Showing results by narrator "Tavia Gilbert" in All Categories

In a book as eye-opening as it is riveting, practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse but all the life that happens in just one day in a hospital's cancer ward. In the span of 12 hours, lives can be lost, life-altering medical treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen.

At the start of the 20th century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste....

With color, irony, and sensitivity, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that is the writer’s life. As it probes and exposes, examines and analyzes, The Writing Life offers deeper insight into one of the most mysterious of professions.

When crime scene investigator Brooke Porter arrives at the home of a murdered woman, the only thing more shocking than the carnage is the evidence that someone escaped the scene. But where is this witness now? A thorough search of the area yields more questions than answers, and before Brooke even packs up her evidence kit, she's made it her goal to find the witness and get them out of harm's way.

In the summer between second and third year at Whitehall, Emily accompanies Lady Barb on her rounds of the Cairngorm Mountains, bringing magical help to the locals and searching for new magicians. For Emily, tired and broken after the events of Study in Slaughter, it should be a chance to relax as well as to visit a new part of the Nameless World, to put her responsibilities aside and just be herself. But the locals aren't quite what she expects, with problems of their own, and Lady Barb is a different person away from Whitehall.

Brimming with new ideas for magical research, Emily returns to Whitehall School for her second year of magical education, looking forward to returning to her studies. And yet things are different; her new roommates harbor their secrets, her old friends are becoming distracted by sports and games, and one of the teachers seems to dislike her. As she starts new classes, she discovers she has to work far harder to keep her place in the school. But her second year will be far more adventurous than her first.

The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune refuses to back down as white supremacists attempt to thwart her work. She marches on as an activist and an educator, and as her reputation grows she becomes a celebrity, revered by titans of business and recognized by U.S. Presidents. Eleanor Roosevelt herself is awestruck and eager to make her acquaintance.

He is Spade, a powerful, mysterious vampire who has walked the earth for centuries and is now duty-bound to protect this endangered, alluring human—even if it means destroying his own kind. Denise may arouse his deepest hungers, but Spade knows he must fight his urge to have her as they face the nightmare together, because once the first crimson drop falls, they will both be lost.

Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father—the one responsible for ruining her mother's life. Then she's captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unlikely partnership. In exchange for help finding her father, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her battle reflexes are as sharp as his fangs. She's amazed she doesn't end up as his dinner…are there actually good vampires?

Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.” She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love.

Chicago private investigator Kira Graceling should have just kept on walking. But her sense of duty refused to let her ignore the moans of pain coming from inside a warehouse just before dawn. Suddenly she finds herself in a world she’s only imagined in her worst nightmares.

One Christmas, Lady, a cocker spaniel puppy, sprang into the arms of Jim Dear and Darling. It was love at first sight. Since then, Lady has spent every day doing the same wonderful routine with her family - and she wouldn’t change a thing. But when Jim Dear and Darling bring a baby into the house, Lady’s world turns upside down. She leaves home to find herself on the dangerous city streets, where she meets up with a dog named Tramp. He tries to convince her that his way of life is a daring adventure, but Lady has her doubts. Will she leave her quiet life behind?

Blue Echohawk doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know her real name or when she was born. Abandoned at two and raised by a drifter, she didn't attend school until she was ten years old. At nineteen, when most kids her age are attending college or moving on with life, she is just a senior in high school. With no mother, no father, no faith, and no future, Blue Echohawk is a difficult student, to say the least.

Half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her vampire husband, Bones, have fought for their lives, as well as for their relationship. But just when they’ve triumphed over the latest battle, Cat’s new and unexpected abilities threaten to upset a long-standing balance.

With the mysterious disappearance of vampires, rumors abound that a species war is brewing. A zealot is inciting tensions between the vampires and ghouls, and if these two powerful groups clash, innocent mortals could become collateral damage.

In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state—women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation.

As war moves ever closer, the sleepy English village of Crowmarsh Priors settles into a new sort of normal: Evacuees from London are billeted in local homes. The nightly German air raids become grimly mundane. Rationing curtails every comfort. Men leave to fight and die. And five women forge a bond of friendship that will change their lives forever in this engrossing novel of loyalty, loss, and love in the shadow of World War II.With the hardships of war intensifying every day, the women band together to defeat formidable enemies and find remarkable strength within themselves to help one another. It is a war-forged loyalty certain to endure years and distance. When four of the women return for a celebration fifty years later, their mission is not simply to commemorate or remember. They’ve returned to confront a traitor whose actions cost countless lives — and to avenge one of their own at last.

Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the 20th-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away? Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel.

Every magician who wants to be great goes through an apprenticeship...a period of training under a master who will hopefully raise them to mastery themselves. For Emily, the time has come to begin her long-awaited apprenticeship with Void. She must master her powers or risk being destroyed by them. But as Void introduces her to levels and layers of magic she never even knew existed, she finds herself fighting desperately to keep up, to defeat challenge after challenge, to prove her worth to study under him, and to survive a training course that has killed lesser magicians.

The Kingdom of Zangaria has finally started its descent into civil war. King Randor has declared martial law, imprisoned the pregnant Crown Princess Alassa in the Tower of Alexis, and started preparations for a first strike against his enemies. The time has come for everyone to choose a side. Emily has arrived in Alexis with the intention of freeing Alassa before her father can have her executed. But as Emily and her friends are drawn into a maelstrom of rebellious factions and crown loyalists, they find themselves faced with an insolvable problem.

When Lee Metoyer is hired to be the new housekeeper, she has no idea that she’s about to become the anchor to a family in an abusive patriarch’s home, setting a mystery in motion that will take decades to uncover. At the age of seventy-two, Lee falls ill and on her deathbed asks Sandy to write her story. The only problem is, Sandy doesn’t know the story. Embarking on a quest to honor Lee’s final wishes, Sandy takes an emotional and thrilling journey, unveiling shocking truths not only about her beloved housekeeper but also her own upbringing.