Showing results by narrator "Emily Durante" in All Categories

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.

In the third book of the Midnight Twins trilogy, Mally and Merry's supernatural dream visions are put to the test when their baby brother is kidnapped - and by someone who has grown very close to the Brynn family.

When a visiting angel dies in mysterious circumstances in Crimson Cove, covered in bites that look like they were made by a ghoul, my wonderful witch goes into full-on panic mode. She's convinced her ghoul mother is the killer. But I'm not so sure. Ghouls are chaotic and dangerous, but there's something bigger going on. How do simple bites kill an almost immortal creature? Who is leaving all those enormous footprints in the woods? And why do non-magicals keep getting through our protective wards?

Fanged trouble comes to the magical small town of Crimson Cove. Who's getting bitten? How did the werewolf lose his head? No, it's not a joke. Crimson Cove is awash with warring werewolves. And I'm not purring. Werewolves mean trouble. And then there's the continued invasion of non-magicals. Why are they here? How do they keep sneaking in? It's another thing that has my fluffy murder mittens twitching. When top werewolf negotiator Emron Laker loses his head, the trouble bubbles and risks boiling over as werewolves rampage and demand justice.

Anna remembers a time before boys, when she and her mom were a family, just the two of them against the world. But now her mom’s gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, and Anna is left to grow up alone. Until she discovers that boys can fill the void - from Desmond to Joey to Todd. But the price is high. The other kids make fun of her; the girls call her a slut. Anna’s new friend, Toy, seems to have found a way around the loneliness, but Toy has her own secrets that even Anna can’t know.

As performance lags in the midst of economic cycles, many companies turn to magic bullets such as EVA, Kaizen, or Six Sigma. Unfortunately, these initiatives - along with how they're implemented - often deliver only short-term positive impact or cause more pain than the preexisting condition. Returning to competitive health and profitability in the face of economic downturns requires a dynamic realignment of business strategies, organizational design, and talent management.

"Let's play truth or dare, for old times' sake." I reluctantly agree, silently praying none of my three oldest friends gets the chance to ask me a truth. There is so much I've been keeping from them. Just for this weekend, for our long-awaited college reunion, I want to put all that aside and have some fun. But it wasn't my secrets I should have been worried about. It was theirs.

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.

Rich, beautiful Ivy Caswell—from one of Fairbanks's most esteemed families and recently engaged to the Lt. Governor's son—finds herself in Skagway during the off-season to help her aunt and uncle with a sensitive family matter.

As Reeve Stewart, the youngest of the Stewart siblings, hustles around Skagway trying to figure out how to share some major news with her family, she checks in on her older siblings, celebrating a beloved Christmas tradition with each of them in turn.

Parker Stewart's brother has been best friends with Quinn Morgan for as long as she can remember, which is approximately how long he's been a thorn in her side. From teasing her when they were kids to ruining her shot at dating the hottest guy in middle school, Quinn has done everything possible to make Parker hate his guts. But underneath his gruff exterior, Quinn's always had a soft spot for sharp, pretty Parker, and smarted from her total lack of interest in him.

As Christmas rounds the bend, Eliza Lee Elliott struggles with her grandfather's death. Though her faith has carried her through the grief, working at the Appalachian Express has kept her sane, especially her new task of coordinating The Santa Run. Bennett Olsen is tired of city life, so when McCoy Railway purchases the Appalachian Express, it gives in a big way. Supervising the Kentucky acquisition is his chance to slow down. When an accident threatens the Santa Run, Eliza and Bennett are pushed together at every turn, making their growing attraction impossible to ignore.

Hoping to erase her unhappy old life, Hazel jumps in her beat-up old car and speeds away. When she pulls up to the Evening and Morning Star Trailer Park, where nothing turns into even more of nothing, she decides it just might be the new life she's looking for. At the center of this new life is King, a motorcycle-riding, hard-drinking, guitar-playing kind of guy. Hazel loves him to death. He spends his days fixing cars, while Hazel spends hers working at the town’s thrift shop. Evenings they spend with Spiney and Sissy, playing cards or drinking at Old Joe’s.

The speed of technological development, from cell phones to artificial intelligence, opens up exciting new opportunities for promoting human flourishing. It also raises grave risks, threatening not only personal privacy and dignity but also our collective survival. Technologies of Human Rights Representation asks: How can we open the black box of technological advances so that we can more fully understand their effects upon our lives? What can we do to make sure that these effects align with the values of human rights?

The American Adrenaline Narrative considers the nature of perilous outdoor adventure tales, their gendered biases, and how they simultaneously promote and hinder ecological sustainability. To explore these themes, Kristin J. Jacobson defines and compares adrenaline narratives by a range of American authors published after the first Earth Day in 1970, a time frame selected as a watershed moment for the contemporary American environmental movement.

Stranded at single father Dan Gallagher's ranch during a Colorado blizzard, Dr. Beth Rogers is counting the days till the roads are clear.

But suddenly the big-city doctor is delivering babies in log cabins, helping to feed newborn calves and teaching Dan's little girl to play hymns on the piano. She thought she had her heart set on leaving, so why does she dream of Dan asking her to stay forever?

Mia has settled into her life with the Della Torres - Milan's premier demon-catching family, accompanying them to exorcisms and even learning some way to be useful in the family trade. Then Bernardo comes into her life, handsome, well-mannered, someone who makes her forget her impossible crush on Emilio, her cousin. But always lurking in the background is the demon who possessed Mia once before, and who has not given up on possessing her again - this time for good.

When She Was Electric is an evocative portrait of a family and a small town torn apart by losses. At the heart of this subtle, textured novel is a wrenching disruption - the death of a young girl in a sleepy town. The book tells the story of three generations of women: the resourceful grandmother who turned unwanted land into a thriving enterprise; the daughters, ethereal Min and bold Nellie, who grew up challenging polite conventions; and Ana, the granddaughter who embodies the hopes - and secrets - of this formidable matriarchy.

Nothing is beyond Kristi Carmichael's disdain - her hippie high school, her friend Jacob, her workaholic mom. Yet Kristi has a vulnerable side. She can hear the thoughts of her fellow students calling her fat and gross. She's hot for Gusty Peterson, one of the most popular guys in school, but of course, she's sure he thinks she is disgusting. And she's still mad at her father, who walked out on them two years ago. Soon, a school project brings her together with Gusty, her father comes home and drops a bombshell, and a friend comes out of the closet.

Sarah Simpson loves to make lists. She has lists of the things she doesn't like about her father's new (blond tennis instructor) wife, things she doesn't like about her motherï¿¿ï¿¿s new (nerdy, zebra-shirt-wearing) boyfriend, and reasons why life is just plain unfair.