Showing results by narrator "Amanda" in All Categories

Annie Beyers has everything - a beautiful house, a loving husband, and an adorable daughter. It’s a day like any other when she takes Hannah to the pediatrician…until she wakes hours later from a car accident. When she asks for her daughter, confused doctors tell Annie that Hannah never existed. In fact, nothing after waking from the crash is the same as Annie remembers. Five happy years of her life apparently never happened.

Chaos, the vicious supernatural competition where heroes are born and riches are won. To most, it's just an urban legend whispered in the darkest shadows, but that all changes when my best friend drags me into a savage world where vampires, shifters, and fae compete for glory and fame. As a creature without magic, I’d be a fool to enter Chaos, but the prize—a dagger of untold power—could change my powerless existence. With that dagger, I could wield magic, earn respect, and maybe, just maybe, win the heart of the dragon heir… it’s a risk I have to take.

Harlow has almost everything she ever wanted: a passionate marriage, an adorable stepson, and a fresh start at her husband Gregor’s boyhood home on the water. If only she could get pregnant, her happiness would be complete. But soon after they arrive on the misty, tree-cloaked island, Gregor starts to change—and Harlow is shaken by his odd connection to their neighbor Kirsten, a luminous tradwife influencer.

Delaney Reed needs a vacation from her vacation town. Even on a good day, it’s a lot of work to keep the peace in a town full of gods, monsters, and magical beings. Lately all the good days have gone from bad to worse. Luckily, Delaney has a plan to steal away with her fiancé, Ryder Bailey, for a nice relaxing weekend together. Her getaway plans come to a screeching halt when Delaney discovers Crow’s garage sale is selling cursed magical items to anyone who wants one—and everyone wants one.

In the US, there is a wide-ranging network of at least 370 food banks, and more than 60,000 hunger-relief organizations such as food pantries and meal programs. And yet hunger still affects one in nine Americans. What are we doing wrong? In Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, Katie Martin argues that if handing out more and more food was the answer, we would have solved the problem of hunger decades ago. Martin instead presents a new model for charitable food, one where success is measured not by pounds of food distributed but by lives changed.

Barbara Pym is one of the 20th-century's wittiest, and most underrated, novelists. Her perceptive comedies of manners, centred around the domestic lives and loves of unassuming middle-class Englishwomen, won her many devoted readers and saw her hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen. Yet she spent 15 years out of print in the 1960s and '70s, until Philip Larkin championed her work in the Times Literary Supplement. Her seventh novel was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and writers from Jilly Cooper to Alexander McCall Smith continue to laud her talent today.

When Lady Mae turns eighteen, she’ll inherit her mother’s ghastly job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty criminals as payment for their petty crimes. But then their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and there in the living room they murder her mother for refusing to butcher a child. Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her gruesome job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother.

I will take this secret to my end. Two years ago, the Guild of Guardians killed my parents for a crime they didn't commit. They tried to kill me too, but I got away. I buried the past and made a new life for myself, hidden in a world not my own. The human world, where faeries belong in stories and magic is unknown. But now the Guild has found me.

Is Idina Moorfield going crazy or has an ancient magic found its source? Her family says she's not a true Moorfield and will never be good enough for the family business. Sometimes what looks like the worst day ever, is the beginning of our best adventure. Idina takes that first step into a new life and gets the hell away from them to forge her own future.

I’m a witch with a problem. Okay, make that lots of problems. Following a slight misunderstanding with magical law enforcement, I wind up expelled from the hidden supernatural community known as the Seattle Haven. My parole officer dumps me in a tiny beach town with nothing but my collection of worldly possessions and a warning that this is my last shot. I don’t think I’m cut out for the human world, but when stuck between a prison cell and a haunted halfway house, I suppose I’ll take option B.

The McCready Family Funeral Home and Bait Shop has crickets running rampant in the store and hot sauce in the Snack Shack's ketchup bottles. But as the county coroner, Frankie has enough on her plate without worrying about the increasingly mean pranks being played at her family's business. And the arrival of Sheriff Eric Linden, both devastatingly attractive and painfully taciturn, is enough to push her over the edge.

Recovering witch Garnet Lacey owns Wisconsin's premier occult bookstore. And a fringe benefit of the job is getting customers like Sebastian Von Traum - piercing brown eyes, a sexy accent, and a killer body. The only thing missing is an aura. Which means he's dead. And that means trouble - something Garnet's a sucker for....

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. At the center is Mencheres, a breathtaking Master vampire who thought he'd seen it all. Then Kira appears—this fearless, beautiful...human who braved death to rescue him. Though he burns for her, keeping Kira in his world means risking her life.

After the Mage Council publicly excised me, I've finally got my first real case. And I've even taken on a brand-new employee: a werewolf with impulse control issues. But my sister just lost everyone she loves, and she’s begging me to ask Samael for help. Whether I like it or not, I need Samael's resources. Because anyone who can kill that many witches has the kind of power we can't afford to ignore. And there's no point dodging the demon who manages to involve himself in all of my problems.

Everyone knows the legend of the Jersey Devil. Some believe it is an abomination of nature, a hybrid winged beast from hell that stalks the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey searching for prey. Others believe it is a hoax, a campfire story designed to scare children. But one man knows the truth....

Christmas in Winterspell means ice skating, hot cocoa by the barrel, and frosted gingerbread houses. I was almost looking forward to it. The merriment screeches to a halt when two elves show up, claiming to have been sent by Santa himself, on a mission to track down an ancient grimoire. A grimoire with the power of Christmas itself woven through the pages. Without it, Christmas isn't happening, and Santa himself is in grave danger. Could Winterspell hold the key to saving Christmas?

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

Thanks to some experimental wizardry, Matt is out of Maggie's head. He's in a golem body, to be precise. It's not his body, but it's an improvement on his previous situation. Kind of. It's going to take some time for his soul to acclimatize to an unfamiliar home. Until that happens, Matt will have to hope the awkwardness that comes with learning to operate his new body isn't too much for everyone to handle. An unsolicited case means there's no time to worry about Matt's temporary weirdness.

The Order has one last shot at stealing the wild magic brewing inside me. But I’m not sitting around waiting for them to strike. I’m tracking one of their shadow mages, who holds the key to the other pieces of the powerful meteorite that chose me. It’s mine to carry, and mine to wield.My patron mage granted me a vision. One that compels me to reunite the last two pieces of meteorite and transform into the warrior I was meant to be. In order to do this, I must wake the dead, slay man-eating beasts, and defeat a Blackbriar professor I thought I could trust.

Have yourself a very Merry Witchmas in Holiday Haven, where the magic and mystery of Christmas is snow joke! Lumi Northrop is a powerful guardian of the north—the North Star Reindeer Sanctuary, that is. But when trouble strikes and Santa's favorite reindeer goes missing, it's up to her to save Christmas!