Showing results by narrator "Maria Marquis" in All Categories

Set in New Orleans at the close of the 19th century, The Awakening follows Edna Pontellier, who, while vacationing with her husband and their two sons, finds liberation from her prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires. At the coastal resort of Madame Lebrun, Edna struggles to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South.

Writer Carrie Colts hopes a move to Montauk will be a rejuvenating change of pace for her family. The last thing she expects to see is her former college roommate on her doorstep. Newly widowed, and with a daughter of her own, Maya would love to reconnect. As a gesture to an old friend in mourning, Carrie extends an invitation to stay. Just for a few days. After all, there are reasons that Carrie and Maya are estranged.

Nazafareen is a Breaker, a mortal who has the rare ability to shatter spell magic - although her power carries a high price. With the memories of her former self erased and nowhere else to turn, she comes to Nocturne hoping to start a new life under the triple moons of the darklands. But when an assassin forces Nazafareen to flee to the sunlit mortal city of Delphi, she finds herself embroiled in a deeper mystery whose origins lie far in the past. Why was the continent sundered into light and dark a thousand years before?

When DaVinci's younger sister Kahlo visits the Bahamas with friends, Kahlo thinks her host Jules Khan is a grumpy misanthrope. But when he offers her the chance to visit her idol the painter Maxfield Parrish in the past, Kahlo jumps at the opportunity, despite threats from Jules’s murderously jealous girlfriend. Soon Jules and Kahlo are obliged to join forces on a trip gone awry, and Kahlo begins to see Jules as someone capable of helping her become her best self—as long as Jules’s girlfriend doesn’t kill her first.

A detective, conspiracy thriller. Some people can’t let go of a grudge. Homicide Detective Sean Trann is learning this the hard way. He made the mistake of interrupting the killing spree of Boston’s most notorious serial killer, Spider. Intent on finishing what he started and infuriated at Sean’s previous involvement, Spider has decided to use those closest to Sean as pieces in his twisted game. Sean is the only one who can stop this executioner, but can he stay professional when his loved ones are on the line?

It’s been a thousand years since the Avas Vatras tried to burn the world to ashes. A thousand years since they were imprisoned in the brutal wasteland called the Kiln. But revenge is a dish best served cold - even, apparently, by the children of fire. In Delphi, Nazafareen joins forces with the followers of Dionysius to rescue her friends from the Oracle’s dungeons and seek out the three talismans whose extraordinary powers stopped the Vatras before. With her own breaking magic growing stronger by the day, she must walk a razor’s edge to control her volatile temper.

On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025. The plan was hailed by environmental groups and politicians around the country. Then, suddenly, the state’s Democratic establishment reversed the decision, and in 2024 the Biden-Harris administration awarded the plant $1.1 billion in credits to extend its life. What happened in between? In Atomic Dreams, journalist and lifelong environmentalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow unearths the surprising answers—and the deep-seated conflicts behind them.

Amanda Walker is not a witch - yet. She's an artist, looking for work - unaware that someone has a desperate need for her, a dark plan that may require Amanda to enter death itself.If she is allowed to live long enough to make the choice.

Erika Germoglio is a self-made woman who has it all—a successful career and a well-connected fiancé—then suddenly has even more. An Italian grandfather she has never met wills to her Casalvento, a house and a vineyard, and Livernano, a medieval village turned bed-and-breakfast, both in the Chianti region of Tuscany. When Erika travels to Italy to settle the affairs of her inheritance, she meets Paolo, Casalvento’s intelligent, compassionate, and strikingly handsome estate manager and wine maker. And she learns the inheritance comes with a catch.

Beatrice Leal’s personal life is complicated between her divorce and her precocious six-year-old. But the job she loves is the one thing she counts on to be straightforward—that is, until her boss’s own divorce prompts a move from NYC back to Ireland. Now Bea’s in Ireland twice a month for work. It’s wreaking havoc on the custody agreement she and her moody ex are sorting out while he lives downstairs in the brownstone they co-own. And to top it off, her company’s new CTO turns out to be the boy who once broke her heart: Jack Sander.

In the last volume of the Fourth Talisman series, the worlds of the living and the dead collide in a final confrontation that will leave Nocturne and Solis forever changed...Three talismans adrift. Two mad kings. One poisonous crown. As dark forces gather at the Rock of Ariamazes in Samarqand, Nazafareen discovers that there are worse places than the afterlife. The twisted creature pulling the Vatras’ strings is holed up in the deepest level of the Dominion - and only she has the power to follow him there, though at the potential cost of her own soul.

When you’re a cog in a cycle of generational trauma, how do you disrupt harmful patterns and build your own? How do you become a healthy mom when you never had one? In Mother Trauma, Emily Bowers shares her story to reveal the truth about emotional abuse and its lifelong impact on survivors. She reveals the steps she’s taken to heal old wounds, learn self-love, and grow into the mother she wanted and needed as a child. You can learn from trauma rather than live in it, but you need hope, healing, and compassion—from others and yourself.

In the fourth volume of The Fourth Talisman series, Nazafareen risks everything on a desperate gamble to stop the Vatras, once and for all. Determined to confront Culach and make amends, Nazafareen goes to Val Moraine, setting off a chain of events that ultimately leads her deep into the perilous wasteland called the Kiln and the faceless enemy waiting there. But the ancient hatred that shattered the world a millennium before is stronger and far more devious than she and her companions imagine. Is the Viper truly dead? And can Nazafareen triumph without facing her own heart's darkness?

On the White Sea, realm of smashers and sea monsters, a ship is carrying Nazafareen and Darius to the Isles of the Marakai, where the wise woman Sakhet-ra-katme has guarded the secret of the talismans for centuries. But another is searching, too - a daeva born in the brutal prison of the Kiln, who plans to use the talismans to free the Vatras and their mad king.

We all know it. Demanding accountability in the workplace is the quickest way to get your employees to start fidgeting nervously and looking at the door. Traditional accountability methods leave leaders frustrated with limited, ineffective tools and leave employees feeling criticized, discouraged, and even disengaged. Using a foundation of neuroscience and human dynamics, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace brings a much-needed modern approach to inspiring employee engagement, productivity, and results.

In this engrossing memoir, Marion Nestle reflects on how she achieved late-in-life success as a leading advocate for healthier and more sustainable diets. Slow Cooked recounts of how she built an unparalleled career at a time when few women worked in the sciences, and how she came to recognize and reveal the enormous influence of the food industry on our dietary choices.

After breaking the 100m world record, 16-year-old Calli is whisked away to a secret facility where she's placed with other teens who possess superhuman speed. She soon finds herself in a deadly situation involving other superpowers, a magical diamond, and a centuries-old clan vying for world domination. Calli will have to rely on her quick wit and gut instinct to navigate her new world, which includes secretly carrying a power-infusing diamond, all the while steering clear of the young man who mistakenly believes she's his soul mate.

Sixteen-year-old Nicole had enough on her plate already between navigating the ups and downs of friendship with her witchy best friend Isabel, competing with her romantic rival Cassie, and flirting with her crush Alex, a.k.a. Cassie’s boyfriend—and now she’s dead. They say it was suicide, but Nicole knows she didn't kill herself and will do whatever it takes to prove it. When Nicole wakes up and finds herself on Substation Fifteen, a special plane of existence for teen suicides, she must accept the fact that she is no longer alive.

For fans of Alechia Dow and Pittacus Lore comes "Leeta Simtar: A Life on Two Planets"—the latest book from young adult author Annie Fox about an interspecies hybrid looking to find herself on a new planet. A coming-of-age story that explores the meaning of birth family and found family, Leeta Simtar shows listeners how breaking out of the past can help us figure out where we’re going next. Leeta Simtar isn’t the only interspecies hybrid on the planet Fure, though she is, without a doubt, noticeably different from all the others.

Detective Sean Trann believed that no matter the case, he could always depend on his team. But the Spider murders have taken a turn that no one saw coming. Because of this, those around Sean have changed completely. One has given up. One lives in denial. One has been lost. One remains in hiding. And one has betrayed them all. A secret about the Spider killer has been revealed, but Sean is the only one who knows about it. With his team scattered and broken, who can he turn to with this damning knowledge? Or should he reveal the secret at all?