Showing results by narrator "Anna Caputo" in All Categories

Born into a post-summer-of-love bohemian squalor, Cinnamon Monday attempts to teach herself life's lessons by emulating her favorite 19th-century literary heroines. As she enters adolescence, and her imagination is no longer enough to protect her, Cinnamon must escape dangers circumstances and thrive in the real world by relying on her wits and the kindness of strangers who become friends. Set in the beautiful Dry Creek Valley, The Angels' Share is the story of a young woman determined to live her best life and become the kind of person she'd only read about.

Hidden somewhere in the fog of the San Francisco bay lies Blue Rock Island, home to the bay area s two best-kept secrets: Bell's Bluff, the old, abandoned prison on one side of the island, and the Night Train, a mysterious train ride on the other. When 12-year-old Molly Pepper receives a secret invitation promising a night of magic and adventure aboard the Night Train, she is skeptical. In her experience, most promises prove too good to be true. The fact that she lost her mom is proof enough. Still, Molly gives hope another chance.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an overly inflated ego must be in want of a spotlight. When the actor set to play Mr. Darcy is found murdered in his dressing room, Pine Crest's annual AustenFest is derailed. Pepper Brooks must set her pride and prejudice aside to differentiate between rumor and truth as she searches for the killer.

With the holidays approaching, amateur sleuth Geneva Pomolo takes a minor role in a community theatre’s musical stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol. A lifelong Dickens fan, Geneva is hoping for a calm respite from the rigors of crime-solving, but her stage debut proves anything but calming. The cast is stacked with powerful egos who have deluded themselves into thinking they deserve a career in Hollywood — such as Peter Vankirk, who lands the starring role of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ava has always been poor, so she doesn't think the Great Depression will change anything. But when her mother dies and her coal miner husband loses his job, Ava's certainty falters. The last thing she needs is a letter from her estranged sister, asking for the impossible.

Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The older of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning. Zadie’s estranged younger sister, Finn, can’t see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an “echo” more powerful than anything she’s experienced before.

It's not that I thought life was going to be easier now that I've settled into being forty, happily married to the man of my dreams, living my best life as a witch, but, well, okay yes, that is what I thought. Reality comes knocking the day I try to open the door to my shop and the key doesn't work. Neither does anything else: bricks to the window, my strongest spells, an actual half-giant punching in the door—nada. This magical shop has been in my family for over a hundred years. It's our legacy, what I want to pass down to my daughter.

Part memoir, part cultural exploration, Articulate details a life lived among words in varied sensory forms and considers why and how those words matter. Told through rich storytelling, analysis, and humor, this is a linguistic coming-of-age in both Deaf and hearing worlds, challenging us to consider how language expresses our humanity—and offering more ways we might exist together.

The Best American series, launched in 1915, is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction, and it is the most respected—and most popular—of its kind. Don Winslow, the Raymond Chandler Award-winning author of City in Ruins, picks the best twenty mystery and suspense stories from the previous year.

When Leona Warlon heads across the city to meet her husband, David, for a rare dinner out, she hopes they can share a moment of relief after their year of loss. But Leona quickly realizes this is no ordinary date night. She hasn’t just stepped into an upscale ristorante; she’s stepped into a different version of her life. One in which her marriage is no longer tender, in which her days are pressured by her powerful in-laws, and in which her precious baby girl lived.

For wedding singer Mel Hart, the holidays have always retained a certain magic. Her mother, Connie, always managed to pull off spectacular Santa hijinx that convinced Mel to keep believing in Santa way longer than other kids. Those moments meant everything to Mel because the rest of the year, life was unpredictable because of her mother’s alcohol use. But two weeks before Christmas, Mel gets a call from the hospital: her mother has died.

On Earth, Grover Baines (a NASA scientist) is murdered in 1979 when he stumbles upon a secret third Voyager flight. Unlike the two other probes, Voyager 3 was a small manned craft loaded with reproductive material in hopes of finding a suitable planet for habitation on Alpha Centauri. Years later, in 2001, a fourth Voyager is sent on the same mission. Though technology has advanced dramatically in the 24 years since the first three Voyagers were launched, this mission manages to remain secret amid the attacks on the Twin Towers.