Showing results by narrator "Melissa" in All Categories

Bonnie Balfour adores the changing seasons, fabulous fall activities, and holiday hoopla, but will a corpse on the porch squash her holiday plans? Thanksgiving is right around the corner in historic Bliss, Georgia, and Bonnie is trimming display tables at Bless Her Heart, especially for the occasion. A "Gift of Gratitude" display, beside the front door of her second-chance dress shop, encourages shoppers to leave messages of good tidings for neighbors and friends. Unfortunately, someone has left a cornucopia of complaints instead. And they’re all about Bonnie.

It was the early 1900s when Obadiah (Oba) and Merriweather's (May's) parents died tragically, leaving them orphans at ten and eleven years old. When none of their nearby relations volunteer to take them in, they are set on a train to Arkansas to go live on their Amish aunt and uncle's cotton farm. Once there, it didn't take long to discover they would be treated cruelly, no matter what they did. May, always anxious to be a godly young lady, took on more and more responsibility, trying desperately to keep the peace and convince her older brother not to run away.

I owe my life to a masked killer. He came for me, like an avenging angel of death sent to spare me from pain and humiliation yet teach me the price of salvation. I am bound to him by the blood he spilled for me, but he didn’t save me out of mercy. I don’t think he even knows the word. He wants submission. He wants me by his side. And he wants this city for his own.

Cooper Reeves was the boy-next-door. Every milestone, every memory of my youth was entangled with his. We were inseparable...until college. It wasn't his friends, girls, or even sports that came between us - it was me. Tired of being in the friend zone, I finally made a move. Turns out it was the wrong one. Cooper walked away to play his first year of professional football and left me behind with a broken heart.

Terraform the barrens. Create life with your bare hands. And defeat the wild hunt. Garrett Andrews will have to do all that, plus develop a mining colony on two separate planets if he wants to stand a chance at defeating the ancient, primordial evil bent on destroying the universe. Worse, since his own planetary systems are starting to produce sentient life, he’ll have to level up those creatures and release them back into the wild, all while trying to fend off a former champion turned evil.

In 2296, an unstoppable mass extinction is underway, and history proves society will collapse before it can change. Climate Council scientists have no choice but to unveil the Dawn Project. Their audacious plan will terraform the planet back to life… by erasing its civilization. Biologist Kaia Badra commits her life to the project’s success at all costs after a storm surge takes her parents.

In the groundbreaking Crossover Experience, our trio of researchers focuses on the fine details found within NDEs that are often overshadowed by the more well-known main events. And it is here they found a treasure trove of clues that reveal more depth, contour, and messaging within a Near-Death Experience. What they also found, to their surprise—it is often in what we don’t see in an NDE that we gain the greatest insight.

Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn't fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she's lost 85 pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship. All the girls in her new school want one thing - Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than the Arctic, Jack has never gone out with anyone.

Born in the slums of Five Points, Emmett Cavanaugh climbed his way to the top of a booming steel empire and now holds court in an opulent Fifth Avenue mansion. His rise in stations, however, has done little to elevate his taste in women. He loathes the city's "high society" types, but a rebellious and beautiful blue-blood just might change all that.

She swore off the man who broke her heart. He’s determined to win her back. When Emerson hears a rumor that her ex-husband, NFL quarterback Vincent Lake, is bringing a plus-one to a wedding they’re both set to attend, she signs up for online dating and hopes to find a guy impressive enough to make her famous ex jealous for the night. Vincent should be on top of the world when he leads his team to the playoffs, but when his best friend accidentally matches with Emerson, it’s like a dagger to his heart.

Erin Solomon is an accomplished investigative journalist when she receives word that she has inherited Payson Isle...and all its ghosts. She returns to Maine to learn the truth behind the tragedy that has haunted her since childhood, aided by the rakish mentor who's stood by her side since she was a teenager; her trusty mutt, Einstein; and a mysterious stranger with his own dark past.

Claire Hansen was a Keeper, a member of that select group that kept the universe in one piece. And now she'd been Summoned to the Elysian Fields Guesthouse, a rundown bed-and-breakfast that seemed to attract the most unusual clientele. And Claire was not happy about this latest assignment, not happy at all. Not when she'd been tricked into taking over here by a horrible little gnome of a man who'd abandoned his post before she'd even figured out who he really was. Not when room six held a resident who'd been sleeping there for so many years that she really needed a good dusting - except that it was far too dangerous for anyone to get that close to her.

For Lucy, the Jersey Shore isn't just the perfect summer escape, it's home. As a local girl, she knows not to get attached to the tourists. They breeze in during Memorial Day weekend, crowding her costal town and stealing moonlit kisses, only to pack up their beach umbrellas and empty promises on Labor Day. Still, she can't help but crush on charming Connor Malloy. His family spends every summer next door, and she longs for their friendship to turn into something deeper. Then Superstorm Sandy sweeps up the coast, bringing Lucy and Connor together for a few intense hours.

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it.

Imagine this. You're ready to leave after a one-night stand, and you're figuring out how to - shock horror - leave your number and ask him to be your fake boyfriend for your sister's wedding this weekend. When he wakes up. Well, that happened to me. And over coffee and omelets, I found myself a date. Which was how I ended up arriving at the wedding with a guy I knew nothing about.

Celebrated workplace thought leader Elizabeth Lotardo delivers an engaging guide to owning and elevating your work experience. With tips, watchouts, and funny stories, Leading Yourself will give you the encouragement and tactics to up-level your career, even if you aren't in your dream job. You'll learn to manage your self-talk, find meaning in the mundane, optimize your time at work, and build relationships with the people who matter.

Since losing his family in a tragic accident, building contractor Max Lambright can't seem to find purpose in anything but hard work...until he meets feisty newcomer, Willa Richards. As she struggles to make a new life for herself and her baby girl, she challenges him in just about every possible way. Dare he hope that, alongside this spirited woman, he might rekindle his lost faith, and find the path to love and the family he craves?

For days, all of Denver, Colorado, has worried over the fate of a missing child, little Tanner Holcomb. Then, a miracle: handsome, athletic Johnny Bradley finds him, frightened but unharmed, on a hiking trail miles from his wealthy family’s mountain home. In a heartbeat, his rescuer goes from financially strapped fitness trainer to celebrated hero. The heat of the spotlight may prove too much for Johnny’s picture-perfect family, however.

> The Wonderful O tells of a man named Black who despised the letter "O". He deleted it from his language and omitted it from his words. Opals, moonstones, owls and oaks could not possibly be his items of choice. He preferred emeralds, rubies, sapphires and maps. At least they had no "O". Soon he wanted his entire village to omit the letter "O". But the villagers found words they would not do without HOPE, LOVE, VALOR, and the most important one of all.

Having explored the shadowed ruin of Beacon Hill, Sadie and August are drawn deeper into a dark and winding history. It was at the infamous Rainier Asylum that local horrors were first conjured, and compelled by a mix of duty and guilt, the librarians begin to look into the institution's sordid past. For years, locals have reported seeing something hideous stalking about the abandoned asylum. When a young farmhand meets this diabolical presence face to face and disappears, Sadie and August decide to visit the site to search for him.