Showing results by narrator "Cindy Kay" in All Categories

A vow. A contract. A marriage of fire and ice. But just when Eric de Vries and I found our forever, the entire world conspired to keep us apart. A kidnapping. A trial. A madman bent on revenge. Now caught in a web of our own passion and a father's obsession, the harder we struggle, the tighter we're caught. They say love conquers all, but it feels like we're the conquest. As the walls close in, I have to wonder...are we really meant to be? Or is this love just a trap?

Jane and Eric de Vries. Often enemies. Sometimes lovers. Husband and wife. Or are we? I wore the dress. We said the vows. And somehow it became more than just a stunt to collect his billions. A promise bound by love, not hate. Until he humiliated me in front of all of New York and disappeared. Now my errant husband has returned, and it's like I never existed. Except when he looks at me like he wants to rip my dress from my body. Something's holding him back. And I won't rest until I discover its cause.

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families' consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sosuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sosuke's brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital.

In the past, humans were the dominant star-traveling species in the universe—until the Chapalil came, conquered, and absorbed the Earth into their intergalactic empire. One of the only humans ever granted nobility by the Chapalil, Charles Soerenson once led a failed rebellion against the alien overlords. Now his sister, Terese, has abandoned her homeworld, impelled by a broken heart to seek a new life among the worlds her brother rules. On Rhui, a planet off-limits to interstellar voyagers, Tess stumbles upon a dangerous Chapalil conspiracy.

From stories about time-traveling assassins, to Black Mirror-esque tales of cryptocurrency and internet trolling, to heartbreaking narratives of parent-child relationships, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is a far-reaching work that explores topical themes from the present and a visionary look at humanity’s future. This collection includes a selection of Ken Liu’s speculative-fiction stories over the past five years - 17 of his best - plus a new novelette.

Life near the North Korean border is a zero-sum game, an ongoing battle in which you either win or you lose. This dangerous, shadowed netherworld is home to an unforgettable woman known only as the “trickster.” Inspired by the story of Lee’s great aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, 8 Lives of a Century Old Trickster consists of eight dark and spellbinding chapters that follow this remarkable character and her family as they struggle to survive during the most turbulent times of modern Korean history.

The most terrifying thing that you can possibly imagine is your own body in the hands of a monster. Or worse, in the hands of another human being. In this definitive anthology of body horror selected by a World Horror Grandmaster, you'll find the unthinkable and the shocking: a couture designer preparing for an exquisitely grotesque runway show; a vengeful son seeking the parent who bred him as plasma donor; a celebrity-kink brothel that inflicts plastic surgery on sex workers; and organ-harvesting doctors who dissect a living man without anesthetic.

When Chloe Chang gets dumped via USPS after moving across the country from New York City to Los Angeles, her first instinct is to throw her box of memories in the garbage. Instead, she starts buying other teenagers’ breakup boxes to create an art exhibit, Heartifacts. Opening night is going great, until she spots Daniel Kwak illicitly filming his best friend’s reaction to his ex’s box. When she tries to stop him, an intense discussion ends up launching a creative partnership and friendship … and a major crush for Chloe.

From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination.

Over the last fifty years, women have made extraordinary advances in athletics. More women than ever are playing sports and staying active longer. Whether they’re elite athletes looking for an edge or enthusiastic amateurs, women deserve a culture of sports that helps them thrive: training programs and equipment designed to work with their bodies, as well as guidelines for nutrition and injury prevention that are based in science and tailored to their lived experience. Yet too often the guidance women receive is based on research that fails to consider their experiences or their bodies.

The Arrisans conquered Earth in a day. They smashed into our helpless planet like a wrecking ball, and overnight, everything changed. That’s what our history books say. The truth is, I’ve never seen an Arrisan face-to-face. But when my lone medical ship is attacked by ruthless pirates, the nightmare that hunts them down is no hero. Cloaked in assassin’s gray, metal scythes fused to his wrist-bones, he is the grim reaper of the conquerors. The Arrisan elite special forces. A blade.

Research reveals that American kids lag behind in academic achievement, happiness, and wellness. Christine Gross-Loh exposes culturally determined norms we have about "good parenting," and asks, Are there parenting strategies other countries are getting right that we are not? This book takes us across the globe and examines how parents successfully foster resilience, creativity, independence, and academic excellence in their children.

Olive Cobin Zang has . . . issues. And they mostly aren’t her fault. (No, really!) Though she often slips under the radar, problems have a knack for finding her. So, imagine her doubts when she’s suddenly dropped off at the strangest boarding school ever: a former castle turned prison that's now a “reforming arts school”!

The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest. Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass—and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather's body for burial.

Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.

In 11 propulsive and deeply felt chapters, Chai recounts her investigations into SARS quarantine wards, a childhood suicide epidemic, the human cost of industrial pollution, and organized crime, while looking back at her growth as a journalist. Chai Jing shares the philosophical and emotional complexity of the ethical challenges that are always present in such revealing reporting, while she also finds hope and purpose, time and again, in the vital and intimate stories of her interviewees.

In The Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story.

The nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn't know: Tess Soerensen is a human. Back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii Empire.

When ten-year-old Lina Gao steps off the plane in Los Angeles, it’s her first time in America and the first time seeing her parents and her little sister in five years! She’s been waiting for this moment every day while she lived with her grandmother in Beijing, getting teased by kids at school who called her “left behind girl.” Finally, her parents are ready for her to join their fabulous life in America! Except, it’s not exactly like in the postcards.

Across Rhui, the jaran have been taking over towns and bending all non-jaran to the law of their rule. With Ilya Bakhtiian in charge, the nomadic fighters are now preparing an assault on the royal city of Karkand. But within the campaign, another struggle looms. Ilya's wife, Tess, is not from Rhui, but from Earth, and her brother, Charles, is a duke of the empire that includes Rhui, even though he once instigated a rebellion against it.