Showing results by narrator "Hallie Ricardo" in All Categories

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.

In Heir Apparent, there are as many ways to win as there are to get killed. Giannine can testify to how many ways there are to die - it's about all she's been able to do since she started playing. Now all she has to do is get the magic ring, find the stolen treasure, answer the dwarf's dumb riddles, come up with a poem for the head-chopping statue, cope with the army of ghosts, outmaneuver her half brothers, and defeat the man-eating dragon. If she can do all of that, why, she just might save her own life!

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.

Mellie has always been the reliable friend, the good student, the doting daughter. But when an unspeakable act leads her to withdraw from everyone she loves, she is faced with a life-altering choice - a choice she must face alone. Lise stands up - and speaks out - for what she believes in. And when she notices Mellie acting strangely, she gets caught up in trying to save her…all while trying to protect her own secret. One that might be the key to helping Mellie.

Sixteen-year-old science-geek Eve gets pregnant on a service trip over her winter break, and pro-life Mom and pro-choice Dad want her to study both sides of the abortion debate to figure out what to do. The unaware father Adam is still serving as a volunteer at the Dominican Republic orphanage where they met. Since there's no WiFi at the orphanage, he looks forward to being able to text and Face Time with Eve once he gets back to Germany in mid-August. By then, she'll be eight months pregnant - or not.

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. 

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.

The daughter of a murdered businessman joins forces with a New York City cop in a perilous hunt for history's most coveted treasure. Claire Andrews loved her father dearly, but now he's dead, brutally slain after attempting to sell an irreplaceable, possibly priceless saltcellar encrusted with rare gems. Leaving the Midwest for New York City, she seeks the help of Detective Artie Modelstein of the NYPD's Frauds/Jewels Squad, hoping to recover the lost treasure and clear her father's sullied name.

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?

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.

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.

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.

How far would you go to save the only family you have left? Victoria "Vic" Asher is finally finding some balance in her life. Though she's still reeling from her parents' death in a plane crash, she's content with waiting tables at the Clock; window shopping with her best friend, Tiffany; and hanging out with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Chad. But when she receives a mysterious package in the mail from her brother, Gil - a law student doing research in Italy - she knows immediately that he's in danger.

Adele - the beautiful fairy queen with wings of clockwork - despairs when her husband, the master tinker, dies before he finishes the great machine that will reignite the human-fairy war and drive the humans away. When she meets Dale, a human boy with natural talent - who can finish the machine - she enslaves him and binds his will with her fairy magic. However, Dale's twin sister, Nora, who has only recently discovered that she is a maker and has power of her own, escapes before she can be taken as well.

Five years have passed. The worlds above and below have recovered and changed. The fairies from the Clockwork Kingdom return every year, asking for Dale's help in vain. This year Cornelius, the head of the fairies, brings dread news: Kostya has returned. The maker has taught herself what she could about magic, but no teacher has ever arrived. Finally a herald manages to break through the spells surrounding the town to warn Nora that something, perhaps a monster, has been keeping them at bay. And it is stalking her for her power and her life.

Competitive climber Cara Jenkins feels most at home high off the ground, clinging to a rock wall by her fingertips. She's enjoyed a roaming life with her mountaineering parents, making the natural world her jungle gym, the writings of Annie Dillard and Henry David Thoreau her textbooks. But when tragedy strikes on an Ecuadorian mountaintop, Cara's nomadic lifestyle comes to an abrupt halt.

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.

Chestnut is a dog without a family. After being abandoned in the wild, Chestnut is wandering the North Carolina countryside trying to survive. When 12-year-old Meg stumbles upon him on the outskirts of her family’s Christmas tree farm, she just knows that they’re meant to be together forever. The only problem? The farm is on the brink of closing down, and her family can’t afford a pet. Meg knows she has what it takes to save the business and take care of Chestnut - she’ll just need to keep him a secret until then. Will Meg and Chestnut get their Christmas miracle? 

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.

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.