Showing results by narrator "Sarah Welborn" in All Categories

Born a year apart, May and June Anderson were once as close as twins. Time and a loveless marriage changed the once vibrant May into June's timid counterpart. Now, two years after June abruptly disappeared, May receives a letter from her sister, inviting her to visit a mysterious colony in southern California. Eager to match June's boldness for once, May doesn't hesitate.

Amber Pierce thought she'd planned the perfect family vacation. Seeking to mend the rift with her daughter, she books a camping retreat in the breathtaking Cascades . . . a trip that includes her ex-husband and his new wife. But hours into their first hike, the group takes a wrong turn. Days later, they're lost, hungry, dehydrated, and hope is fading.

The holidays are Holly Brown’s favorite time of year. There’s nothing she loves more than the fun, festivities and the company Christmas party . . . namely because it means she gets to spend time with Lucas Brooks—her coworker and her boss’s son. When she learns that the party is getting canceled thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Brooks’ impending divorce, Holly takes it upon herself to save the party. And if she just so happens to bring her boss and his wife back together in the process, that’s just more cause for celebration.

"If you're not strong enough to swim fast, you're probably not strong enough to swim 'pretty," said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario Billy Rose. Since the nineteenth century, tensions between beauty and strength, aesthetics and athleticism have both impeded and propelled the careers of female swimmers—none more so than synchronized swimmers, for whom Williams is often considered godmother. In this riveting history—the first of its kind—Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville and dime museums to the Olympic arena.

Johnna LaGrange photographs death for a living. But when she gets the call that her younger sister Ori has vanished from their hometown of Sweetwater, North Carolina, the decay she's drawn to becomes chillingly personal. Returning to a town that never forgave her for surviving, Johnna finds her family in tatters—her mother drowning in vodka, her brother partying like nothing's wrong. Only Shannon, her ex turned detective, is willing to help. But as they dig into Ori's disappearance, buried memories start to surface.

The body cannot tell any lies. From birth to death, and through all the transitions in between, the body stores our knowledge and history, our feelings and experiences. Our betrayals. These insightful and empathetic stories, from the critically acclaimed author of The Last Animal, shine new light on our physical vessels set against our physical world, two landscapes irretrievably connected and altered over time.

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell's Skirts looks at the history of twentieth-century womenswear through the lens of game-changing styles like the little black dress, as well as more obscure innovations like the Taxi dress or the Pop-Over dress, which came with a matching potholder. These influential garments illuminate the times in which they were first worn—and the women who wore them. At once an authoritative work of history and a delightfully entertaining romp through decades of fashion, Skirts charts the changing fortunes, freedoms, and aspirations of women themselves.

Hope Chambers has a major problem. She's spent the entirety of her four years of high school focusing on being perfect—perfect grades, perfect extracurriculars, perfect essays—to the point that she forgot to get a life. And now she's perfectly boring. She's got exactly two weeks before her admissions interview for MIT to spice up her life and get a personality, dammit. And she knows exactly who can help her: soccer star and Mr. Popularity himself, Landon Watkins.

In Small Teaching K-8, a team of veteran educators bridges the gap between cognitive theory and the K-8 classroom environment, applying the same foundational research found in author James Lang's bestselling Small Teaching to the elementary and middle school setting. The book demonstrates how to integrate simple interventions into pre-existing pedagogical techniques to dramatically improve student outcomes.

Set against the sun-drenched streets of Savannah, this gripping mystery intertwines Ivy's hidden past with her turbulent present, unraveling dark secrets and testing the strength of family bonds. With unexpected twists and chilling dilemmas, Three Faces in the Mirror is a tale of deception, betrayal, and the desperate quest for truth.

Karen Hough doesn't want you to be "perfect." People fear public speaking because they worry about having to conform to all sorts of handed-down rules that tie them up in knots and put their audiences to sleep. It's authenticity and passion that win people over, she says, not "polish." But you can't be authentic if you’re following guidelines that drain the life and personality out of your presentation. Hough debunks over a dozen myths about presenting to make it more fun and natural for everyone.

We think of the United States as a nation committed, at least on paper, to ideals of human equality, under God and/or under the law. But as robust as the notion of the "American dream" is a longstanding defense of social hierarchies, including vast gulfs between rich and poor. Drawing on forgotten characters and neglected archives, Kim Phillips-Fein tells the story of the executives, intellectuals, and political leaders who have argued that the words of the Declaration of Independence—that "all men are created equal"—are a myth.

Companies looking to expand used to think about entering international markets, but today you're global from the moment you create a website. Nataly Kelly, Chief Growth Officer at Rebrandly (a global tech company with customers in more than 100 countries) and former VP International Ops and Strategy at HubSpot, says now the goal should be market intensification—building on the presence you already have. Kelly's MARACA model enables companies to distill the mass amounts of data available to determine if, how, and where they should expand by looking at three key areas of measurement.

John and Monique love one another with the ferocity only teenagers understand. As the years pass and circumstances change, John's developed drug addiction pushes them apart, but they continue to share his family. Across the years, despite trying to avoid one another, they endure a few awkward encounters. One night, Monique gets a message. John is in the ICU, and the day she has been trying to avoid for decades has come. John dies, leaving behind a son, two grandchildren, and a journal – a collection of John's thoughts, experiences, and the aspirations he holds for his boy.

Star football player Jace Rovers has a secret. And not just any secret—a shocking secret.... He writes romance. The kind with swords. And dresses. And kissing. Nobody knows. Not the other kids at Twin River High. Not his overbearing parents. And certainly not the millions of fans who've read his book on the writing platform Scribbles. And that's the way he plans to keep it. Except suddenly one of the other football players grabs his notebook in jest and starts reading a kissing scene out loud...and Jace knows he's busted.

It's the opening weekend of deer season in Gunthrum, Nebraska, in 1985, and Alma Costagan's intellectually disabled farmhand, Hal Bullard, has gone hunting with some of the locals, leaving her in a huff. That same weekend, a teenage girl goes missing, and Hal returns with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of, as rumors fly and townspeople see Hal's violent past in a new light.

From mavericks to party standard-bearers, United States Senators, members of the House of Representatives, and presidential candidates have campaigned for four decades espousing their intentions to address the impacts of climate change.

For archaeologist Emilia Flores, landing a fellowship to work at the ancient ruins of Pompeii in Italy is a dream come true. The only catch? She’ll be digging alongside her infuriating nemesis, TJ Mayer, who’s been a constant thorn in her side. TJ isn’t about to pass up the Pompeii project. Sure, he’ll be stuck working with Emilia, but he thrives on challenging her. And he hasn’t forgotten that secret kiss they shared at an archaeology conference last winter. Though unearthing Pompeii’s treasures might be a dream, student debt is a nightmare that never takes a vacation.

Corey Chaos, teen YouTube sensation, just needs a break from his hectic schedule. Ever since his musical talent was "discovered" by the right person at the right time, his life has been a steady stream of interviews, screaming fans, TV shows, screaming fans, Instagram lives, and did he mention the screaming fans? He'd give anything to be a normal teen again, even for five minutes. So, when his agent suggests staying at his pool house for a month to get away from the stress, Corey is on the next plane to snowy Twin River, Wisconsin.

What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? And what can we learn from the plants and creatures who mother at the edges of their world's unraveling? Becoming a mother in this time means bringing life into a world that appears to be coming undone. Drawing upon ecology, mythology, and her own experiences as a mother, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder confronts what it means to "mother": to do the good work of being in service to the living world. What if we could all mother the places we live and the beings with whom we share those places? And what if they also mother us?