Showing results by narrator "Jesse Vilinsky" in All Categories

Psychology student Olivia Eriksen’s family is notorious among true-crime buffs. Faced with a legacy of psychopathy that spans generations, Olivia has spent much of her academic life trying to answer one chilling question: Nature or nurture? Although she’s kept a safe distance from her blood relatives for years, Olivia agrees to attend a weekend reunion. After all, her fiancé is eager to meet his future in-laws, and the gathering may give her a chance to interview her elusive grandfather about the family traits.

Once every two generations, the young adults of Whitecliff must face the trial of Mother's Wrath, during which they will either receive magical powers or be swept away in the tempest. Dorea hopes the storm will bring her one of its elemental powers: lightning, water, or wind. To her shock, when the trial ends and the earth stops trembling, she finds herself gifted with all three.

The night little Madison disappears from her crib, Luce sees a pair of eyes—two points of gold deep in the forest behind her house—and and feels certain they belong to a wolf. Her town, Picnic, Illinois, is the kind of place where everyone knows one another and no one locks their doors. It’s not the kind of place where a toddler goes missing without a trace, where wolves lurk in the shadows.

In a small town tucked away in the Midwestern corn fields, the adults whisper about Tornado Day. Our narrator, a high school sophomore, has never heard this phrase but she soon discovers its terrible meaning: a plague of sentient tornadoes is coming to destroy them. The only thing that stands between the town and total annihilation is a teen boy known as the tornado killer. Drawn to this enigmatic boy, our narrator senses an unnatural connection between them. But the adults are hiding a secret about the origins of the tornadoes and the true nature of the tornado killer.

Carla is stuck. In her twenties and working for a landscaper, she’s been told she’s on the wrong path by everyone—from her mom, who wants her to work at the hospital, to her boyfriend, who is dropping not-so-subtle hints that she should be doing something that matters. ­Then she is hired for a job at the home of Viridian, a lauded and lovely aging poet who introduces Carla to an eccentric circle of writers.

Professional bakers and a local food blogger are participating in the Baking Spirits Bright holiday baking competition and they aren’t about to go down without a fight. The competition quickly heats to a boiling point, with flaring tempers and mysterious happenings. When one of the entrants is found dead, stabbed with Becca’s chocolate chipper, Becca tries to salvage the season by finding the killer. But the heat is on, and Becca is in danger of getting burned.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.

A necklace. A bugle. A lion statue. What do they have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing unless you’re Tildy, Leon, or Nell. These items matter an awful lot to them. Not because of what they are, but what—and who—they represent. Anatomy of Lost Things shares the crisscrossing stories of Tildy, Leon, and Nell, of the impossible losses they’ve each recently faced, and the unexpected histories of their prized objects.

This hilarious, fresh take on a classic vampire tale follows a pair of hundred-year-old teenage vampires who are turned mortal and must face the greatest nightmare of all—high school. Charlie and her brother, Reg, have been vampires for… a very long time. For a century, they enjoyed the glitz and glamour of life as members of the wealthiest vampire clan. But now, after one careless mistake, they’ve been expelled from the vampire community and dumped in the middle of Nowhere, Iowa to live as mortals.

Seventeen-year-old Bliss Walker has been stuck in a home that doesn’t feel like hers for six years. Ever since Mama dropped her off and never came back. Then, the summer before her senior year of high school, two things happen: Mama returns out of the blue, and Bliss meets Blake, a boy who listens like everything she has to say is worth hearing. It should be a dream come true. But as the summer spins on, Bliss finds herself facing a painful choice: between the life she’s always longed for, and the world she’s starting to make for herself.

For Georgia, this summer is shaping up to be a big disappointment. Mama is busy studying for her biology degree. Daddy is working nights, and often the man who comes home isn’t Daddy. He’s a man who looks like Daddy, but walks a little wobbly. Who sounds like Daddy, but sings a little too loud. Georgia calls him the Shadow Man.

What begins as a special trip for 11-year-old Sophia Freeman and her father leaves her trapped on a mysterious island with a tree boy and fantastical creatures. Later, she learns she is dying from an eternal curse and the only way to prolong her life is to drink the island’s sacred water. Can Sophia and her companions reach the fountain and defeat the guardian before time runs out?

Noah’s Rainy Day combines classic Liv Bergen irreverence and brainpower with an unflinching look at the darkest of human motivations, all while a whirlpool of increasingly terrifying events threatens to engulf Liv and Noah both in one final rainy day....

After Andrea's brother, Francis, disappeared, everything changed. Her world turned upside down, and there was nothing she could do to right it. So when she discovers a magical dream world called Reverie in the woods near her home, Andrea jumps at the chance to escape her pain and go inside. But the cost of admission is high: Andrea must give up a memory in order to enter. And she knows exactly which memory she'd like to give up.

When Nina decides to take a radio-broadcasting class her senior year, she expects it to be a walk in the park. Instead, it's a complete disaster. The members of Nina's haphazardly formed radio team have approximately nothing in common. And to maximize the awkwardness, her group includes Jamie, a childhood friend she'd hoped to basically avoid for the rest of her life.

One wave: that’s all it takes for the rest of Mae and Hannah Winters’ lives to change. When a tsunami strikes the island where their parents are vacationing, it soon becomes clear that their mom and dad are never coming home. Forced to move to Boston from sunny California for the rest of their senior year, each girl struggles with secrets their parents’ death has brought to light, and with their uncertainty about the future. Instead of bringing them closer, it feels like the wave has torn the sisters apart.

After defeating The Hisser - and discovering their power as a team - Infinity Trinity is ready for its next adventure. When Akiko, Mae, and Josie learn that a spy has been betraying secrets to the Japanese military, they join Room Twelve in San Francisco for important work with other code-cracking experts. But soon there is personal code to crack: Akiko spots her mom walking with the suspected spy through San Francisco, which had been her family’s home until Executive Order No. 9066 sent Akiko and all Japanese Americans on the West Coast into internment camps.

Gustav and Fernie's adventures in the Dark Country continue as they search for their families. But as they get closer to discovering their families' fates, their mission is once again threatened by old foes - as well as some new, even more treacherous, ones. Will Gustav and Fernie be able to battle their way through and rescue their families before it's too late?

Fernie and Gustav leave the safety of the Gloom Mansion and begin their long journey to the Shadow Country to save their families from the evil Lord Obsidian. Aided by the magical Cryptic Carousel, Fernie and Gustav travel to lots of exotic locations as they try to locate the Shadow Country, meeting a few new foes along the way.

In Gustav Gloom and the Four Terrors, things are not always what they seem in the Gloom Mansion. Gustav decides that he needs to rescue his father from the Dark Country, but he can't do that without Fernie's help. After Gustav convinces Fernie's safety-conscious father to enter the Gloom Mansion with Fernie and Pearlie, there is a prison break from the Hall of Shadow Criminals and it's up to Fernie to save her family and Gustav before it's too late.