Showing results by narrator "Raquel Beattie" in All Categories

Khalani Kanes has never stood on the surface of the earth. In the underground city of Apollo, faith and dreams are as absent as the sun. She longs to visit Genesis, the infamous Domed City and the final place where humanity lives aboveground. But when Khalani is given a life sentence and thrown into prison for a theft she didn't commit, that wish shatters into oblivion.

Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz is dead set on taking down the Villalobos crime family, but the ruthlessness of her quarry demands a ruthless edge of her own. Targeted by an increasingly unstable foe, Veranda must protect her family and navigate adversaries within the force while she sets a trap for Bartolo. As the action heats up, Veranda and her new Homicide team - along with an arson investigator who kindles a flame of his own - are all drawn into a deadly gambit.

Lynn the Fox has been a Kazak for several years and thought she had seen it all. She was, after all, a Master Kazak having killed more than five Assassins - professional killers with wizard-like talents. But life is unpredictable and the unthinkable is about to happen. Events that will not only put her in unexpected danger but also threaten the existence of the Kazak organization.

The Black Eye Galaxy is composed of over one billion stars and an unknown number of planets inhabited with intelligent life. Presently, there are over 100 with Faster Than Light capability....

Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way. Hard work and immaculate planning turned her from invisible wallflower to prominent socialite, but there have been bumps along the way. Less than a year after her husband Jackson's tax-evasion scandal, Amber reigns supreme over the Bishops Harbor community. But with Jackson being released from prison, Amber's free time - and money - is vanishing. With shocking turns and entertaining characters, The Next Mrs. Parrish will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about duplicity and betrayal.

Rosa Mandolini knows in her heart that her family are the greatest painters of magical illuminations in the city. But the eccentric Studio Mandolini has fallen on hard times and the future is no longer certain. While trying to help her family, Rosa discovers a strange magical box protected by a painted crow. But when she finds a way to open the box, she accidentally releases the Scarling, a vicious monster determined to destroy the Mandolini family at any cost.

A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else. But now Deniau's been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect's will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.

The past tore them apart. After a terrible accident took everything from Callie Stewart, enrolling at Blairwood University is supposed to be a chance at a new beginning. Living his best life, Hayden Watson, star wide receiver for the Blairwood Ravens, is heading straight for the NFL draft, and nothing is going to stand in his way. The present brings them together.

It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández's mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man's face on the magazine's cover with the words "I Tortured People". His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian.

Cate Holloway knows the unspoken rule of New Orleans: avoid the powerful Gage crime family at all costs. Of course, that was before her brother got caught in their chaos. Now Cate has no choice but to confront the dark and forbidding prince of New Orleans himself . . . and beg for her brother's life. But Lachlan Gage is as lethal as he is beautiful . . . and the only currency he's interested in is her soul. Because Lachlan isn't just some ruthless criminal. He's fae. And he has his own secret reasons for binding her to him.

The deeper the secret, the darker the shadow. Ten years ago, Jolene nearly killed her friend Elizabeth in a gruesome accident. And no one has any idea. Not even Elizabeth. Jolene has been trying to outrun the guilt ever since, wandering from place to place and career to career. So she’s shocked when, after her latest move, she runs into the very person she’s been trying to avoid for ten years. Elizabeth still lives with scars from the accident. And she’s still clueless about what happened that fateful night.

In 1985, Edward Shank famously gunned down the Beacon Hill Butcher, ending the serial killer’s reign of terror over the city of Seattle. But now in his eighties, Edward’s action-packed glory days are long behind him. The decorated former Seattle police chief has given up his high-maintenance Victorian home to his grandson Matt for a quiet life at the nearby Sweetbay Village Retirement Residence, where mac-n-cheese Wednesdays have become the highlight of his week.

A new marriage. A perfect home. A machine that says it’s all a lie. Welcome to Silicon Valley, where the weather is perfect, the income is high … and Rowena Snyder is miserable. A transplant from New York, Rowena moved into her husband Jacob’s idyllic childhood home with their new baby. But suburbia isn’t Rowena’s cup of Starbucks. And she’s got serious anxiety and depression to boot. Jacob, worried about their marriage, scores a new product currently in beta testing from his tech job: Maxine, a “digital friend” that bonds with an individual by continually gathering their personal data.

Theodore is ready to take over the company his father left for him. He's spent his entire life working towards the moment he becomes president, every waking moment dedicated to that goal. Unfortunately, his family man boss isn't too keen on his strictly single ways and worries if he gets this job, he'll never start a family. That's when he lies and tells his boss he has a fiancé. Now, he not only has to prove he deserves the job, despite his rival doing everything he can to sabotage him, but he has to find himself a fiancé—and fast.

Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and cofounder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture—and society—is finally ready to embrace complicated women.

With invading aliens determined to confine humans to their planets, one thing is certain: the Aliens' force is technologically superior to the SAS, and even with the new Riss technology the clans have developed under Nadya Reese's supervision, the SAS cannot defeat them alone. But forging an alliance between the SAS, UFN, and JPU will not be easy. It will require the empires to put aside their long history of border wars and mutual dislike. Worse, many in the SAS hate Riss-humans, especially Nadya.

In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.

Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff’s edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it’s this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it’s that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick.

To everyone’s astonishment, the party girl and can't-make-up-her-mind Megan not only survived the Hill, the name for the Kazak School, but loves her job and enjoys learning about the lives of the VIPs she is assigned to protect. The most exciting part is the cat-and-mouse game with the Assassins and terrorists intent on killing her clients. Megan the Wolf - sociable, sexy, sly, and lethal - is the newest Kazak Guardian.

Alisha is the newest Talon of the Raptor Clan, mercenaries prized by rulers, nobles, and the wealthy as elite bodyguards. Her skill with a blade and her foresight won her a prized place as a Talon, but unlike other Talons, she has a unique magical sigil given to her by an unnamed goddess. Alisha's first assignment for the clan is guarding a spoiled young princess. Surrounded by dangerous plots, keeping the girl alive takes all of Alisha's guile.