity, and self-esteem. Featuring stories filled with love, acceptance, truth, peace, and an assurance that there can be hope for a better tomorrow, The Talk is an inspiring anthology and must-have resource published in partnership with Just Us Books.

For 30 years, Nadine Kingsley has kept a heart-wrenching secret. When a letter arrives threatening to reveal the truth that could destroy her tight-knit family, Nadine embarks on a difficult journey to explain her painful decision, especially to her youngest daughter, Autumn.

On the eve of a much-anticipated proposal, Meg is happier than she could have ever imagined. The future she sees for herself on that magical night is bright, one that's full of love and laughter and dreams finally realized. That is, until one random act of violence changes everything. Consumed by fate and forces she can't comprehend, Meg finds herself at the center of a spectral conflict that transcends life and death.

When she discovers evidence of her husband's infidelity, Annie Goodman's life is thrown asunder and she flees with her young daughter to the one person she has always trusted: her twin sister, Julie. In this safe harbor, the sisters quickly become as close as they were as children. But when Annie tries to get a job, her safe harbor turns rocky - she's arrested, her credit cards are stolen, and her very identity is in question. Seeking solace with Julie, she finds her twin sister gone, along with her daughter. It soon becomes clear that nothing Annie previously believed is certain....

From the author of book-club favorite The Salt House comes a deeply affecting novel about a teenage girl finding her voice and the military wife who moves in downstairs, united in their search for the true meaning of home.