Showing results by author "Kate Labahn" in All Categories

It started in an airport, Allegra and fraternal twin brothers Raphael and Sean met playing with stuffed animals with their parents waiting for a plane to take them to Pasadena in the Nineties. The two families become friends and neighbors and grow up together. Allegra wants to be in the business of making movies like her parents. Raphael chooses to learn to be an actor to be around Allegra. Sean is a very gifted painter, but finds his true talent shines in sculpting stone and then glass.

Seven years after the events in The Thirteenth Hour of the Sinuatollion Saga, Kir-rowen, “Kiro,” the immortal daughter of Solange and Clarion, dreams of her grandmother Mendina. Kiro remembers being immortal doesn’t mean she is invulnerable, too. On the contrary, she struggles with a hero inferiority complex, as her parents had saved their people twice. Now, Kiro no longer has the Alicorn Sword to borrow and do good.

The world of Keyfaetuun has four dragons, but never did it have a single unicorn … until the fae guardian of the Kingdom of Zenith, Madame Astrid, took a foal from its mother and fed the foal magic milk, which transformed him. Then she stole a baby girl from her parents and gave the little unicorn to her “daughter” as a pet. But when the daughter grew up and was taken to live in a tower, she said goodbye to her unicorn friend she called Quinn. After Madame Astrid was punished for breaking the rules.

Based on a 1796 Scottish ballad, this is a retelling of the tale of a Scottish lord’s son, Tam Lin, who becomes abducted by the fairy queen Morgann while hunting. In Selkirk, Scotland, there is a bit of land between two rivers called Carterhaugh. Lord Robert, who was given the land, then gifted it to his beloved daughter Janet. Janet longs to experience real, passionate love for herself, having witnessed such devotion in her parents. When she picks a rose by a well for inspiration, the most unexpected guardian knight of flowers appears. Tam Lin.

Isadora Stilton and Quinn Avery have known each other since before they were ten. They continued being friends through puberty and into high school. Alas, first love withers under the long, icy axe of college acceptance letters. The two young lovers decide to say goodbye to each other and hello to successful careers, his as an actor and hers as a writer. Years later, the dance of life brings them both around to see each other again, and an unexpected health crisis brings them closer than ever before.

In a time long past, along the Nile, a peace treaty is signed between the powers of Egypt and Rome. As an act of good faith, Arsinoe, Pharaoh Ptolemy's daughter, invites the Roman envoy Albanus to dinner, making for him her three stone soup. As Ptolemy sees the attraction between the two, the pharaoh decides to drive a wedge between the two.

In Ancient Greece after the Trojan War, as described in The Iliad, there were a brother and sister, Avel and Syma, who suffered at the hands of their stepfamily. Until three Goddesses decide to visit the siblings and give them tests and gifts to help change their lives for the better. In the kingdom where the brother and sister live, the Goddess of Love wants the young ruling queen Charis to find love again, so the goddesses again take part in bringing Avel, Syma, and the young queen together, changing the lives of all three of them, so much so that it would be painted on pottery one day.

In the land of Beryl, there is a forest, and in those woods lived Widow Abigail and her two dear daughters Snow and Rosie. The girls are opposite to each other in their dispositions, but they love each other dearly. Living off what the forest provides, they play games and help their mother with chores around the home, but the sisters love most for their mother to tell them stories after dinner. One winter’s night, the line between fairy tale and reality begins to blur when their mother begins the tale about a forest spirit who falls prey to his own inner demon of greed.

The Amber Empire is ruled by three brothers—Garth the eldest has a brilliant mind for military strategy and seeing the bigger picture for the future of the Empire, Caleb the youngest is a sorcerer, and Roscoe the one who slows down and takes the time to love Harriet, make her his queen, and have a daughter, the princess Evaine. When King Roscoe leaves to fight in a war against the kingdom of Malachite, he finds love with the gentle Malachite woman, Zoe. When Zoe becomes pregnant with Roscoe’s illegitimate child, he sends her back to the Amber Kingdom with a protection letter.

Tim McGilicuddy and Edgar Escobar didn’t like each other from the very first day of fifth grade. When Lindsey Ruess stops them from coming to blows and the teacher lets them off with a warning, Tim decides he’s much happier losing himself in his favorite video game than going with his parents on a trip to Wales. Which means Tim has to stay with eccentric Aunt Ophelia, who hangs scary paintings in her bathrooms.

Once upon a mountain in Norway, when trolls were still believed to roam in nature, a miner named Bjorn took a beautiful pink stone from the mountain to give to his beloved Elin. Years later, their daughter Kari and her friends Louisa, Torsten, and Ottar grew up playing together, but their innocence was broken after a near fatal accident involving Torsten and Ottar. Nine years after the accident, the four of them were still friends; however, things changed again when Torsten went into the forest for snowdrops and disappeared.

On the planet Entitya, there were three Gods: Susegi, God of Light, Nefarion, God of Darkness; and Unacoria, Goddess of Love. These three deities came from Mother Universe and brought light and life to their island home, Sinuatollion. Peace was shattered the day Nefarion dared to assault Unacoria. Her revenge on him was just the beginning. Years later in his home on Sinuatollion island, Mesagan dreams about a wolf in a dangerous swamp. When Mesagan hears his father, Susegi, is going to visit a sick friend among the wolf pack, Mesagan decides to go with him.

On the planet of Entitya, on the rural and medieval island of Sinuatollion, where certain humans and certain animals have telepathic and empathetic bonds, 18-year-old Solange and her foster brother, Leviathan, a fire-breathing, water-swimming dragon, leave their hometown of Gemini to find their individual birth parents. Mesagan, Solange’s uncle who raised both girl and dragon side by side, gives them one clue: a bloodstained stone, which unbeknownst to the adopted siblings is part of an ancient magic sword called the Alicorn.

In three short stories about African animals that take you from ancient times to the modern day, adults and children discover tales about friendship and other invaluable lessons that arrive with living life. When a lion lures a human away to protect his pride, he meets a crab, and their friendship changes everyone’s lives. On the banks of the Nile, the friendship of a hippo and a crane is tested when a class assignment changes the bird’s way of thinking. At Central Park Zoo, giraffe brothers must put their sibling squabbles aside to help a lost dog reunite with her owner.

Chip, a thoughtful chocolate chip is unique in a bag of chocolate chips. His view of the world gets much bigger and slightly scarier when Mother Daisy and her daughter Kit open the bag and Chip starts talking to a nearby Egg. Soon Chip's wonder at the wider world gets scary when he sees what happens to his friend egg and what Kit does to his fellow chocolate chips. With the transformational process of mixing and baking Chip gets turned into a brownie, but that doesn't change his thoughtfulness.

In this short sequel that takes place during the same time as Snakes and Diamonds, we follow King Roscoe, left behind in Malachite after the war between Malachite and the Amber Empire. Roscoe meets another who had been frogged by the Wizard Henry, Celine, the former Queen of Malachite’s neighboring kingdom, Obsidian. Celine tells Roscoe she knows of one who might be able to help them, Philla of Beryl, the fae daughter of Oberon and Titania. But Roscoe, frog or no, is determined to get back to the Amber Empire, so the two frogs part ways.

Once upon a time in the fantastical medieval land of Yule in a kingdom called Yew, Drosselmeyer and Hob were tree spirits by day and could take human form at night. After Clara's father Seth, a good-hearted woodcutter, suddenly dies, Drosselmeyer focuses his one remaining eye on secretly looking after his goddaughter, Clara. She is treated like “Cinderella” by her stepmother Madeline and her eldest daughter Pearl.

Two stories that take place at two different Christmas times. Jim and Della struggle during hard times in 1906 New York City. Della has gorgeous hair, and Jim has a beautiful watch. Each of the young lovers decide to give up their most prized possessions to get a Christmas present for the other. Annabelle and Henry each run special shops in the city that have the gifts Jim and Della want, but when Annabelle does much more than help Della, hers and Jim’s love for each other will be put to a series of tests. Wink was an elf baby orphaned in the woods after a winter storm.

Stacy Dee Haverly, nicknamed Dagmar, is navigating an even greater grief than the sudden loss of her father. This time, it is the inevitable loss of her mother. Her grief affects her and her estranged grandmother Helena deeply, but Dagmar has four friends she grew up with who have been there for her far more than her distant grandmother. We follow Dagmar in her grief before returning to an earlier time, when Dagmar, Adrian, Iona, Sam, and Rodney all went to school together and grew up as friends.

Get ready for a Red Riding Hood Retelling like no other before! Originally conceived as a play script, now published with visual aids, Red is an eager young woman, and Peter, who works at the nearby goods store, is sweet on her. But Red’s grandmother doesn’t want her granddaughter to grow up too fast too soon. One day, Red encourages a big wolf who has been doing what some would look upon as bad things. Even Peter warns Red not to trust wolves, but Red, in a moment of compassion for a suffering animal, brings Wolf home to her grandmother.