Showing results by narrator "Emily Woo-Zeller" in All Categories

It's no easy tour of duty for Lt. Nova Whiteside when her interstellar transport is taken by pirates, and she is then tagged for termination. Could it have something to do with the mysterious alien they were transporting? Having gone from merely MIA to technically AWOL, any chance of escape leaves her no choice but to rely on Sethran Kada, a former lover, for help.

In 1936, classical pianist Thomas Greene is recruited to Shanghai to lead a jazz orchestra of fellow African-American expats. From being flat broke in segregated Baltimore to living in a mansion with servants of his own, he becomes the toast of a city obsessed with music, money, pleasure, and power, even as it ignores the rising winds of war. Song Yuhua is refined and educated, and has been bonded since age eighteen to Shanghai's most powerful crime boss in payment for her father's gambling debts.

Betrayed by everyone she loves, Valerie Dearborn will do anything to get out of Fey and avoid becoming Cerdwellyn's queen. Even if it means she has to rely upon Lucas, the monster who betrayed her.

It's been three months since Lane made her first kill - the sadistic Decapitator - and now she feels both closer and more alienated than ever from her united, grieving family. Haunted by conflicting memories of her mother, Lane resumes her role as the vigilante Masked Savior out of a feeling of obligation - but her heart just isn't in it anymore. Now that Lane has felt the rush of deeper, darker thrills, a growing part of her wants to revisit its seductive power, and she's not sure how long she can resist.

They say timing is everything, and for single dad Hamish Colquhoun, the timing couldn't be worse. With a new law practice to establish, a centuries-old farmhouse to restore, and the challenges of raising a tween daughter, romance is the last thing on his mind. But when Afton Lennox, his best friend’s runaway bride, comes home seeking redemption, she ignites all the feelings he’s tried for years to bury.

The Sukai Dynasty has ruled the Phoenix Empire for over a century, their mastery of bone shard magic powering the monstrous constructs that maintain law and order. But now the emperor's rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.

My name is Gillian and I have three problems: A fallen tree through the roof of my family’s remote island cottage. A sister trying to sell said cottage out from under me. A dead body in the living room. Sadly, it’s not my sister’s. Actually, make that four problems: my ex, Amanda, just showed up uninvited. Apparently, she’s a spy, undercover to investigate the luxury wine auction hosted by my conniving sister.

On the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists, and online warriors prompting an unprecedented awakening among China's educated, urban women.

A year ago, she could barely do a push up as she recovered from a spine surgery, one that could have paralyzed her. And now? She’s made the United States’ gymnastics team with her best friend, Emma, just like they’ve both dreamed about since they were kids. She’s on top of the world. The pressure for perfection is higher than ever when horrifying news rips the team apart. Audrey is desperate to advocate for her teammate who has been hurt by the one person they trusted most - but not all the gymnasts are as supportive.

Four weeks before their college graduation, 21-year-old Kevin Schaeffer walked Amy Butcher to her home in their college town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hours after parting ways with Amy, he fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. While he awaited trial, psychiatrists concluded he had suffered an acute psychotic break. Amy was severely affected by Kevin's crime but remained devoted to him as a friend.

On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer's Diary with the words "too much and not the mood." She was describing how tired she was of correcting her own writing, of the "cramming in and the cutting out" to please other readers, wondering if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The character of that sentiment, the attitude of it, inspired Durga Chew-Bose to write and collect her own work. The result is a lyrical and piercingly insightful collection of essays and her own brand of essay-meets-prose poetry about identity and culture.

Welcome to Tiankawi—shining pearl of human civilization and a safe haven for those fleeing civil unrest. Or at least, that’s how it first appears. But in the semi-flooded city, humans are, quite literally, on top: peering down from skyscrapers and aerial walkways on the fathomfolk—sirens, seawitches, kelpies and kappas—who live in the polluted waters below. And the fathomfolk are tired of it. When a water-dragon and a half siren join forces, the path to equality is filled with violence, secrets, and political intrigue.

In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame - beautiful, sharp-tongued Daisy.

The need for love - obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable - takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.

When a woman living under a cloud of suspicion for her husband's death comes to vintage kitchen collector Jaymie Leighton with a mysterious request, she's not sure whether, or how much, to get involved. The police believe they have new evidence of foul play in what was initially ruled an accidental death, and the woman's terrified they'll try to pin the crime on her. Before Jaymie can decide whether to help her, though, the woman's found murdered in the woods near Jaymie's cabin.

As a child, isolated from the world in a secretive military encampment with her distant mother, she turns for affection to a sympathetic soldier and to the only other girl in the camp, forming two friendships that will shape the rest of her life. As a young adult in New York, cut off from her native country and haunted by the scars of her youth, she is still in search of a home. She falls in love with a married woman who is the image of her childhood friend, and she follows strangers because they remind her of her soldier.

As she turns 16, Skybright notices troubling changes. By day she is a companion and handmaid to the youngest daughter of a very wealthy family. But nighttime brings with it a darkness that not even daybreak can quell. When her plight can no longer be denied, Skybright learns that despite a dark destiny, she must struggle to retain her sense of self - even as she falls in love for the first time.

Kyra has returned to the caves of Kali, but her homecoming is bittersweet. She no longer knows what her place is. Her beloved teacher is dead and her best friend Nineth is missing. And gone, too, is Rustan, the Marksman who helped her train for the duel with Tamsyn - and became far more than a teacher and friend. Shaken by his feelings for Kyra and the truth about his parentage, Rustan has set off on a quest for answers. His odyssey leads him to the descendants of an ancient sect tied to the alien Ones - and the realization that the answers he seeks come with a price.

In a remote, mountainous area of a Maui forest near Haleakala volcano, the naked body of a young woman is found hanging from a tree. The devil is in the details: the woman's nostrils, mouth, and lungs are packed with lava sand. Her hands are bound in twine. Her feet are charred and blackened, suggesting a fire-walking ceremony. Detective Kali Mahoe's suspicions are immediately aroused. It has all the signs of a ritual torture and murder. But Kali's investigation soon leads her down a winding trail of seemingly unconnected clues and diverging paths.

Kali Māhoe, Hawaiian cultural expert and detective with the Maui Police Department, has been called to a bizarre crime scene. In the recesses of a deep trench on Lana'i Island, a derelict refrigerator has been unearthed. Entombed inside are the skeletal remains of someone buried decades ago. Identification is a challenge. The body is headless, the skull replaced with a chilling adornment: a large, ornately carved wooden pineapple.