Showing results by narrator "Xe Sands" in All Categories

A collection of sweet, tender, poetic, beautiful, heart-wrenching, sensual love stories.

Cutting Teeth is about the complex dilemmas of early midlife-the vicissitudes of friendship, of romantic and familial love, and of sex. It's about class tension, status hunger, and the unease of being in possession of life's greatest bounty while still wondering, is this as good as it gets?

In today's fast-paced, competitive business environment, everyone needs to communicate clearly and use time productively. E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide is a user-friendly audiobook that is filled with guidelines, tips, and tools. Discover how to write professional email that gets results, makes better use of email time, and avoids problems that can be costly. The updated version includes a section on using instant messaging and handheld devices. Used by individuals, corporations, and trainers, this is a must-have for anyone who writes emails at work.

By Cecile depicts post-World War II France as it reels from war and recovery. In Paris, an orphan girl, Cecile, finds refuge with an older man. He introduces her to nightclubs, intellectuals, artists (Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Eartha Kitt!), and non-monogamy. When she falls for his mistress, she begins to live a life she deems worthy of writing about...but only under the pseudonym of her husband.

In The Smallest Lights in the Universe, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager interweaves the story of her search for meaning and solace after losing her first husband to cancer, her unflagging search for an Earth-like exoplanet and her unexpected discovery of new love. Sara Seager has made it her life's work to peer into the spaces around stars - looking for exoplanets outside our solar system, hoping to find the one-in-a-billion world enough like ours to sustain life. But with the unexpected death of her husband, her life became an empty, lightless space.

A kid walks into your bookstore and...guess what? He's your son. The one you put up for adoption eighteen years ago. The one you never told anyone about. Surprise! And a huge surprise it is. It's a huge surprise to his adoptive mother, Monica, who thought she had a close relationship with Matthew, her nearly adult son. Until he secretly arranged a vacation to Cape Cod so he could meet his birth mother...without a word to her. It's also a surprise to Harlow, the woman who secretly placed him for adoption so many years ago.

Checkmate... Despite a month of peace from hybrid attacks, the constant threat of violence has the loup garou on edge. Knight McQueen's home feels like a military compound, and his people have become battle-weary soldiers. And Knight's tenuous grip on his own self-control has been further damaged by the disappearance of the only woman whose touch brings him peace.

Still in college, Rebecca is the “responsible one.” She keeps her friends from getting too crazy—though Human Curling is kind of out there. She’s a safety valve for Joel, her foster father, and helps out at Halfmoon House, which he runs with his wife, Amanda—Rebecca’s foster mother, who makes sure her children able to protect themselves. To take care of themselves.

Susan Callisto is pushing 30 and taking stock. The man in her life, Massachusetts Police Lieutenant Michael Benedict, has unaccountably left her without a word of goodbye. Wounded but full of pride, Susan at first wonders why and then shrugs and decides to forget about him. Who needs a moody piece of work like Michael, anyway? Certainly not Susan who, transitioning from lawyer to political consultant, is far too busy to think about love—except on lonely summer nights..

Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past. Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life.

Claire wakes in a hospital room in the Florida Keys. She has no idea how she got there or why. The loss of so many memories is paralyzing. Some things she can piece together by looking at old photos saved by her husband, Charlie, and her best friend, Rachel, and by combing through boxes of letters and casual jottings. Told from alternating points of view that pull the listener into the minds of the three characters, the story unfolds as the smudge that covers Claire's memory is gradually, steadily wiped away, until finally she can understand the why and the how of her life.

Lark Smith is planning her fairytale wedding when in the blink of an eye, everything she's dreamed of is suddenly gone. That day, Lark decided the best way to deal with loss was to prevent others from ever having to. Five years later that goal of becoming a doctor is just within reach when she's fired. Now, getting back on track means making a deal with the devil. Well, not exactly, even if they do call renowned surgeon Lorenzo Santini "Dr Satan" behind his back. He'll use his influence to get her back in the program. But first, Lark has to pose as his significant other all summer.

Being one of the guys isn't all it's cracked up to be. So when journalist Chastity O'Neill returns to her hometown, she decides it's time to start working on some of those feminine wiles. While doing a story on local heroes, she meets a hunky doctor, and things start to look up. Now there's only one problem: Trevor Meade, her first love and the one man she's never quite gotten over. Yet the more time she spends with Dr. Perfect, the better Trevor looks!

Private detectives Luke, Lyle, and Debbie have seen the worst of the worst, but nothing will prepare them for the new danger they must face. After uncovering the corruption of former State Governor, Marva DeLonghi, and sending her to prison, the trio thought their work was done. But when Marva escapes and powerful crime lord Philipe Ruskov demands a favor, they are thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Isabelle, a woman in her 30s without any of the trappings of a grown-up life, has just been fired from her job at a San Francisco phone company. Returning to the midwestern suburb of her childhood, Standardsville, Illinois, she contends with her dating single mother, a neighbor who once appeared on The Honeymooners, and an ex-boyfriend.

The Last Kid Left begins when a car smashes into a sculpture of a giant cowgirl. The police find two bodies in the trunk. Nineteen-year-old Nick Toussaint Jr. is arrested for murder, and after details of the crime rip across the Internet, his 16-year-old girlfriend, Emily Portis - a sheltered teen who's been off the grid until now, her first romance coinciding with her first cell phone - is nearly consumed by a public hungry for every lurid detail, accurate or not.

When a young woman who calls herself Suzie Q. approaches Luke to find her missing cat, Luke takes the job and winds up getting hold of a Magic 8 Ball that correctly predicts the future and answers any question, so long as it has nothing to do with lotto picks or love.

Almost twenty-five years after the infamous art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - still the largest unsolved art theft in history - one of the stolen Degas paintings is delivered to the Boston studio of a young artist. Claire Roth has entered into a Faustian bargain with a powerful gallery owner by agreeing to forge the Degas in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But as she begins her work, she starts to suspect that this long-missing masterpiece - the very one that had been hanging at the Gardner for one hundred years - may itself be a forgery.

It's the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is on her way to a party. It's chilly enough out for her mink coat, and Manhattan is grittier now - her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl - but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents and parents-to-be while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak.

Lexi Stewart is a descendant of Alyssa MacInnes, one of the powerhouse women who created the MacInnes legacy. Lexi is lost. A young widow…well, young in her own eyes…Lexi's coming to terms with the fact that true passion was never in her cards - and certainly isn’t in her future. She’s equally sure she has nothing in common with Alyssa, her impressive ancestor, or Dara Doyle, the Irish spitfire who captured the oldest MacInnes son’s heart a century ago. Still, it’s a lovely story, one she’d love to live herself - but it’s a tale meant only for dreams.