Showing results by narrator "Zura Johnson" in All Categories

In the village of Liver-and-Onions, there was a Potato Face Blind Man who used to play an accordion on the corner near the post office. The sometime narrator of these tales, he transports readers and listeners to Rootabaga Country, where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, the pigs wear bibs, and the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind, looking like a little hat that you could wear on the end of your thumb. Carl Sandburg, the beloved folk chronicler and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, invented these stories for his own daughters.

Avalee Elvis prides herself with being able to fix just about anything. . . except her past. Unable to put the puzzle of her life together, she pours heart and soul into making neglected places whole again. As the owner of Lowcountry Lost, Avalee spends her days in hot-pink Carhartt overalls and a tool belt reclaiming Lowcountry properties. Making them beautiful again releases the deep sigh that soothes the hurt she holds.

With forgetfulness looming, Vivienne is forced to make tough decisions regarding her relationship - and her immortality. Deacon watches helplessly as the woman he loves descends into forgetfulness. After secrets from his past are exposed, he finds out that one of those closest to him has betrayed his trust.

Mia Madden is pretty sure that the road to dating app hell is paved with suspiciously hot profiles. Take tonight's date, for example. Alex Conroy is unreasonably gorgeous—he's got that whole "board-room in the streets, lumberjack in the sheets" happening—but he also represents everything she loathes about corporate hustle culture. Yet another lousy date to laugh-cry about later. Except, it turns out that Alex is also the hot-shot new boss her dad can't stop complaining about—the Forbes thirty-under-thirty company fixer of his nightmares. Worse, their respective best friends are dating.

Cindi Ella Lass didn't have a career in Paris, Texas in mind when she graduated with a degree in fashion, but her grandmother's offer of a place to live (free rent!) entices her to the small town. When she arrives, she notices the most beautiful pair of crystal shoes in the shop next door...and she can't get them out of her head.

Jez and the crew of the Ungovernable are injured, exhausted, and out of time. Their long-time nemesis, Evka, has finally perfected the weapon the crew has been desperately fighting to stop for months—a protocol that will allow her to track down and kill anyone in the system with the click of a button. And the lives of the crew, and of everyone they love, are on the line. With their backs to the wall and no more tokens up their sleeves, they’ll need every bit of skill and ingenuity they possess.

Decades ago, Masha hid under a table and watched her parents die. Now, with war in the streets and chaos in the government, she can at last put the ultimate piece of her revenge into action. But it will involve murder, deception, and cunning on an unprecedented scale, and she's no longer as certain as she once was that she can pull this off. In the meantime, behind the barricades, the rest of the crew is trying desperately to survive as the Svodrani System government brings its full weight to bear. And surviving a war against the entire System might be a step too far, even for them.…

After taking down the two most powerful mafia bosses in the system, ex-smuggler pilot Jez and the crew race back to the capital to head off an impending civil war in the ensuing power vacuum. But to stop a bloodbath, they need to buy themselves time to prepare. So while Masha, Ysbel, and Tanya provide a distraction, Jez and Lev infiltrate a government paralyzed by the news, while Tae goes out into the volatile streets to neutralize the gangs who are more than willing to prove they’re the mafia’s natural successors. But preventing a civil war is more complicated than it sounds.

Ex-smuggler pilot Jez and the crew of The Ungovernable desperately need a way to stop the government from killing them all. So, when Grigory - godfather of the biggest mafia organization in the System - invites them aboard his private gambling ship and tells them he can give them a way out, it’s an offer they can’t refuse. But accepting it means dealing into Grigory’s game, and he hasn’t forgotten the money they'd cost him in their first heist. If they don’t want to end up floating in space without a spacesuit, they’ll have to find a way to beat him at his own game.

In Shadow Lab, a brilliant roster of speculative fiction writers pulls listeners into a diverse and genre-bending collection of stories, each as irresistible as the last.

Humor and heart collide when two fake dates accidentally ruin a wedding and must play matchmaker to fix it, perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Tessa Bailey.

Five months ago, an accident left Diana Sparrow badly injured and missing a few months of her memory. As if that's not enough, she's started having recurring nightmares about the night of the accident. Dreams that feel so real, she's left questioning: maybe she didn't just slide off the road into a ditch. Maybe, just maybe, she hit something. Or someone. She can't turn to her former best friend Val, who's been sleeping with Diana's husband Jonathan for months, but she might find some comfort in newcomer Cole Pelham. But is Cole connected to what happened that night?

Dancer Beth Spence finally gets a shot at her dream—auditioning for the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. But her audition concludes with a torn Achilles tendon and possibly the end of her dance career. When her sister, Delaney, flies her to Meadow Valley, California, to recuperate, she is reluctant to go but out of options. Beth has no idea that Delaney has set her up with a job managing widower Eli Murphy’s veterinary clinic while staying in the guest house on his ranch.

Isaline is desperate to keep her identity a secret. In the space of one night, her future as a City Watch has crumbled before her eyes. And now she’s on a train across Benemourne with two complete strangers—dangerous treasure hunters that she can’t trust with her real name.

Luckily for humanity, scientist Marie Curie applied her brilliant mind and indomitable spirit to expanding the frontiers of science, but what if she had instead drifted toward the darkness? At the cusp of between child- and adulthood, at the crossroads between science and superstition, a teen Marie Curie faces the factual and the fantastic in this fabulous collection of stories that inspire, delight, and ask the question: What if she had used her talents for diabolical purposes?

On the surface of the sea, a burning island beckons a mysterious man called the Collector. Approaching the fire, the Collector bears witness to a vicious crime. When he realizes an innocent life will be lost—a baby, swathed in a bundle and left to die in a floating rowboat—the Collector makes a choice that will change his course forever.

Russian enforcer Luka Zadorov is no fan of the South. Being traded to Alabama has meant swapping the glory of northern hockey for playing second fiddle to college football, but his plan to get traded back hits an interesting snag when he crosses paths with Ava Grace. Maybe the South has something to offer after all…

Honoria Talbott is just a quiet Irish girl who loves to swim and tinker with her clockwork inventions - until she meets Cathal mac Ler, a selkie lord charged with marrying a human female as part of a treaty negotiation between fae and humans. When her father and brother go missing at sea, Nora finds herself at the whims of her stepmother, who would see her married to a high-ranking cousin in order to keep her father’s wealth in the family.

Marta and her twin brother, Nick, have always been haunted and fascinated by an ancestral legend that holds that members of their family are doomed to various types of falls. And when their own family collapses in the wake of a revelation and a resulting devastating fight with their Catholic mother, the twins move to Prague, the city in which their 'falling curse' began.

Taken from her home. Forced to fight for sport. Will a magician’s thirst for adventure be quenched with blood? Aya Flandeen’s rare gift has always set her apart from the rest of her village. Though she yearns to venture into the outside world, she didn’t expect her journey to start with a brutal slave-trader’s raid. Revealing her powers to save the townsfolk, Aya’s heroism ends in disaster when she’s abducted and compelled to participate in a gladiatorial fight to the death.