Showing results by narrator "Kate Rudd" in All Categories

Here are 35 Stories of fitting in, consequences, and following your dreams for older teens, including "Fitting In... or Not"; "That Was Embarrassing"; "Consequences"; and "Going for It"

Dana Kupiac's husband left her over a year ago for the wilds of Ohio and a woman named Allyssa, leaving Dana a single mom on a mission to succeed in her canning business. With the help of Dana's eternally lactating sister Valerie, Dana takes a once in a lifetime trip to a food conference in Las Vegas where she learns about selling her spicy chutneys, and meets the owner of a gourmet food store. Their weekend together ends in an impromptu ceremony where they're "married" by Elvis.

Lucy Lang’s life is spiraling out of control. For years she sacrificed her own needs to care for her half-sister and alcoholic mother, only to be abandoned by both. Now, at age 30, Lucy finds herself held back by memories and regret as she struggles to find her own purpose in life. But when her sister needs a kidney transplant, Lucy is the only one who can save her life. With the help of new friends and a man who won’t give up on her, Lucy sets out on a journey to reunite with her sister.

On a hot summer night in a midwestern town, a high school teenage prank goes horrifically awry. Alcohol, guns, and a dare. Within minutes, as events collide, innocents becomes victims - with tragic outcomes altering lives forever, a grisly and unfortunate scenario all too familiar from current real-life headlines. But victims can also become survivors, and as we come to know each character through his/her own distinctive voice and their interactions with one another, we see how, despite pain and guilt, they can reach out to one another, find a new equilibrium, and survive.

In quaint Haddonfield, New Jersey, Tess is about to marry Gabe in her childhood home. Her mother, Helen, is in a panic about the guests, who include warring exes, crying babies, jealous girlfriends, and too many psychiatrists. But the most difficult guest was never on the list at all: a woman in a wedding dress and a gas mask, armed with a rifle, a bomb trigger strapped to her arm.

From a brilliant new literary voice, a collection of stories that follow a young woman from college into her early thirties - from delayed adolescence to (delayed) adulthood. Through college, careers, love affairs, and marriages, Linden’s characters try to sort out what separates the passing from the permanent, the actual from the possible, and exactly how involved you really have to be in the basic questions of your life.

What is the XYZ factor? The XYZ Factor isn't a place or a company or an age. It's a new kind of culture where innovation, accessibility, and transparency are the norm. It's an environment created on the principles of the Millennial generation to foster intergenerational productivity in a new kind of office culture. An XYZ organization's employees are challenged, engaged, and excited to produce. Simply put, XYZ companies have an "it" factor that helps them rise above the competition. Any company can become an XYZ company. This audiobook is your blueprint.

Nestled in the Pennsylvania countryside, Florence University frames an idyllic college world, complete with cute coeds and handsome jocks - not to mention plenty of booze and sex with virtually no responsibility. For three seniors, the vagaries of life have rarely been so terrifying. Drawn together by their struggles for identity, the three students form a fateful friendship that will change the courses of their lives forever. Sexy, fast paced, and layered with intimate insight about life’s most formative years, The Fall is a compelling coming-of-age story.

Felicity Wright never expected to inherit the hotel where she works as head chef. But now, she'll do anything to keep the Bancroft Hotel operating - even if that means mixing it up with the late owner's handsome nephew, Blake Bancroft. He's here to challenge her unexpected inheritance of the Bancroft Hotel, and there's no way either of them are walking away without a fight.

Like many people, you've done your best to gain control of your life - to force reality to fit into the confines of your high expectations. Reality, though, has a way of repeatedly dashing your hopes and crushing your dreams. You've been told to believe God is in control, but countless dark and painful circumstances have your mind filled with questions that desperately beg answers: Why can't life ever go according to my plan? How do I trust God in the midst of chaos?

Playing Booth DeWitt's cruel ex-wife in his semiautobiographical film is the chance of a lifetime for actress Ariel Kirkwood. As she gets to know the sexy screenwriter, she finds herself wishing she was his real leading lady, but her accurate portrayal has left Booth conflicted over his failed marriage and new desires. Now Ariel must convince Booth to see her for the woman she is - and not the one she was hired to play....

Araminta Palomer, the oversheltered child of a wealthy family, enlivens her life by imagining a near-invisible animal playmate: Willbe. But "Minta" possesses an unsuspected psychic talent, and so she unwittingly creates a tulpa, an envisioned being that gradually becomes tangible, first to herself and then to others. Willbe seems a loving companion at first, but as Minta matures, he changes into an increasingly perilous and unreliable friend.

The Problem of Prayer addresses the toughest dilemma every Christian faces: doubt. The world has conditioned us to crave results, demanding instant solutions to our problems. But that's not what faith is about. Faith in prayer is about surrendering to God's will - seeing things through his eyes, not our own.

To have, to be, and to appear: that is the topic of 24-year-old Vivian’s master’s thesis, an ambitious work that explores the role of gender in social, artistic, and intellectual pursuits. To gather her research, Vivian peppers her friends and classmates with a series of increasingly provocative questions guaranteed to spark the curiosity of anyone who has ever questioned why things are the way they are, particularly regarding the perception of gender between individuals and in society. Adventurous listeners are subsequently led through the same questions by a diverse quintet of characters....

Christian teens care very much about their connection and relationship with God, but they are also experiencing all the ups and downs of teenage life, with the attendant joys and sorrows of growing up. This book, filled with stories written by Christian teens for Christian teens, helps teens who care about their faith navigate their teenage years.

Recruited by an advertising agency focused on targeting a new drug to her own age demographic, Sarah Striker is grateful for the steady income, but she begins to question the side effects of the products she’s pushing. Sarah begins publishing an underground zine to expose the secrets behind the pharmaceutical industry’s aims. Fulfilled by her quest to spread the truth, her new life seems to be working out perfectly - until she realizes that she herself is perilously close to becoming a victim of this new corporate world.

By all accounts, Abby Holden has it all. She's the mother of a beautiful teenager and the wife of a beloved high school football coach. And all it took to achieve her charmed life was her greatest act of betrayal. Coach Ryan can coax his team to victory, but he can't seem to make his wife, Abby, happy. Her struggles with depression have marred their marriage and taken a toll on their daughter, Juliana. Although this isn't the life he's dreamed of, he's determined to heal the rifts in his family.

Still stuck in his small Central Pennsylvania hometown, Ilya Stern is used to feeling like a disappointment. After his high school girlfriend, Jennilynn, drowned, he married her sister, Alicia, only to divorce a decade later. The business they started together is threatened by a luxury development - and Alicia has already sold her stake. Now that Babulya, Ilya's gentle Russian grandmother, has died, there's no one left who believes in him. Or so he thinks.

When a killer storm unexpectedly hits Manhattan, seventeen-year-old Lilah Stellow's dad insists that she and her younger sister, Flori, take refuge at their cabin in the mountains. But instead of joining them with the experimental drug that keeps Lilah alive, he disappears just as news reports name him as a prime suspect in an act of ecoterrorism.

Shelly Hansen was horrified when her great-aunt's wedding dress arrived, because, according to the family legends, she was destined to marry the next man she met. So when she tripped on an escalator and fell into Mark Brady's arms, she told him - and herself - that she wasnt interested in marriage. But then she started seeing him everywhere. Coincidence?