Showing results by narrator "Zura Johnson" in All Categories

Cindi Ella Lass didn't have a career in Paris, Texas in mind when she graduated with a degree in fashion, but her grandmother's offer of a place to live (free rent!) entices her to the small town. When she arrives, she notices the most beautiful pair of crystal shoes in the shop next door...and she can't get them out of her head.

Taken from her home. Forced to fight for sport. Will a magician’s thirst for adventure be quenched with blood? Aya Flandeen’s rare gift has always set her apart from the rest of her village. Though she yearns to venture into the outside world, she didn’t expect her journey to start with a brutal slave-trader’s raid. Revealing her powers to save the townsfolk, Aya’s heroism ends in disaster when she’s abducted and compelled to participate in a gladiatorial fight to the death.

In an Alaska owned by Tsarist Russia, steamtech is melded with spirit magic to create a mighty machine. The elements are plentiful, but the Higher World crumbles and the local Inuit people are consumed. When their father dies, the council denies Fanya her inheritance and sells her sister into slavery at the behest of the mysterious Zachary Finley. Fanya's quest to protect her sister and regain what's rightfully hers leads her from the Underworld of Stalgorod to the untamed wilds of greater Alaska. It isn’t just Zachary Finley who wants Fanya to suffer.

In the village of Liver-and-Onions, there was a Potato Face Blind Man who used to play an accordion on the corner near the post office. The sometime narrator of these tales, he transports readers and listeners to Rootabaga Country, where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, the pigs wear bibs, and the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind, looking like a little hat that you could wear on the end of your thumb. Carl Sandburg, the beloved folk chronicler and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, invented these stories for his own daughters.

Masha remembers her childhood in the former USSR but found her life and heart in Israel. Anna was just an infant when her family fled but yearns to find her roots. When Anna is contacted by a stranger from their homeland and then disappears, Masha is called home to Milwaukee to find her.

Looking back, Tara Carter wonders if what followed her first kiss was a warning of things to come. At the young age of 10, her heart broke when her best friend, Trey, moved 1,500 miles away. Crossing paths five years later, the two teens exchange beautiful letters that cement their love. They embark on an idealized relationship, despite trauma and heartbreak on both sides, only to be forced apart shortly after.

Five months ago, an accident left Diana Sparrow badly injured and missing a few months of her memory. As if that's not enough, she's started having recurring nightmares about the night of the accident. Dreams that feel so real, she's left questioning: maybe she didn't just slide off the road into a ditch. Maybe, just maybe, she hit something. Or someone. She can't turn to her former best friend Val, who's been sleeping with Diana's husband Jonathan for months, but she might find some comfort in newcomer Cole Pelham. But is Cole connected to what happened that night?

The search for Ramathule and Xirow involves a new cast of characters both bad and good. More fights take place on the planet Zarthala and even some in outer space. If they can't stop Ramathule from summoning Sulvaria, the universe itself will be destroyed.

Five strangers, thrust into a crisis situation that transforms them and forever solidifies their destiny. Mythical battles, legendary universal forces, and constant journeying further into chaos is a price you must pay to become a half dragon. Though with great danger and suffering come hope, motivation, and even love.

The award-winning memoir When All That's Left of Me Is Love is poignant and powerful. Linda Campanella provides an intimate look inside her family and her heart as she relives the joy-filled year and long good-bye leading to her terminally ill mother's death. In the process, she comes to terms with the permanence of her loss and finds comfort in profound gratitude for many unexpected gifts.

Blame the booze, her shaky marriage, her troubled son, or a thousand other things, but Jewelann Jordan has one thing on her mind when she attends her class reunion: making sure her old crush Christian Campbell sees exactly what he lost all those years ago. A late night, a hotel room, a rekindled flame that burns even hotter than it did back then—what could go wrong? Everything. The night with Christian isn't the first secret Jewelann has kept from her husband Ken, so one more shouldn't be much harder—except that Christian shows up without warning.

Abby Callier is more in love with Shakespearean heroes than any real man, and she’s beginning to wonder if there is life for her outside the pages of a book. It doesn’t help that her esteemed parents tend to view her as they would one of their science experiments gone wrong. On the eve of finishing her dissertation, she escapes her staid existence to live in the house she inherited from her Great-Aunt Evie in the small town of Echo Springs, Colorado. Because, let’s face it, when a woman starts comparing her life to horror films, it might be time for a break.

Natalie has found the worst kept secret in history. Now, to stay safe, all she has to do is keep her head down and obey the Regent. But the cost of Natalie's power is catching up with her. The past and present are a blur, Nautilus lurks at the city gates, safety is an illusion, and all around her reality cracks. While Edwin urges her to find an anchor and Leo strives to be her confidant, Natalie is convinced that to save herself, she must fix her family. And fixing her family means finding Brant.

In Shadow Lab, a brilliant roster of speculative fiction writers pulls listeners into a diverse and genre-bending collection of stories, each as irresistible as the last.

Gemma lives with her mother in an isolated antique shop in Michigan, near a small patch of woods that conceals an enchanted gateway to fairyland. She knows she's not supposed to go into the woods - her mother Virginia has warned her multiple times about the monsters that lurk there - and yet defiantly, curiously, she goes anyway. Virginia understands her daughter's defiance. She knows the lure of the woods all too well. Her mother warned her about the monsters that resided there, and she also did not listen. Until a witch cursed her true love, Ash - Gemma's father - into the form of a beast.

Grace has always wanted to be a ballerina, ever since she first peered through the windows of the Near North Ballet company. The elegance of the dance seemed transcendent to an immigrant child of the working poor, and so, when she is orphaned, it is to the ballet that she flees. Years later, Grace is on the verge of becoming the company's new prima ballerina - though she is beginning to realise that achieving her long-held dream may not be the triumph she once envisioned.

Lost, frightened, and thousands of feet underground, Isaline is trying to hold herself together. The expedition to find King Faraday’s workshop has begun, and deep in Benemourne’s deadly Adrudian mines, anything can happen. With the help of her companions, Isaline is ready to discover who she is. But lies and forgotten memories are catching up to her.

Ruby Palmer finds herself on an entire planet surrounded by the things she hates the most: robots. Besides taking everything she says way too literally, the robots have problems of their own. A myriad of technical glitches are, on the cosmological scale, quickly destroying them. Ruby has the programming knowledge and skills that matter to them, but can she overcome her fears and find it within herself to help? Her survival, along with the survival of all of humanity and robot kind, depends on it.

Haunted by a power she can’t control, Natalie and her friends are determined to reunite their families and uncover the truth of their past. But with Leo missing in action and Uncle Chris out of the picture, Natalie is left harboring a mysterious key and a secret that isn’t hers to tell. Invited to masquerade as a Nautilus recruit, Natalie finds herself in the Helix: Nautilus’s center. Faced with old enemies and locked doors, she hopes to last long enough to find her parents. But Natalie isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

Isaline is desperate to keep her identity a secret. In the space of one night, her future as a City Watch has crumbled before her eyes. And now she’s on a train across Benemourne with two complete strangers—dangerous treasure hunters that she can’t trust with her real name.