Showing results by narrator "Cassandra Morris" in Literature & Fiction

In the summer of ’84, fourteen-year-old Frankie Jubilee is shuttled off to Litani, Minnesota, to live with her estranged mother, a county prosecutor she barely knows. From the start, Frankie senses something uneasy going on in the small town. The locals whisper about The Game, and her mother warns her to stay out of the woods and away from adults. When a bullying gang of girls invites Frankie to The Game, she accepts, determined to find out what’s really going on in Litani. She’s not the only one becoming paranoid. Hysteria burns through the community. Dark secrets emerge.

An enchanting New York Times and international best seller and award-winner about life, art, literature, philosophy, culture, class, privilege, and power, seen through the eyes of a 54-year-old French concierge and a precocious but troubled 12-year-old girl.

Since my stepsister, Nakona Ril, has joined the family, I’ve finally settled into a happy life of cooking and potion brewing at the family inn. But the shadow of war looms ahead, with the fate of the world and my own destiny fast approaching. Monsters are coming, bandits seek to steal my potions, and countries set their sights upon the rumor of a talented alchemist. Why won’t they all just leave me alone?

From the author of the New York Times best-selling Pretty Little Liars comes a killer new series, The Lying Game. Sutton Mercer had a life anyone would kill for - and someone did. But thanks to a view from the afterlife and Emma Paxton, her long-lost twin sister, Sutton has a chance to solve her own murder. Emma slips into Sutton’s old life to piece together her disappearance. But can Emma keep up the charade long enough to discover what really happened to Sutton...or will she become the next victim? Let the lying games begin.

Luttie McFee's history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Luttie lives in the god-forsaken town of Yankton, South Dakota, with her nine-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father.

What it means to be the last of my kind: My nature as Spherit Folk is becoming more difficult to hide. I'm faced with a shocking truth: Only one race can produce a Holy Woman who can save the world, and I'm the last remaining descendant of that race! With the human war raging on and traffic to my family's inn cut off during these tremulous times, I must set off to the Mythical Continent to discover my destiny!

It all started one night when a selfless woman helped a drunken stranger get home safely from a club. Little did they both know that after that one night, their lives would change forever. A friendship was forged, an undeniable love was born, and secrets were revealed that took them on the journey of a lifetime. A family was created: a daughter and a son who were Connor and Ellery's world.

Violet knows that time is a futile healer. When she thinks of her happily married grandfather—a predator lovingly referred to as Papa—the feelings of rage and betrayal still swell. Her younger sister, Lily, just discovered the numbing truth about him. Their mother, Rose? She can’t believe it. Not Papa. Leave it alone, Violet. Focus on the now.

Therese Wolley is a mother who has made a promise. She works as a secretary, shops for groceries on Saturdays, and takes care of her two girls. She doesn’t dwell on the fact that her girls are fatherless, mostly because her own father abandoned her before she was born and she has done just fine without him. Even though her older daughter regularly wakes with nightmares and her younger one whispers letters under her breath, she doesn't shift from her resolve that everything will be fine.

Turning sixteen in Wisty Air has been interesting, with the Sugula looming ever higher in the sky, threatening our world's very existence. Still, life goes on as I purify monsters, come up with new alchemy recipes, and enjoy seeing my family when I can. Unfortunately, those ordinary days come to a sudden halt when I'm abducted by Edesa Kura! What awaits me in the country of mechanized soldiers?!

Happiness is Pearl's job. Using the revolutionary Apricity machine, every day she provides customers with personalised recommendations for their emotional well-being: from eating more tangerines to cutting off a finger, from getting a dog to getting a divorce. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her. But Pearl is starting to wonder whether it’s even possible to measure an emotion. Pearl's teenage son, Rhett, is a sensitive boy who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence. If only Pearl could persuade him to take the Apricity test...

After serving six months in a juvenile detention center, Lucas Carson returns home irrevocably changed by what happened there. Traumatized, Lucas shuts himself out from everyone he loves, even his younger sister, Lily, who ran away from home when she was pregnant at sixteen. When Lily resurfaces years later, Lucas can’t cope with his guilt about not being there for her. He takes off, only to cross paths with Shiloh Bloom—fifteen, homeless, and, like Lucas, escaping the past.

What could go wrong when baker Rosie Hart heads to a snowy Colorado mountain lodge for a week of elaborate pre-wedding festivities at her friend’s wedding? The better question would be...what could go right? Rosie’s fears for the nervous bride are confirmed when one of the wedding guests turns up dead. All evidence points to the groom being the intended victim, but with the guests dressed in Christmas-themed attire and a dead Santa on their hands, Rosie’s not so sure. What if the killer did hit the right target all along?

Overcome with the loss of his boyfriend, Sydney, Gavin Winters has set fire to every reminder in their home. A neighbour has captured the blaze on video, turning this little-known TV actor into a household name. Gavin flees LA for New Jersey, where he hopes that 10-year-old Joan, the daughter of a close friend, can reconnect him with the memories of Sydney he is now in danger of losing forever. Joan was born with a rare ability to recall every single day of her life in perfect detail, and in return for sharing her memories of Sydney, Gavin will help her write a song.

Blues musician Cory Ainsworth is barely scraping by after her mother's death when she discovers a priceless piece of rock 'n' roll memorabilia hidden away in a shed out back of the family's coastal South Carolina home: Elvis Presley's Stutz Blackhawk, its interior a time capsule of the singer's last day on earth. A backup singer for the King, Cory's mother, Honey, was at Graceland the day Elvis died.

Fight scenes and moral dilemmas: that's what listeners will find in this collection. These seven stories, first published in magazines and anthologies between 1999 and 2011, include several military adventures, some love stories, a little space opera, and some speculation about the near future.

A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning author Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller." From Kentucky to the California desert, these 42 short stories - ranging from the '80s and '90s to present day - expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.