Showing results by narrator "Hallie Ricardo" in All Categories

Emme Wynn has wanted nothing more her whole life than to feel like part of a family. Having grown up on the run with her con artist mother, she’s been shuffled from town to town, drawn into bad situations, and has learned some unsavory habits that she’s tried hard to overcome. When her estranged grandmother tracks her down out of the blue and extends a job offer—helping to run her booth at an open-air marketplace in small-town Sweetgrass, Alabama—Emme is hopeful that she’ll finally be able to plant the roots she’s always dreamed of.

Blue Bishop has a knack for finding lost things. While growing up in charming small-town Buttonwood, Alabama, she’s happened across lost wallets, jewelry, pets, her wandering neighbor, and sometimes, trouble. No one is more surprised than Blue, however, when she comes across an abandoned newborn baby in the woods, just south of a very special buttonwood tree. Sarah Grace Landreneau Fulton is at a crossroads. She has always tried so hard to do the right thing, but her own mother would disown her if she ever learned half of Sarah Grace’s secrets.

When Ava Harrison receives a letter containing an unusual job listing one month after the sudden death of her ex-boyfriend, she thinks she’s being haunted. The listing—a job as a live-in caretaker for a peculiar old man and his cranky cat in Driftwood, Alabama—is the perfect chance to start a new life. A normal life. Ava has always been too fearful to even travel, so no one’s more surprised than she is when she throws caution to the wind and drives to the distant beachside town.

Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about Southern cooking and family, but despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. What is she supposed to do? Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night her sister almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted - so why is she so unhappy?

In a land torn between magic and alchemy, Sepha is an exceptional alchemist, able to bend the rules in ways no one else can. But when a slip of the tongue lands her in prison with a mountain of straw, even she has to admit that she can't transmute straw into gold. With the threat of a death sentence hanging over her, she's forced to make a deal with a conniving magician. Sepha escapes with her life - but at a cost: she has one year to alchemically create a body for the magician, or else her firstborn child will be his.

Lily, Greta, and Romeo are on their home turf, chased all the way home by the Black Heron. Can they finally put an end to them? They’re going to need help. Can they get the full support of the Council of Magic? It’s not going to be so easy with a traitor inside the council. On to plan B then! Carmichael is still out there gathering Black Heron survivors. He will do whatever it takes to complete the transference spell and turn magic on its head.

As the daughter of a successful Major League pitcher, Charlie Hastings has baseball in her blood. Unfortunately, being the only girl on her high school baseball team, Charlie has always been just one of the guys. When her best friend, and secret love of her life, asks another girl to the prom, Charlie is devastated. She’s tired of being overlooked by boys because she’s not like other girls. Suffering a massive identity crisis, she decides to hang up her cleats. But with only two weeks until the state championships, the Roosevelt High Ravens can’t afford to lose their star catcher.

With two biological sons and a promising career, Coleman Carter seems set to fulfill his promise as a resourceful trial lawyer, devoted husband, and dutiful father until his wife, Elizabeth, champions their adoption of a Korean orphan. This seemingly altruistic mission estranges Coleman's conservative parents and demands that he now embrace the unknown as fully as he has always entrenched himself in the familiar.

Austin joins Dallas and Houston in Akashic's deep dive into the Lone Star State's darkest dimensions. Featuring brand-new stories by: Gabino Iglesias, Ace Atkins, Amanda Moore, Jeff Abbott, Scott Montgomery, Richard Z. Santos, Alexandra Burt, Lee Thomas, Miriam Kuznets, Jacob Grovey, Chaitali Sen, Molly Odintz, Amy Gentry, and Andrew Hilbert.

The road trip in the Winnie continues to Otiylo, Greece, but Lily and Romeo are being followed, and a trail of death and trouble lies behind them. Is that strange coin she holds a magical GPS? Nothing can keep Lily from searching for her mother, but she’s going to need help from a local coven.

After Del Walker fled her small hometown and its cult-like church, she vowed to never return. The man she loved, Lars, left her to marry the local golden girl Eve, and their romance is now the focus of Eve’s viral blog espousing the pastor’s conservative philosophy about women and marriage. But six years later, Lars is suddenly killed, and she’s convinced it couldn’t have been an accident.

Kendra Syrdal is probably in a bad mood. Unless she's writing, making fun of something, or eating tater tots. In this collection of humorous essays, Kendra takes you along for the ride in the completely weird and sometimes messy (but always hilarious) life of another girl with a terrible case of resting bitch face. She writes for the inner Cathy comic in all of us - who just needs to say ACK!, be cranky, and hate on stuff sometimes.Except on tater tots, obvi. #yesalltots

Lily and Romeo are just one desert away from reaching the High Seat of the Black Heron Society, where they’ll finally learn the fate of Lily’s mom, Greta. But Lily is going to need some guidance before she shows up at the Black Heron’s door.

Life is about finding things - finding yourself, finding love, finding good friends, finding your happiness after losing someone you loved, and finding peace in the midst of chaos. This book takes you through the stages of falling in love, getting heartbroken, getting over your heartbreak, appreciating friends & family, and the journey to becoming who you really are.

Samantha and her mother spend day and night caring for Samantha's ailing grandma. But tonight may be the last night Samantha will be able to sleep on the sofa next to her Grandma's hospice-provided bed. Moving and insightful, Grandma's Leather Sofa shows what it truly means to care for a loved one who is terminally ill.

A Skinful of Shadows is a dark YA historical fantasy set in the early part of the English Civil War. Makepeace is an illegitimate daughter of the aristocratic Fellmotte family, and as such, she shares their unique hereditary gift: the capacity to be possessed by ghosts. Reluctant to accept her appointed destiny as vessel for a coterie of her ancestors, she escapes. As she flees the pursuing Fellmottes across war-torn England, she accumulates a motley crew of her own allies, including outcasts, misfits, criminals, and one extremely angry dead bear.

Has anyone seen Greta Antony? Time to get a witch, a werewolf, and a Winnie across the water to follow the next dangerous clue. Lily and Romeo are offered a deal to get them across the sea to Libya and retrieve a needed sacred relic. Heed this warning - magic often comes with a price and an artifact from the God of Dreams is going to be no exception.

Lily makes a magical deal and books passage to Europe on a shipping freighter in pursuit of her missing mother. Of course, trouble starts as soon as they reach France...magicals across Europe are being killed with the same cryptic message left behind: A silhouette of a flying heron, the words “Complete the Circle”, and spells most can’t see. But what does it mean? Can Lily and Romeo figure it out before it’s too late for Greta Antony?

With only a creepy stone idol as their next clue, Lily and Romeo are off again. This time the clues will take them to Guatemala’s healing temple of Ichacál, where the situation becomes life or death. Someone’s been kidnapping magical children from small villages. The locals don’t know who it is or how to stop them. Lily and Romeo stop in their tracks and instead set out to find the lost children.

Every day Zoe struggles to keep going. The cruel winter took her father's life and left her angry and broken-hearted. As she carries her little brother through a snowstorm that could kill him in minutes, her only thought is finding shelter. The cabin beyond the woods is far from the place of safety she hoped it would be, but it is there that she meets a man whose muscular body marked with strange and primitive tattoos hints at an extraordinary story. He has the power to light up the lake, and with it Zoe's world.