Showing results by narrator "Elisabeth Rodgers" in All Categories

Catherine Ling is one of the CIA’s most prized operatives. Raised on the unforgiving streets of Hong Kong, she was pulled into the agency at the age of 14, already having accumulated more insight and secrets than the most seasoned professionals in her world. If life has taught her anything, it is not to get attached, but there are two exceptions to that rule: Her son, Luke, and her mentor, Hu Chang.

Sixteen-year-old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel's hired boy. It's a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it's a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May 1889.

This remarkable novel immerses us in the lives of two women in a small upstate New York town: Frances Thorn, who waits tables, despite her privileged background, and raises her twin daughters without even a memory of their father; and Helle Ten Brix, an elderly Danish composer. At the heart of the two women’s friendship is a Hans Christian Andersen tale about a prideful girl (the subject of Helle’s final opera) who is damned for using a precarious loaf of bread, intended as a gift for her parents, as a stepping stone.

It’s been said that at the core of every legend lies a seed of truth. For four American tourists vacationing in Greece, this is a lesson learned the hard way. When the group sets out to find a subterranean pool that’s rumored to be the one by which the demi-god Narcissus once wasted away in self-obsession, what started as a fun excursion quickly escalates into a full-blown nightmare.

When magic meets mundane, sparks fly: These are exciting times in Archers Beach, Maine! An unprecedented Early Season has united townies and carnies in an effort expand into a 12-month resort, recapturing the town's former glory. Kate Archer, owner-operator of the vintage wooden carousel, is caught up in the excitement - and is quite possibly the cause of it. Because Kate leads a double life, as carny, and as Guardian of the land.

Welcome to Archers Beach in the Changing Land, the last and least of the Six Worlds, where magic works, sometimes, and the Guardian husbands the vitality of the land and everyone on it - earth spirit and plain human alike. Kate Archer, Guardian and carousel-keeper, has been busy making some changes of her own, notably beginning a romantic relationship with Borgan, the Guardian of the Gulf of Maine, Kate's opposite number, and, some would say, her natural mate.

Kasey and the gang have come full circle through the crumbling world. Working for the National Guard, they realize old friends and fellow survivors are disappearing. When the missing start to reappear as walking corpses, the group sets out on another journey to discover the truth. Their answers wait in the West Virginia Command Center. Along the way, Kasey’s group encounters a new breed of horror; humanity twisted into something not quite alive, but not quite dead. When the secret of the Command Center is unearthed, an old enemy threatens to rip Kasey’s world inside out.

Eight-year-old Molly and her 10-year-old brother, Ralph, are inseparable, in league with each other against the stodgy and stupid routines of school and daily life; against their prim mother and prissy older sisters; against the world of authority and perhaps the world itself. One summer, they are sent from the genteel Los Angeles suburb that is their home to back-country Colorado, where their uncle Claude has a ranch. There the children encounter an enchanting new world - savage, direct, beautiful, untamed - to which, over the next few years, they will return regularly.

Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed.

This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It's the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass - a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams' characters, however, are like the rest of us.

Memory: A Very Short Introduction explores the fascinating intricacies of human memory. Is it one thing or many? How does memory change as we age? And what about so-called recovered memories - can they be relied upon as a record of what actually happened in our personal past? This book brings together our most recent knowledge to address (in a scientifically rigorous but highly accessible way) these and many other important questions about how memory works, and why we can't live without it.

Werewolves, vampires, witches, voodoo, Elvis - and weddings An "ordinary" wedding can get crazy enough, so can you imagine what happens when otherworldly creatures are involved? Nine of the hottest authors of paranormal fiction answer that question in this delightful collection of supernatural wedding stories.

Klara Walldéen was raised by her grandparents on a remote archipelago in the Baltic Sea, learning to fish and hunt and sail a boat through a storm. Now, as an EU Parliament aide in Brussels, she is learning how to navigate the treacherous currents of international politics: the lines between friend and enemy, truth and lies.

Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment in a gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone. Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up. Big mistake. Susan awakens every morning with fresh bug bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter, Emma, has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until she makes a chilling discovery in the bonus room.

Kelly McCann is a fighter. She’s fought to build a successful legal career, fought for the special needs of her family, and tirelessly fought for her clients. Her specialty is defending men accused of sex crimes–falsely accused, she always maintains. Her detractors call her a traitor to her gender, but she doesn't care. Badass and brilliant, Kelly simply loves to win, and as the story opens, she's done it again, securing an acquittal for a renowned scientist accused of sexually assaulting his female employees. But the thrill of her victory is short-lived.

Paris Metro is the gripping story of an American journalist compelled to reexamine her convictions as terrorism threatens to engulf her family. It's 2015, and Kit is living in Paris, estranged from her Iraqi diplomat husband and raising their teenage son, Ahmed. When Charlie Hebdo is attacked and a cartoonist friend of hers is killed, and then terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit's Parisian world is shattered. As she is drawn back into reporting, she begins to suspect that Ahmed may be running with the terrorists.

At a time when civilian periodicals faced strict censorship, the army’s chief of staff George Marshall won the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create an expansive troop-newspaper program. Both Marshall and FDR recognized that there was a second struggle taking place outside the battlefields of World War II—the war of words. While Hitler inundated the globe with propaganda, morale across the US Army dwindled. As the Axis blurred the lines between truth and fiction, the best defense was for American troops to bring the truth into focus by writing it down.

With 25 years of experience as an ER physician, Carolyn Barber looks at the myriad of medical and surgical treatments that don't help patients much - but do make big money for hospitals, medical device manufacturers, and Big Pharma. Barber's experience, though, goes deeper. A 30-year cancer survivor herself, she knows firsthand what happens when patients are poorly advised. 

Elizabeth Phoenix once used her unique skills as a psychic to help in the Milwaukee Police Department’s fight against injustice. But when Liz’s foster mother is found viciously murdered - and Liz is discovered unconscious at the scene - her only memory of the crime comes in the form of terrifying dreams...of creatures more horrific than anything Liz has seen in real life. What do these visions mean? And what in the world do they have to do with her former lover, Jimmy Sanducci?

It’s not the end of the world - yet. But Doomsday once again lies in wait for demon-slayer Elizabeth Phoenix. Several weeks ago she had no choice but to kill a man she loved. Sawyer was a witch and shape-shifter, a sorcerer of incredible strength. And now he’s started to invade her dreams...in the most dangerous and sensuous ways imaginable. Through her nighttime visits with Sawyer, Liz has acquired a new set of paranormal powers. She has also received a special new gift in the form of Sawyer’s baby.