Showing results by narrator "Joy Osmanski" in All Categories

A heartfelt and funny story about a shy 11-year-old who learns to manage her anxiety through improv classes - and discovers her activist voice. From Margaret Dilloway, author of Summer of a Thousand Pies, and perfect for fans of Sharon Draper, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Holly Goldberg Sloan.

Everyone knows that opening a restaurant is a risky business, a venture with an astounding rate of failure. Patric Kuh’s Becoming a Restaurateur takes listeners behind the scenes of one of America’s trendiest new restaurants, revealing how Lien Ta and chef Jonathan Whitener of LA’s Here’s Looking at You managed to beat the odds. With valuable information about what daily life for a professional is like, this is an entertaining, practical guide to what makes a master restaurateur, from writing the business plan to opening night and beyond.

The first novel in nearly a decade from Myla Goldberg, the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Bee Season - a compelling and wholly original story about a female photographer grappling with ambition and motherhood, a balancing act familiar to women of every generation.

Gwenn LeMoine sees the world through the lens of hair. The daughter of two hairstylists, she has taken her natural talent to an entrepreneurial level and is now the owner of Parlor, a wildly popular, two-location hair salon in the East Village and Brooklyn. In Becoming a Hair Stylist, Atlantic columnist and New York Times notable author Kate Bolick provides a compelling profile of a career in hair styling through the life of LeMoine and offers us a glance at a day in the life at Parlor.

After their devastating journey from the Anchor to Sophia, Clive and Clover Hamill, Gemma Poplin, and Paz Dedios have all been separated - not only in space, but in their convictions. In the Anchor, Clive would like nothing better than to never speak with Paz again, but when he is tapped to help with her interrogation, the two of them begin to reconcile their differences, which don’t run nearly as deep as they expected. In Sophia, as Clover learns more and more about the city and its enigmatic director, Zeno, his faith in his mission begins to waver.

Meet Stanley Huang: father, husband, ex-husband, man of unpredictable tastes and temper, aficionado of all-inclusive vacations and bargain luxury goods, newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For years, Stanley has claimed that he’s worth a small fortune. But the time is now coming when the details of his estate will finally be revealed, and Stanley’s family is nervous. Family Trust skewers the ambition and desires that drive Silicon Valley and draws a sharply loving portrait of modern American family life.

They said that the first generation of man was brought low by its appetites: for knowledge, for power, for wealth. They said mankind's voracity was so great, the Lord sent his own Daughter to bring fire and devastation to the world. The survivors were few, but over the course of centuries they banded together to form a new civilization - the Descendancy - founded on the belief that the mistakes of the past must never be repeated. Brothers Clive and Clover Hamill, the sons of a well-respected Descendant minister, have spent their lives spreading that gospel.

Beloved baseball coach and teacher Nate Winters and his wife, Alicia, are well respected throughout town. That is until one of the many reporters investigating a bizarre bird phenomenon catches Nate embracing a wayward student, Lucia Hamm, in front of a sleazy motel. Lucia soon buoys the scandal by claiming that she and Nate are engaged in an affair, throwing the town into an uproar...and leaving Alicia to wonder if her husband has a second life.

Architect Cassidy Logan has sworn off good-looking adventurers. Newly divorced, she's focused on building ecologically friendly, historically accurate homes on the Chesapeake Bay for her father's construction company. Traveling to Cannonball Island - where there has been no new construction in nearly 100 years - Cass is sensitive to the heritage of the island and has come up with plans so perfect she's determined to buy a home for herself.

Hadley's the envy of every girl - and the desire of every guy. Her key to magically having it all is that she's an actual witch. The only ones who know about her powers are members of her coven. But there's no way to cover up an attack that causes every adult in the coven to vanish. Now it's up to Hadley to lead the young witches against the Parrishables and to rescue their missing parents. At the same time, she's caught up in her feelings for a mysterious guy named Asher, who has plenty of secrets of his own. With everything at stake, can Hadley trust her magic - and her heart?

Almost-16-year-old Brooklyn feels invisible, but she desperately wants to be pretty, to be popular, and to be adored by a cute guy. Luckily for her, she's a witch about to come of age - so she's only a few spells away from making it all happen. On her milestone birthday, Brooklyn's conservative parents finally unbind her powers, which include the ability to magically match couples with a love spell. Brooklyn uses her special skills to get a makeover, new friends, and the attention of her crush, Asher. But the popular clique Brooklyn wants to infiltrate puts her in the same precarious position as her Salem ancestors....

Two sisters and the cousin they grew up with after a tragedy are summoned home to their family matriarch's inn on the coast of Maine for a shocking announcement. Suddenly, Isabel, June, and Kat are sharing the attic bedroom - and barely speaking. But when innkeeper Lolly asks them to join her and the guests in the parlor for weekly Movie Night - it's Meryl Streep month - they find themselves sharing secrets, talking long into the night, and questioning everything they thought they knew about life, love, and each other.

The Gaggle captures the zeitgeist of today's "post-dating" world, where the rules for sex, dating, and relationships have completely changed. You know you're great, so why haven't you been on a classic dinner-and-a-movie date since... well, forever? Because, as it turns out, you are now living in a post-dating world, where the old rules for sex and relationships no longer apply.

It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, 40 miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the Earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the Terranauts, have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-Earth colony. Their sealed three-acre compound comprises five biomes - rain forest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh - and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them.

Carousel Court is the story of Nick and Phoebe Maguire, a young couple who move cross-country to Southern California in search of a fresh start for themselves and their infant son. They arrive at the worst possible economic time. Instead of landing in a beachside property, they find themselves cemented into the dark heart of foreclosure alley, surrounded by neighbors being drowned by their underwater homes. Nick and Phoebe both devise their own plans to claw their way back into the middle class and beyond.

In the idyllic ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado, Sarah St. John is reeling. Three months ago, her 22-year-old son, Cully, died in an avalanche. Though single, Sarah is hardly alone in her grief. Her father, a retiree, tries to distract her with gadgets from the QVC home shopping channel. Sarah’s best friend offers life advice by venting details of her own messy divorce. Even Cully’s father reemerges, stirring more emotions and confusion than Sarah needs. Sarah is surprised, then, when a strange girl arrives on her doorstep. Unexpected and unexplained, she bears a secret from Cully that could change all of their lives forever.

Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda - four terminally ill patients - have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves - without a single imperfection. Blemishes, scars, freckles, and wrinkles have all disappeared; their fingerprints are different; their vision is impeccable; and, most importantly, their illnesses have been cured.

When Michael sees his wife, Nancy, chatting with a stranger at a party, his intuition tells him that he's watching her with the man she should have married. He quickly begins a campaign to replace himself within his own family with this other man - who, to him, is worthier, better, and kinder - all so his faithful wife; his beautiful teenage daughter, Ryan; and his young son, Max, can live the lives they deserve.

After narrowly surviving two harrowing tragedies, Jules now fully understands the importance of the visions that she and people around her are experiencing. She's convinced that if the visions passed from her to Sawyer after she saved him, then they must now have passed from Sawyer to one of the people he saved. That means it's up to Jules to figure out which of the school shooting survivors is now suffering from visions of another crisis.

Spanning the six decades when Las Vegas grew from a dusty gambling town into the melting pot metropolis it is today, 'Round Midnight is the story of four women - one who falls in love, one who gets lucky, one whose heart is broken, and one who chooses happiness - whose lives change at the Midnight Room.