Showing results by narrator "Carlotta Brentan" in All Categories

Some nights are memorable for W and are filled with successes in fighting crime; during some nights, W holds on to the daytime identity of Guinn McGovern, trying to deal with a normal social existence and the struggles of modern dating. This night, W has to wear both hats: The job as a superhero doesn’t allow any day off, even when some truths about Guinn, and about how some of the main characters of the series became who they are, could be waiting around a corner.   

In the middle of the night, a shadow is running in the darkness of lonely New York City corners, chasing criminals, helping lost souls. Wrong Day for a Kill is the first short story in the science fiction series Superhero Stories: The W Series. W is a superhero like no other, who struggles between the hunger for Justice and the need to use violence to achieve that very ideal of justice. Where is W running to tonight? Who is being chased? Meet W in the first of a long series of adventures.

From Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first to be processed there, to Arne Peterssen, the Norwegian who was the last to be taken away from the island in 1954, Ellis Island weaves together the personal experiences of forgotten individuals with those who live on in history: Fiorello La Guardia, Lee Iacocca, and other American leaders whose paths led them to the island for various reasons.

Amelie St. James, prima ballerina of the Paris Opera Ballet and sweetheart of Paris, is a fraud. Seven years ago, in the devastating aftermath of the Siege of Paris, she made a decision to protect her sister: she became the bland, sweet, pious “St. Amie” the ballet needed to restore its scandalous reputation. But when her first love reappears and the ghosts of her past come back to haunt her, all her hard-fought safety is threatened. Dr. Benedict Moore has never forgotten the girl who helped him embrace life again after he almost lost his. Now, years later, he’s back in Paris.

As a young woman, Corina leaves her Mexican family in Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a writer in the cafés of Paris. Instead, she spends her brief time in the City of Light running out of money and lining up with other immigrants to call home from a broken pay phone. But the months of befriending panhandling artists in the métro, sleeping on crowded floors, and dancing the tango at underground parties are given a lasting glow by her intense friendships with Martita and Paola.

Imani knows exactly what she wants as her big bat mitzvah gift: to find her birth parents. She loves her family and her Jewish community in Baltimore, but she has always wondered where she came from, especially since she's Black and almost everyone she knows is White. Then her mom's grandmother - Imani's great-grandma Anna - passes away, and Imani discovers an old journal among her books. It's Anna's diary from 1941, the year she was 12 and fled Nazi-occupied Luxembourg alone.

Surviving the ill-fated expedition to Knnot, Valeria, Alik, and the others have found refuge in Valeria's village. Though Val should find comfort in reuniting with her family, everything has changed—including herself. For now, Val is the Pale God's chosen champion. And she is ready for revenge on the Czar.

Mere weeks after the 1992 riots that laid waste to Los Angeles, Eugenia, a typical Italian teenager, is rudely yanked from her privileged Roman milieu by her hippie-ish filmmaker parents and transplanted to the strange suburban world of the San Fernando Valley. With only the Virgin Mary to call on for guidance as her parents struggle to make it big, Hollywood fashion, she must navigate her huge new public high school, complete with Crips and Bloods and Persian gang members, and a car-based environment of 99-cent stores.

In 1960, free-spirited Doreen is a recent high-school grad and waitress in a Chicago diner. She doesn't know Margie, 16 and bookish, who lives a sheltered suburban life, but they soon meet when unplanned pregnancies send them to the Holy Family Home for the Wayward in rural Illinois. Assigned as roommates because their due dates line up, Margie and Doreen navigate Holy Family's culture of secrecy and shame and become fast friends as the weight of their coming decision - to keep or surrender their babies - becomes clear.

As golden sunlight shimmers across the crystal-clear waters, Francesca travels to the tranquil Italian island of Santa Caterina in search of precious rare books and a new beginning. Heartbroken after the sudden end of her long-term relationship, she jumped at the chance to help recover a collection of missing books. But when she arrives, she soon discovers she was invited by the island’s mysterious owner, alongside handsome local book collector Thiago, to unlock a secret that spans generations. Together, she and Thiago learn the books were hidden during the Second World War.

It is 1936, and in the small Italian city of Monza, on the pebbled bank of the Lambro, two frantic girls scramble to bury a body—the dead son of the city's most prominent fascist. Soon, they will find their fierce friendship put to the ultimate test. A year earlier, Francesca Strada, the well-mannered daughter of a bourgeois family, dreams of a life beyond provincial conformity. From afar she spies on Maddalena, the town’s rebellious outcast—whom neighbors call “the Cursed One”—and whose indomitable spirit fascinates her.

Kate Warner is many things: the country’s first female detective, a Pinkerton agent, and a union spy. It’s August 1861, and her latest assignment could finally end the bloody war and bring the fractured United States together again. All she has to do is win the trust of her captive: Confederate spy and socialite Rose Greenhow. But with Rose well aware of Kate’s working-class background and belief in abolitionism, it seems an impossible task. Worst, Kate has secrets that make her vulnerable, such as her forbidden love affair with a colleague.

Ellie Batair was sure of one thing and one thing only: if given the chance, she could defeat any man who stood in her way. When forced to enlist in the army of a Queen she hates and endure brutal, life-threatening trials, she comes face to face with the truths of her past. Truths that her years of training never could have prepared her for. In order to survive, Ellie finds allies in the most unlikely of people: a young Elf, a cunning witch, and a haughty Fae.

It is the summer of 1969 and Rome is awash with glamour and intrigue: the stars of Cinecittà are drinking and dancing along the paparazzo-lined Via Veneto, where royalty, American expats, and the occasional Russian spy rub shoulders. Teddy Huntley Carlyle has just arrived in Italy from Dallas, Texas, eager for a fresh start with her new husband, a diplomat assigned to the American embassy. After years of “spoiling like old milk,” in the words of her controlling, politically-minded uncle, Teddy vows to turn over a new leaf.

Non dover mai più dire addio a nessuno. Non è l’idea più meravigliosa del mondo? Di sicuro è quello che pensa Cora, brillante ragazza neurodivergente, quando finalmente scopre di che cosa si occupa la misteriosa azienda in cui lavora suo fratello Gregor. Il Melograno, fondata dal miliardario Magnus Hawkins, è una corporation hi tech con grandiosi piani per il futuro: sotto la visionaria guida dell’ingegner Gold, sfruttando l’intelligenza artificiale, mira a creare degli ologrammi—i Gram—del tutto identici alle persone reali.

A young couple from Paris sets out on the adventure of a lifetime: a journey by sailboat around the tip of Cape Horn. But when they stop on a deserted island to explore the barren landscape, the unthinkable happens and they find themselves stranded. Unprepared to survive in the harsh conditions on the island, their only supplies from an abandoned research station, the two must depend on each other as they never have in their lives to hold on until rescue comes, if it ever arrives at all.

Louis XIV transformed from the Sun King into the King of Shadows when he embraced immortality and became the world’s first vampire. For the last three centuries, he has been ruling the kingdom from the decadent Court of Shadows in Versailles, demanding the blood of his subjects to sate his nobles’ thirst and maintain their loyalty.

It’s the worst year of the Great Depression, and America needs all the hope it can get. The Chicago World’s Fair, a glittery city-within-a-city, becomes a symbol of the good that’s yet to come. But every utopia has a seedy side—and that’s Rosa Mancuso’s world. As the mysterious Madame Mystique she mixes magic with a dose of bare skin burlesque, bringing customers to the home of the Fair’s carnival rides and spectacles.

When Nora, a withdrawn American teenager, is sent to live with relatives in Turin, she meets Nicola, the enigmatic son of the most powerful aristocratic family in Italy. Years later, the two reconnect in New York and begin a heated affair. Propelled by disorienting desire, Nora quickly becomes entangled in Nicola’s insular, menacing world of old-world luxury and family secrets.

Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants—until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look at Keri Vellis's struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Listeners get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen.