Showing results by narrator "Emily Durante" in All Categories

When beautiful Julietta meets aloof, handsome photographer Bastian, she immediately feels butterflies in her stomach.

But Bastian has a secret: Since birth, he has suffered from a very rare skin disorder that makes him exceptionally prone to injury. His life is riddled with pain and rejection; his thoughts are dominated by self-doubt and mistrust.

Julie wants to help him shake loose his inhibitions and open up to her, but can she reach deep enough to truly understand his suffering?

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.

Milo is trouble. He lives it, breathes it. He embraces anything that numbs and takes his mind somewhere else, a world where his mother is herself and not just a shell, and his brother didn't almost kill her, severing any relationship they had. But more importantly, Milo drowns out the guilt for leaving his mother and not being able to forgive his brother. He drowns his pride and moves on to another girl and another party, pretending that life isn't moving on around him and he's stuck in the same place. He's stuck in the past and doesn't know how to let go.

The Fairy mercenaries may be back in their own realm, but the Witches still want Xandra dead. Fearing an ancient prophecy, the Witches are determined to keep Xandra from destroying the world. Still new to her magical powers, she must learn to use her Witch magic in order to protect herself and those she loves. Now, if only she can get her magic to cooperate. Once again, Xandra is tasked with determining who is friend and who is foe as she faces this new threat.

With a popular comic strip, card line, and children's cartoon to her name, Lucy Brighton should be in a happy place. Then Lucy receives a call that her parents have been killed in a car crash. While settling their affairs in Florida, Lucy begins to realize how little she really knew about their lives. She has no way to explain the mysterious safe in their bedroom, with its cache of fake passports, cash, and weapons.

This year, a modern-day Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas with the help of a suddenly sexy old friend. A down-on-his-luck baseball star finds a beautiful new beginning with a hometown girl. And a prim-and-proper teacher is determined to bring out the holiday spirit in a grumpy tree farmer. Settle in for the season with this collection of very merry short fiction.

The setting is New York's Little Italy in the 1950's - a community closely knit by gossip and tradition. This is the story of an extraordinary family, the Santangelos. There is Joseph, the butcher, who cheats in his shop and at pinochle, only to find the deck is stacked against him; his mother, Mrs. Santangelo, who sees the evil eye everywhere and who calls on her saints; and Catherine, his wife, whose determination to raise a modern daughter leads her to confront ancient questions.

At Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies, Sarah is the faithful friend to Evie and Helen, her sisters in the Mystic Way. But this term, Sarah finds that their friendship is tested. Evie is turning her back on the Mystic Way after laying her beloved Sebastian’s soul to rest; Helen is distracted by her tormented relationship with her mother. Sarah struggles to keep the sisterhood together as the threat of attack looms from the dark coven and the Unconquered lords.

A girl. A coma. A life she can't remember. When Emma Walker wakes up in the hospital with no knowledge of how she got there, she learns that she's been in a coma for six months. Strangers show up and claim to be her parents, but she can't remember them. She can't remember anyone. Not her friends, not even her boyfriend. Even though she can't remember, everyone wants her to just pick up where she left off, but what she learns about the 'old her' makes her start to wish she'd never woken up.

How often have you seen a teenage girl pretend to be perturbed, but secretly smile, when she is told that she acts or looks just like her mother? Fathers, brothers, and friends sometimes shake their heads in wonder as girls "turn into their mothers". This new collection from Chicken Soup represents the best stories from Chicken Soup's library on the special bond between mothers and daughters, and the magical, mysterious similarities between them.

Who you are and who you want to be don’t always match up. Like most teenage girls, you’ve probably spent lots of time in front of the mirror wondering what you’ll be when you grow up—or dreaming of who you’ll become. Is it a supermodel, an actress, a dancer, or is it a businesswoman, a mom, or even a pastor? Brooklyn Lindsey grew up dreaming of being a supermodel....

When Evie Johnson started at Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies, her life changed in ways she couldn't possibly have envisioned: the discovery of her link with Lady Agnes, her special bond with Helen and Sarah, and their sisterhood in the astonishing secrets of the Mystic Way. Above all, Evie's love for Sebastian has turned her world upside down.

Twenty-seven-year-old Kara Larson is bogged down in the stress of planning her elaborate wedding to a professional golfer. Still, to fulfill the requirements of the Palmetto Pointe Junior Society, she makes time in her busy schedule to visit an elderly woman at a nursing home facility. Soon she finds herself mesmerized by the singsong Irish lilt of 96-year-old Maeve Mahoney as Maeve recounts the rambling story of her first love back in Ireland.

Quinn thinks hooking up with Ben over summer vacation will be nothing more than a quick fling. She can't even commit to a nail polish choice, much less some guy. Unfortunately for her, Ben is not just some guy. Ben gets her - the real her, flaws and all - and that scares the hell out of her. When Ben does the unthinkable - tells Quinn he's in love with her - she pushes him away. Ben can only watch from a distance as Quinn lashes out and punishes him for daring to care about her.

How often have you seen a teenage girl pretend to be perturbed, but secretly smile, when she is told that she acts or looks just like her mother? Fathers, brothers, and friends sometimes shake their heads in wonder as girls "turn into their mothers". This new collection from Chicken Soup represents the best stories from Chicken Soup's library on the special bond between mothers and daughters, and the magical, mysterious similarities between them.

Strange things have always happened in Seavy County, the most rugged stretch of Oregon's coastline. Violent storms spring up like magic, even when the rest of the state enjoys sunshine; unearthly beings are sometimes glimpsed in the twilight; and those who live there understand that a rare enchantment still lives in the world, although they seldom speak of it. For Seavy County is home to not just animal life, but to fantasy life as well: mythical creatures long vanished from the rest of the planet.

A gripping story about a young woman whose soul-eating guilt and desperation for a family drives her into the arms of an abuser--and about the struggling widower and women's shelter director who fight to save her in the midst their own battles.

Mia’s ordinary life is disrupted for good in the most horrifying way possible when she is possessed by a hungry and powerful demon - and saved only by the arrival of relatives from Italy, the country her grandfather fled many decades ago. Now her cousins, the charming and gorgeous Emilio, and stern, elderly Giuliano, say the only way to keep Mia safe is for her to come back with them to Milan - to live, to learn Italian, to fall in and out of love, and to master the family trade: fighting all demons with the ancient lore of bell, book, and candle.

It’s 1944, and Hazel’s father has agreed to help the U.S. government develop a secret weapon that will win World War II. His decision turns Hazel’s world upside-down - soon, she and her mother move out west to be with him, to a strange town with no name that everyone calls “the Hill.” The Hill is surrounded by a chain-link fence and barbed wire. Armed guards patrol its perimeter night and day.

A heart-warming contemporary romance set in the Flint Hills of Kansas, where a former rodeo queen abandons her dreams in order to care for her deceased father's ranch and her two half-siblings, only to realize with the help of a young new pastor that God can turn even the most dire circumstances into seeds of hope.