Showing results by narrator "Julia Whelan" in All Categories

It is said there are 99 Arabic words for love. Bea, an American exchange student, has learned them all: in search of deep feeling, she travels to a Middle Eastern country known to hold "The Astonishing Text", an ancient, original manuscript of a famous Arabic love story that is said to move its best readers to tears. But once in this foreign country, Bea finds that instead of intensely reading Arabic she is entwined in her host family's complicated lives - as they lock the doors and whisper anxiously about impending revolution.

Leopold Portman, a young IT manager a few years out of college, dreams of settling down in Philly's bucolic suburbs with his fiancé, Nora. A talented singer in mourning for her mother, Nora has abandoned a promising opera career and wonders what her destiny holds. Her best friend, Stephen, Leopold's brother, dithers in his seventh year of graduate school and privately questions Leo and Nora's relationship. On June 16, 2004, the three are brought together - first for a funeral, then for an annual Bloomsday party. As the long-simmering tensions between them come to a head, they are forced to confront the choices of their pasts and their hopes for the future.

No one dies in Office Girl. Nobody talks about the international political situation. There is no mention of any economic collapse. Instead, this novel is about young people doing interesting things in the final moments of the last century.

Philippa is excited to spend Christmas break with her friend Robyn, but she has no idea just how much excitement awaits. When a magic spell carved on a mysterious circle of rocks suddenly transports Philippa to fairy godmother headquarters, she learns that her own mother is in danger. To protect her from a serious accident, Philippa must pretend to be a fairy, while Daisy, her fairy godsister, returns to earth in human guise. And that's just the beginning of their adventure: after passing a harrowing test of their loyalty to each other, Philippa and Daisy undergo a fantastic journey....

Growing up in a world of wealth and pastel-tinted entitlement, 15-year-old Carly has always relied on the constancy - and authenticity - f her sister, Anna. But when 14-year-old Anna turns plastic-perfect-pretty over the course of a single summer, everything starts to change. And there are boys involved, complicating things as boys always do.

The last time Lex was happy, it was before. When she had a family that was whole. A boyfriend she loved. Friends who didn't look at her like she might break down at any moment. Now she's just the girl whose brother killed himself. And it feels like that's all she'll ever be. As Lex starts to put her life back together, she tries to block out what happened the night Tyler died. But there's a secret she hasn't told anyone--a text Tyler sent that could have changed everything.

In The Island of Excess Love, Pen has lost her parents. She’s lost her eye. But she has fought Kronen; she has won back her fragile friends and her beloved brother. Now Pen, Hex, Ash, Ez, and Venice are living in the pink house by the sea, getting by on hard work, companionship, and dreams. Until the day a foreboding ship appears in the harbor across from their home. As soon as the ship arrives, they all start having strange visions of destruction and violence. Trance - like, they head for the ship and their new battles begin.

Since being diagnosed with Panic Disorder, Jade DeLuna is trying her best to stay calm, and visiting the elephants at the nearby zoo seems to help. That’s why Jade keeps the live zoo webcam on in her room, which is where she first sees Sebastian.

What if everything you think you know about health isn't true? Hailed as "the anti- Skinny Bitch", Eat Like a Fatass, Look Like a Goddess: The Untold Story of Healthy Foods cuts through countless popular myths about nutrition, weight loss, disease-prevention, sustainability and planetary health with razor-sharp wit, hardcore research, and a whole lot of heart.

Bridesmaids meets Big Little Lies in a novel told from the alternating perspectives of two women who define the term frenemies - from New York Times best-selling author Jen Lancaster. Jacqueline Jordan knows conflict. A fearless journalist, she’s spent the past decade embedded in the world’s hot spots, writing about the fall of nations and the rise of despots. But if you were to inquire about who topped Jack’s enemy list, she’d not hesitate to answer: Kitty Carricoe.

Every night, while 16-year-old London Lane is asleep, her memory of that day is erased. In the morning, all she can “remember” are events from her future. London is used to relying on reminder notes and a trusted friend to get through the day, but things get complicated when a new boy at school enters the picture.

Enthusiastic, spunky, and positive, Punky Brewster was the quintessential eighties kid. Nearly thirty years later, Soleil Moon Frye---the adorable girl who played her on TV---is all grown up. Now she's a married mom of two, an entrepreneur who parlayed her successful kids' clothing line into a partnership with Target, and a social media whiz with millions of followers.

Bebe Baker is an ex-everything: ex-stripper, ex-Christian, ex–drug addict, ex–pretty girl. It’s been one year since the car accident that killed her boyfriend left her scarred and shaken. Flanked by an eccentric posse of friends, she is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house while trying to finish cosmetology school.

The external lives of Clark, a high school guidance counselor, and Charlotte, a bookkeeper, are utterly ordinary, but their interior lives are as bold and complex as abstract paintings colored by imagined possibilities, childhood joys and, more darkly, by deeply buried fears. When Clark rescues a young boy from drowning, a chain of events - some comic, some harrowing - is set in motion, revealing the fault lines of the couple's marriage and individual psyches.

Vera Bellington has beauty, pedigree, and a penthouse at The Angelus - the most coveted address on Park Avenue. But behind the sparkling social whirl, Vera is living a life of quiet desperation. Her days are an unbroken loop of empty, champagne-soaked socializing while her nights are silent and cold, spent waiting alone in her cavernous apartment for a husband who seldom comes home.

As a teenager, Chloe’s sketch of a killer linked two dead cult members found in the Everglades to a beach party massacre, closing the case as far as the cops were concerned. Chloe works as a psychologist specializing in art therapy to help traumatized victims, and on the side she finds release in her passion for the martial arts. Police who hire her as a consultant know she’s a literal kick-ass advocate for victims who can’t always speak for themselves.

Twelve-year-old Caitlin lives alone with her mother - a docker at the local container port - in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish. Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own.

Philippa Fisher is feeling lonely. She misses her fairy godsister, Daisy. But while on vacation with her parents, she befriends a local girl named Robyn. Though she’s excited to have a friend again, Philippa can’t help but feel that there’s something strange about Robyn and her father. Meanwhile, Daisy, who is hard at work on a new mission, misses Philippa as well, so she decides to break the rules to visit her friend. Though the girls are happy to be reunited, things soon begin to go horribly wrong with Daisy’s assignment.

The summer of 1937 will be a turning point for 14-year-old Houston “Huck” Finn. When he and a friend find a dead body in a local creek, a rare Lindbergh flight watch on its wrist, it seems like a sign. Huck is building his own airplane, a fact he has concealed from his mother. That summer also marks the arrival of his cousin Annelise, sent to live with the family under mysterious circumstances. As it turns out, she has had flying lessons - another sign.

Fifteen American naval officers unexpectedly seize control of a USS-Ohio class nuclear submarine. In possession of the most formidable war machine ever created, the mutineers form a new terrorist organization that threatens to attack militant extremists and their supporters around the world. In a race against time, the FBI and the US military try to stop the deciphered missile launch codes from reaching the nuclear submarine and unravel a conspiracy that permeates the very foundations of the US government.