Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

From the author of the National Book Award longlisted epic The Great Offshore Grounds, here is the debut novel that launched her career - a story of activism, police violence, and white guilt in a not so distant dystopian America.

Sissie Klein barely remembers the night that tore her from the carefree life she knew. Not long after the shocked teen is pushed into marriage, she's rushed to the hospital, where a catastrophic delivery seals her destiny. Sissie may not have been ready for motherhood, but she loves her daughter fiercely, and she's determined to give her the opportunities she forfeited. Some fates, however, can't be avoided. When Meg is a young woman, tragedy steals her father, leaving behind a legacy of deceit—and a toddler.

Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own.

Following A Plague of Giants comes the second novel in the Seven Kennings series - an unforgettable fantasy world of warring giants and elemental magic from the New York Times best-selling author of the Iron Druid Chronicles.

In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy’s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. Within this book, you’ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakable and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime.

This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation - Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five - while bringing together some of the finest voices of today's Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique.

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 14th collection of short fiction, comprising 28 uncollected and impossible-to-find stories. Here are 28 tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.

In 1920, having persuaded her resistant mother to send her to college, Kate Croft falls in love with science. Painfully rebuffed by a girl she longs for, and in flight from her own confusing sexuality, Kate finds refuge in the calm rationality of biology: its vision of a deeply interconnected world, and the promise that the new field of genetics can explain the way people are.

When Nate's father dies, he leaves behind a final gift for his son: his childhood home. Married now, Nate decides to move in with his wife, Maddie, and their son, Oliver, seeking peace from the chaos of the city. But it doesn't take long before things get strange in the night and even stranger by day. Because Nate was a child being abused by his father and has never told his family. Because Maddie was a little girl who saw something she shouldn't have. Because something sinister walks in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of this town in rural Pennsylvania.

In this award-winning collection, listeners will find spellbinding stories of loss, absence, and the devastating effects of chance - of what happens when the unthinkable bad luck of other people, of other towns, becomes our bad luck, our town. Taut, lucid, and engrossing, provocative and dark - and often darkly funny - these stories have much to offer the lover of literary fiction as well as the listener who just loves a great story.

In an empowering, accessible, and inclusive guide, herbalist Marie White shows listeners of all genders how to enhance sexual and reproductive health through plant medicine. A must-have for those looking to revitalize intimacy with the special touch of medicinal herbs—and a few selected seaweed and fungi—The Intimate Herbal includes tried-and-tested protocols rooted in an intersectional, non-binary approach to holistic health, herbal healing, and supporting the body through physical stress.

Nurse Kayla Friday has dedicated her life to science and reason. But for her, Seattle is a place of eerie loss and fragmented, frightening memories. Now the only clue to her sister’s murder reveals a secret battle between two ancient mythologies - and puts Kayla in the sights of lethally sexy werewolf-mercenary Hart. He’ll do whatever it takes to obtain the key to the Gate of the Land of the Dead and free what’s left of his soul. But seducing the determined Kayla is putting them both at the mercy of powerful desires neither can control.

Drawing on her work at a shelter, her experiences living with two rescue dogs of her own, and years of research, best-selling author and Boston Globe columnist Amy Sutherland takes us on an unforgettable journey into the special world of rescue and shelter dogs - and the growing number of dedicated people who are deeply invested in saving these precious lives.

From the east came the Bone Giants. From the south, the fire-wielding Hathrim. It was an invasion that sparked war across the six nations of Teldwen. Now the kingdom's only hope is the discovery of a new form of magic - one that will call the wondrous beasts of the world to fight by the side of humankind. In the start of a thrilling new series, the New York Times best-selling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles creates an unforgettable fantasy world of warring giants and elemental magic.

Grayson Ford and Emma Kinglsey - close since they were kids, opposites in every way. He's the stuff high school crushes are made of, Mister Popular, and captain of every team. She's artsy, cute, and not in his league, though fully aware of Summerland's "I Dream of Dating Grayson Ford" support group.

A Is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan’s first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull, along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan’s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind....

She never saw this coming.... Brynn Atwood is a low-level Magus whose unpredictable precognitive powers have made her an outcast among her people - and an embarrassment to her highly regarded father. After a frightening vision in which her father is murdered by a loup garou man, Brynn decides to prove herself by finding the killer and stopping them at any cost. Her target is Rook McQueen, the son of a small-town loup garou alpha.

Maree Davenport refuses to let a tearful past rule her future. After losing her parents at the age of five, the big-hearted fabric designer is determined to embrace her feelings and find happiness no matter what. So when she literally runs over a handsome new firefighter in the produce section, the hopeless romantic is certain she’s just collided with destiny.

In 1975 Paul and Roz Mellow wrote a best-selling Joy of Sex-type book that mortified their four school-aged children and ultimately changed the shape of the family forever. Thirty years later, as the now dispersed family members argue over whether to reissue the book, we follow the complicated lives of each of the grown children and their conflicts in love, work, marriage, parenting, and, of course, sex - all shadowed by the indelible specter of their highly sexualized parents.

Grace Holm-D’Angelo is at her wit’s end, trying to create a new life from broken pieces. Newly divorced, she is navigating suddenly becoming a single mother to her 14-year-old daughter. Emma, resentful about being uprooted from Chicago to Los Angeles and still reeling from the divorce, is generally giving her mother a hard time. Then Grace’s best friend, Leeza, succumbs to breast cancer after a long battle, and Grace realizes you don’t get a second chance at life. She returns to her hometown of New London, Wisconsin, to try to reconcile with her own mother, Lorraine, from whom she’s been estranged for longer than she cares to remember.