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

A severed left hand is found in a minivan abandoned on a dry riverbed. When Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force lieutenant Reiko Himekawa and her team join the investigation, the hand is quickly identified as belonging to building contractor Ken'ichi Takaoka, and from the amount of blood spilled in the van, it is presumed that he was killed. However, searches fail to turn up the rest of the body, and the mystery deepens when a childhood friend shown a photo of the victim declares, "That's not Takaoka".

Air Command pilot Nova Whiteside is assigned to a remote outpost to guard the construction of a tethered orbiter, Skyranch Twelve, against rebel sabotage. The difference between the well-ordered Union air fields and this dusty garrison is made painfully clear when she runs afoul a brutal commander of ground troops. When she is trapped behind enemy lines in a bloody uprising, she meets Djari, a civilian whose trust in the governing Union is shattered by what he has witnessed.

Jessica Kramer is a gladiator pilot with a target on her head, having survived a dark plot to assassinate her in the armored arenas of Junctionworld. Now, her crew chief's promise to a dead man sends Jessica and her armored mech plummeting through inter-dimensional space, trying to find the last family she has. As the guns of the Eighth Gate blaze, new threats arise, and unseen powers awaken.

Vintage cookware enthusiast Jaymie Leighton is thrilled at the prospect of meeting an elderly descendant of her town's founding father, not least because she's known to possess an enviably large collection of antique spice graters. But the curmudgeonly woman also has substantial real estate holdings, and at the moment she's engaged in a fierce battle with a property developer who wants her to sell off her old buildings in the name of progress.

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.

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.

Celebrated author Sarah Kuhn reinvents the modern fairy tale in this intensely personal yet hilarious novel of a girl whose search for a storybook ending takes her to unexpected places in both her beloved LA neighborhood and her own guarded heart.

Nicole Louie-Edwards enjoys the nightlife and bringing men back to her apartment, although lately, she's gotten tired of the chase. Her quiet new neighbor, David Cho, isn't her type, but after they get trapped in an elevator together on her birthday, she develops a friendship with the kind geology professor. Then, blushing, he tells her that he can hear her having sex but tries not to listen. Except it's clear he'd like to, and she's surprisingly turned on. They embark on a friends-with-benefits arrangement hotter than any she's had before.

Rural China, 1942. Twenty-two-year-old Eugenia Baker exists in a bubble as yet untouched by WWII. Content to help her father with his missionary work, Genie sees her future as a straight, if narrow, road - until an American pilot arrives, warning them of the approaching Japanese army. Lieutenant Ted Younan is one of the Flying Tigers, volunteer fighters protecting China from aerial attacks. After rescuing Ted from his downed plane, Genie’s father asks the flyboy to get his daughter across the mountains so she can escape to the United States.

Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn't so bad. Maybe the boy named Hamlet (yes, Hamlet) crushing on her is pretty cute. Maybe Clara actually feels invested in her dad's business. What if taking this summer seriously means Clara has to leave her old self behind?

Twenty-five-year-old Ivy Rowan rises from her sickbed after being struck by the great influenza epidemic of 1918, only to discover that the world has been torn apart in just a few short days. But Ivy's lifelong gift - or curse - remains. She sees the uninvited ones - ghosts of loved ones who appear to her, unasked for and unwelcomed, for they always herald impending death.

Kyra is the youngest Markswoman in the Order of Kali, a highly trained sisterhood of elite warriors armed with telepathic blades. Guided by a strict code of conduct, Kyra and the other Orders are sworn to protect the people of Asiana. But to be a Markswoman, an acolyte must repudiate her former life completely. Kyra has pledged to do so, yet she secretly harbors a fierce desire to avenge her dead family. When Kyra's beloved mentor dies in mysterious circumstances, and Tamsyn, the dangerous Mistress of Mental Arts, assumes control, Kyra is forced on the run.

Nainai has lived in Shanghai for many years, and the time has come to find a wife for her adopted grandson. But when the bride she has chosen arrives from the countryside, it soon becomes clear that the orphaned girl has ideas of her own. Her name is Fu Ping, and the more she explores the residential lanes and courtyards behind Shanghai’s busy shopping streets, the less she wants to return to the country as a dutiful wife. As Fu Ping wavers over her future, she learns the city through the stories of the nannies, handymen, and garbage collectors of postwar Shanghai....

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on New Year's Eve 2006. By that afternoon she saw the world - quite literally - upside down. By New Year's Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, she learned that she had had a stroke. For months Lee outsourced her memories to her notebook. It is from these memories that she has constructed this frank and compelling memoir.

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.

Who are the greatest innovators in the world? You're probably thinking Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford - the usual suspects.

This book isn't about them. It's about people who are just as innovative, entrepreneurial, and visionary as the Jobses, Edisons, and Fords of the world, except they're not in Silicon Valley. They're in the street markets of Sao Paulo and Guangzhou, and the rubbish dumps of Lagos. They are pirates, slum dwellers, computer hackers, dissidents, and inner city gang members.

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.

For several decades Chinese ascendancy has been supported by an astonishingly broad and deep portfolio of soft power. The stories of their reach are breathtaking - Chinese-sponsored reporting in national newspapers and academia; the gagging of sports stars and huge Western brands; Hollywood self-censorship; and of course - communications firms. But these are just the most visible examples. Bethany Allen, an internationally recognized investigator into Chinese covert power, shows Western institutions have bowed to and even enabled Beijing's coercion.

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.

When a body wrapped in a blue plastic tarp and tied up with twine is discovered by the bushes near a quiet suburban Tokyo neighborhood, Lieutenant Reiko Himekawa and her squad take the case. The victim was slaughtered brutally - his wounds are bizarre, and no one can figure out the "what" or the "why" of this crime. At age 29, Reiko Himekawa of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's Homicide Division is young to have been made lieutenant, particularly because she lacks any kind of political or family connections.