Showing results by narrator "Katherine Littrell" in All Categories

Starting at a prestigious private Australian girls’ school, 15-year-old Ziggy Klein is confronted with an alienating social hierarchy that hurls her into the arms of her grade’s most radical feminists. Tormented by a burgeoning collection of dark, sexual fantasies, and a biological essentialist mother, Ziggy sets off on a journey of self-discovery that moves from the Sydney drag scene to the extremist underbelly of the Internet. As PC culture collides with her friends’ morphing ideology and her parents’ kinky sex life, Ziggy’s understanding of gender, race, and class begins to warp.

Danewyn is nothing more than a tavern wench, or so she pretends. She hides her ability to see into the unknown for fear she'll be condemned by the village priests. But when she makes a prediction about the Red Fox--the lost prince and rightful heir to Britain's throne--she's overheard by one of his knights, putting her in grave danger as a suspected spy.

It’s 1837, and immigrating to a small New Zealand fishing village is an opportunity for Ida Lange’s family to build a better future. Yet for Ida, raised in a strict, religious, tight-knit German community, so much is still forbidden to a woman. Yearning for the poor day laborer she shared books with as a child, Ida is now trapped in a dire marriage to a man of her father’s choosing. 

The fire wasn’t Marlowe Wexler’s fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist. With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that’s how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It’s easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.

It wasn’t just the bad breakup that turned Eleanor Mellett’s life upside down. It was the cancer. And all the demons that came with it. Luckily, Eleanor discovers Talbingo, a remote little town looking for a primary-school teacher. Unfortunately, Talbingo is a bit creepy. It’s not just the communion-wine-guzzling friar prone to mad rants. Or the unstable, overly sensitive kids, always going on about Miss Barker, who vanished. It’s living alone in a remote cabin, with no cell or Internet service, wondering why there are so many locks on the door and who is knocking on it late at night.

Sex. If there was one thing the Tudors did well, it was sex! Sex and beheading traitors; although rarely at the same time. With well over one hundred years on the throne, the Tudor dynasty experienced its fair share of sex scandals. This book looks at some of the more interesting and significant ones and explores the issues around them in a fun, non-heavy way.

Raised on a vast Australian sheep farm, the beautiful Grace Woods is compelled to travel to tumultuous, post-war Paris in order to start a new life. While working as a glamorous model for Christian Dior, the world’s newly acclaimed emperor of fashion, Grace mixes with counts and princesses, authors and artists, diplomats and politicians. But when Grace falls in love with the handsome Phillippe Boyer, she doesn’t know that he is leading a double life, nor that his past might hold secrets and lies that will turn her life upside down.

It was family ties that led Christie Ryan to River’s End, the small seaside town on the rugged Australian coastline. But it’s her heart that is telling her to stay. Bequeathed her grandmother’s cottage, Christie is ready to put the past behind her for a chance at a future with local artist, Martin. When Martin is approached by a secretive stranger for a portrait, he accepts, eager to build a nest egg for his life with Christie. Martin doesn’t know the unfortunate chain of events the commission will set into motion.

Beck and Vivian never could stand each other, but they always tried their best for their mutual friend, Cassie. After the town moves on from Cassie’s murder too fast, Beck and Vivian finally find common ground: vengeance. They memorialize Cassie by secretly painting murals of her around town, a message to the world that Cassie won’t be forgotten. But Beck and Vivian are keeping secrets, like the third passenger riding in Beck’s VW bus with them - Cassie’s ghost.

When her parents announce their impending divorce, Natalie can't understand why no one is fighting, or at least mildly upset. Then Zach and Lucy, her two best friends, hook up, leaving her feeling slightly miffed and decidedly awkward. She'd always imagined she would end up with Zach one day - in the version of her life that played out like a TV show, with just the right amount of banter, pining, and meaningful looks. Now everything has changed, and nothing is quite making sense. Until an unexpected romance comes along and shakes things up even further.

In 1910, Agnes Carter makes the wrong choice in marriage. After years as an independent woman of fortune, influential with the board of a prominent university because of her financial donations, she is now subject to the whims of an abusive, spendthrift husband. But when Bohemian naturalist and glassblower Ignace Novak reignites Agnes’s passion for science, she begins to imagine a different life, and she sets her mind to getting it.

Piper Kitts is spending the summer living with her grandmother, training at the barn of a former Olympic horseback rider, and trying to get over her ex-girlfriend. Much to Piper’s dismay, her grandmother is making her face her fear of driving by taking lessons from a girl in town. Kat Pearson has always suspected that she likes girls but fears her North Carolina town is too small to color outside the lines. But when Piper’s grandmother hires Kat to give her driving lessons, everything changes.

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun.

Generations of De Montfort women have protected the sword in the stone. Gwen is the last of them, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, Moscelyne. But the sword has now been drawn, and the new Witch King may well be working with Darkside. Now the race is on to find the missing artifacts that will stop the king accessing the full power of the sword.

Ever since her troubled mother abandoned her, Trix McCabe has preferred to stay on the move. But when she lands with her long-lost relatives, she finds out that the McCabe women have talents like her own that defy explanation: pies that cure all ills, palm-reading that never misses the mark, knowledge of secrets that have never been told. Before long, Trix feels like she might finally have found somewhere she belongs. But when her past comes back to haunt her, she’ll have to decide whether to take a chance on this new life...or keep running from the one she’s always known.

Blending the mythical power of Téa Obreht and the epic scope of Min Jin Lee, a searing historical novel that tells a story of colonization, survival, and resistance in a way never done before—a beautiful, brilliant, and brutal reimagining of the first contact between Indigenous people and white British settlers and the far-reaching consequences for one Aboriginal girl coming of age in an unsteady and dangerous world.

Sex! The Tudor's loved it. It was often considered a sport, just like hunting and jousting. The court was always awash with rumours and innuendo. For many at the royal court promiscuity was a way of life and marriage was normally no barrier. However, on occasion, events would occur that would be considered shocking for even this, most liberal, of royal courts. This is the second audiobook in the series and we look at more of the sex scandals that were to shake the royal court.

The small seaside town of River’s End is abuzz with the upcoming wedding of Christie Ryan and local artist Martin to be held at historic Palmerston House. Once home to Christie’s ancestors but lost in a poker game in the 1850s, it’s now an inviting bed-and-breakfast. When a stranger arrives to stay at Palmerston House and starts asking questions around town, Christie begins to wonder about the history of the house. Do the locals know more than they are letting on, and is someone hiding something?

This exceptional and powerful anthology explores the joys, heartbreaks and triumphs of immigration, with stories by critically acclaimed and best-selling YA authors who are shaped by the journeys they and their families have taken from home - and to find home.

Ruth Rothwax finds order and meaning in the words she writes for other people, but she can’t find words to understand the loss her family experienced during World War II. She becomes obsessed with the idea of returning to Poland with her father, Edek, making sense of her family’s past, and visiting the places where her beloved parents lived and almost died. But there’s more to this trip than Ruth can plan for. By facing Poland and the past, she might be able to confront her own future.