Showing results by narrator "Morgan Hallett" in All Categories

Frank Youngsmith lives a simple nine-to-five life as an insurance adjuster. Day after day, he slogs through the same routine. Until the day he gets handed a case that pulls him into an underground world of political conspiracy, intrigue, and blood sport known only as the tournament.

Telegraph operator Lucy Drake is a master of Morse code, but the presence of Sir Colin Beckwith at a rival news agency puts her livelihood at risk. Despite their rivalry, Lucy realises Colin's connections could be just what her family needs to turn the tide of their long legal battle over their stolen fortune. When she negotiates an unlikely alliance with him, neither of them realises how far the web of treachery they're wading into will take them.

For centuries, the Kingdom of Eledore has relied upon the kainen race's natural magical talents to retain its elevated and seemingly impervious status in the world, particularly above the humans in Acrasia. Plots and assassination attempts grow against the royal twin heirs, Nels and Suvi, as the Acrasians seem to be doing more than saber rattling against what they see as an evil, tyrannical nation.

Ronnie, an engaged hairdresser with a history of teenage recklessness and mystery childhood illnesses, feels stifled by the unavoidable pull of the predictable, comfortable life laid out before her. Charlie, an anxiety-ridden, award-winning writer, feels suffocated by his literary success and familial responsibility, including a bread-winning wife and a child with autism.

Zane and Skye are misfit teens drawn together by their love of music and their loneliness, both part of Seattle’s grunge scene in the early ’90s. They dream of moving to LA together; Zane’s music career following the trajectory of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder, and Skye drawing Picasso-esque portraits on the Venice Beach boardwalk. When a tragedy violently catapults these best friends to lovers, their bond is forever strengthened and their relationship destroyed.

Consummate adventurer Jeremy Spade arranges ‘life-changing trips’ in the deserts, mountains and jungles of Asia. His firm lets the world’s richest experience the world’s wildest parts, all from the comfort of an air-conditioned tent with a Michelin-class chef on call. After growing up in the US foster care system, Jeremy is fascinated and repelled by the billionaires. So he never suspects his own life will be changed by one of them.

Nell Valenti is settling into her role of transforming the Villa Orlandini into a superb farm-to-table cooking school, and the time has finally come for a full taste test run. But when Chef Orlandini prepares to reveal his top secret marinara recipe for the first time to a group of American gastro-tourists, Nell realizes she might have bitten off more than she can chew.

When Nell Valenti is offered a chance to move to Tuscany to help transform an aging villa into a farm-to-table cooking school, she eagerly accepts. But Nell gets more than she bargained for when she arrives. With only a day to go until the launch dinner for the cooking school, the villa is in shambles, and Chef O is blissfully oblivious of the work that needs to be done before a group of local dignitaries arrive, along with a filmmaker. The situation only worsens when Nell discovers that the filmmaker is an ex-boyfriend, and he's found murdered later that night.

Asher has been training her entire life to become a Sor-Commander. One day, she'll give her soul to the gilded mechanical body of the Sor and become a commander to a battalion of Dedicates. These soldiers, encased in exoskeletons, with extra arms, and telepathic subordination to the Sor-Commanders, are the only thing that's kept the much larger Levastani army of conquest at bay for decades. But while on a training journey, Asher and her party are attacked, and her commander is incapacitated, leaving her alone to lead the unit across a bitterly cold, unstable mountain.

Actor Matthew McConaughey descends into a surreal desert of the soul, an admirer of Miley Cyrus performs a 3,000-word sentence in defense of his passion, an aging porn star dons a dinosaur costume to film the sex scene of a lifetime, and Leonard Cohen shills for Subway: these mercurial and wildly varied stories explode the conventions of short fiction.

A former special agent tracks rumors of a dangerous new drug to a remote clinic in Florida, where the investigation brings him into the crosshairs of a powerful pharmaceutical company, and the race is on to expose a terrifying truth: it could rewrite the human genome.

Unable to afford rent, Mia—a community college student—lives out of her car, cleaning houses of the well-to-do in the LA area to meet her shoestring budget. Then Covid hits, and everything changes. For people living in houses and apartments, with stay-at-home jobs, the pandemic was inconvenient. For Mia—a student and housekeeper whose budget is so tight she lives in her car—the pandemic destroys the very source of her paltry income.

Mazaryk gathers influence as the steward of the Black House, working behind the scenes to create a global mafia of the world’s most powerful tournament teams. His goal: to mold the tournament into the strongarm he believes it was created to be. Frank Youngsmith and Allen Lockton know the only way to beat a man like Mazaryk is with information. They race against time to provide Ellie Willmore and Team Blue with an edge - insights into the inner workings of the most dangerous man in the game.

Alternating between a woman's childhood in a small town and as an adult in the city, this novel traces a Jehovah Witness family's splintering belief system, their isolation, and the erosion of their relationships. As Emily becomes closer to her closeted Uncle Tyler, she begins to challenge her upbringing. Her questions about the Jehovah's Witnesses' insular lifestyle, rigid codes of conduct, and tenets of their faith haunt her older sister Lenora too.

When the first astronauts of the Mars Colony returned to Earth, they brought a mysterious, metal box they had found half-buried in the red dirt, called the Mars Cube. The scientists assigned to uncover its secrets tested it, scanned it, tried to blow it up, and everything in between. Then they accidentally opened it. Biosafety level-4 laboratories, BSL4, hold the most deadly viruses on the Earth, and Juliet handled them daily. Her research at the CDC landed her a position on the Mars Cube Investigative Team in the world’s only BSL-5 lab.

It’s 2015, and Anne Hatley is leaving her North Carolina home for a Long Island research lab called the Colony. Anne, who was born with a genetic mutation that left her only one leg, will be donating stem cells for gene research in exchange for a new leg. But after meeting others with deficiencies, including carriers of the “suicide gene” and “obesity gene,” Anne questions how much genetics really determine a person’s life.

At the outset of the 2008 financial crisis, Em has a dull marketing job generating reports of vague utility while she anxiously awaits news of her sister, Ad, who has gone missing - again. Confronted by unfathomable loss and recovery, Em begins to see how madness permeates everything around her. Em’s story is layered with other perspectives and voices.

A memoir of homecoming—Heidi Across America is a gritty story of how opening our hearts to others enables us to open our hearts to ourselves and love what we find there.

Every inch of the United States is in a river’s watershed. But in 1966, one of our most important watersheds was dying. Dead fish washed up on the Hudson River’s shores, and the once-clear water reeked of oil. With too much pollution to support human or animal life, America’s “First River” was in too deep—until a Riverkeeper, a pioneering group of environmental activists, fought to get rivers around the globe out of troubled waters. Nonfiction pro Nancy Castaldo showcases Riverkeeper’s achievements and the intersection of science and activism.

Things have gone awry in the tournament. A killer is on the loose among the players. The world is waking up to what the tournament really is, and what was once a secret competition is fast becoming a global obsession. But no winner can be declared until the mystery of what happened to one of the world's most powerful teams is solved.