Showing results by narrator "Emily Woo Zeller" in All Categories

It's summertime for supervillains! Or maybe not, because for Penelope Akk, there is still one foe she has yet to defeat: her own reputation as Bad Penny. It's been a fun ride: fighting adult heroes, going to space, and inspiring the rest of her school to open up about their own powers. Sooner or later, that ride has to end, and with school out of the way Penny is hatching a mad scheme to end it on her own terms. Will that go smoothly? Of course not. Penny's left too many unsolved problems behind her already, like ghosts, crazy friends, and angry little girls from Jupiter.

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.

By some miracle and against all odds, Johnny and Maggie are given a second chance at life and love. But Johnny is freed from Purgatory only to find himself in a totally different time and place, in a world full of strangers. One unsolved mystery becomes another, and Johnny and Maggie must unravel the past to have any chance at a future. Prom Night in Purgatory is the sequel to the love story that is unlike any other, where time is shifting and everything can change, and Maggie must fight for Johnny all over again.

Could the book club break up? When Jess is offered an anonymous scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, she's not sure that leaving home - and her friends - is what she wants to do. Meanwhile Megan's grandmother comes for a long visit and turns everything in the Wong household upside down; Emma crusades against her middle school's new uniforms; and Cassidy finds out there's a big change ahead for her family.

Who are the greatest innovators in the world? You're probably thinking Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford - the usual suspects.

This book isn't about them. It's about people who are just as innovative, entrepreneurial, and visionary as the Jobses, Edisons, and Fords of the world, except they're not in Silicon Valley. They're in the street markets of Sao Paulo and Guangzhou, and the rubbish dumps of Lagos. They are pirates, slum dwellers, computer hackers, dissidents, and inner city gang members.

The book club is about to get a makeover. Even if Megan would rather be at the mall, Cassidy is late for hockey practice, Emma's already read every book in existence, and Jess is missing her mother too much to care, the new book club is scheduled to meet every month. But what begins as a mom-imposed ritual of reading Little Women soon helps four unlikely friends navigate the drama of middle school.

Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.

Bailey Chen is fresh out of college, with all the usual new-adult demons: no cash, no job offers, and an awkward relationship with Zane, the old friend she kinda-sorta hooked up with during high school. But when Zane introduces Bailey to his monster-fighting bartender friends, her demons become a lot more literal. It turns out evil creatures stalk the city streets after hours, and they can be hunted only with the help of magically mixed cocktails.

Middle school supervillain Penny Akk has defeated every challenge thrown against her. She has bested heroes, villains, weirdos who can't make up their minds, robots, aliens, friends, rivals, enemies, natural disasters, secret admirers, and her own shyness. Now she has only one opponent left. Her own super power... and the other Penny who stole it.

Vintage cookware and cookbook collector Jaymie Leighton has agreed to help her sister clear out the house of a deceased older neighbor, and she's thrilled at the prospect of discovering antique kitchenware and other treasures - until she opens a vintage trunk in the cellar and finds the remains of a teenage girl with a cleaver buried in her skull. When the body of a second girl is found just days later in a nearby river, the clues all indicate that the crimes are connected - and that the culprit's motives are hidden in the past.

Pears is a divorced 40-something living with her mother in Queens when the unsexiest pandemic ever hits the country and smatters her potential love life. If her mother wasn’t enough to cock block her, this virus does a double cock block of trapping her in masks while dosing her in hand sanitizer.

Don’t be intimidated by Shakespeare! These popular guides make the Bard’s plays accessible and enjoyable.

We often don't realize how much control we have over our thoughts, feelings, and actions. On some days, the most minor irritation can upset us, but, on others, we are in our best form and can rise to challenges with grace. These fluctuations depend on the neural networks firing in our brains, but we have the power to consciously break hardwired thought patterns. Author Due Quach developed an intimate understanding of the brain during her personal journey of healing from PTSD.

Everything you’ve heard about vampires is a lie. They can’t fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it’s also lonely, since she swore off family ages ago.

Being a superhero should be fun. After all, a world of super powers is a world where Amazonian juggernauts made of candy battle guys in spandex that drive talking cars. Irene loves that weirdness, loves the game of fighting, and loves being a four-foot-tall woman who still gets to drop big heavy objects on villains' heads. In 1980, that fun is in danger. A mad scientist who murders people for his research has everyone afraid. Two of the friendliest super-powered rivals around stop playing and go for the kill.

On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer's Diary with the words "too much and not the mood." She was describing how tired she was of correcting her own writing, of the "cramming in and the cutting out" to please other readers, wondering if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The character of that sentiment, the attitude of it, inspired Durga Chew-Bose to write and collect her own work. The result is a lyrical and piercingly insightful collection of essays and her own brand of essay-meets-prose poetry about identity and culture.

Anyone masterfully interweaves the present-day story of the discovery and development of the flash with the gritty tale of one woman’s crusade to put an end to the darkness it has brought to the world 25 years after its creation. Like Blade Runner crossed with Get Out, Charles Soule’s thought-provoking work of speculative fiction takes us to a world where identity, morality, and technology collide.

Life can kick us when we are down. In Shawn Speakman's case, he is fighting back. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011, Speakman beat the disease as well as the massive medical debt he amassed from its treatment. He did this by publishing Unfettered, an anthology featuring short stories donated by some of the best science fiction and fantasy writers working today. Speakman has again collaborated with celebrated genre authors to publish Unfettered II.

In the Cyrilian Empire, Affinites are reviled. Their varied gifts to control the world around them are unnatural - dangerous. And Anastacya Mikhailov, the crown princess, has a terrifying secret. Her deadly Affinity to blood is her curse and the reason she has lived her life hidden behind palace walls. When Ana's father, the emperor, is murdered, her world is shattered. Framed as his killer, Ana must flee the palace to save her life. And to clear her name, she must find her father's murderer on her own.

Most of us are constantly plugged in and stressed out - tethered to our phones and e-mail, overworked and inactive at our desk jobs, and out of touch with what our bodies and our brains really need. Clean Mind, Clean Body is your reset button, an immersive experience in mental and physical self-care that will transform your daily routine and your habits.