Showing results by narrator "Alyssa Bresnahan" in All Categories

The Maritime Unit had landed in paradise. After a terrifying 10-year transit from Solar System aboard the Ashanti, the small band of oceanographers and marine scientists were finally settled. Perched on a reef five hundred kilometers out from shore, they were about to embark on the first exploration of Donovan's seas. For the 22 adults and nine children, everything is new, exciting, and filled with wonder as they discover dazzling sea creatures, stunning plant life, and fascinating organisms. But Donovan is never what it seems

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful boyfriend, Cat decides that she needs a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry.” But when the budding social influencer finally gives in to impulse, buying a Burmese python from a local pet shop, she sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire events that culminates in one of the most memorable denouements in recent fiction, one that ensnares her entire family, from her eco-obsessed parents, Ottilie and Frank, to her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd.

She left, heavily weighted with secrets. But God reveals all things, in His timing. And He redeems them. Suzanne Zimmerman was only 17 and pregnant when her shamed mother quietly sent her away from their Old Order Mennonite community in Kansas. With her old home, family, and first love firmly behind her, Suzanne moved to Indiana, became a nurse, and raised a daughter, Alexa, on her own. Now, nearly 20 years later, an unexpected letter arrives from Kansas.

Hundreds of years after a plague-induced apocalypse collapsed civilization back to iron and horsepower, the Hyllises have a genetic tendency to inherit “talents” such as telekinesis, teleportation, and telepathy. Though they aren’t powerful talents, they help the Hyllises diagnose and treat the underlying causes of many illnesses in their role as healers. In this book, their town of Clancy Vail is struck by the plague. In order to save thousands of lives, they must master and use the knowledge of epidemiology contained in their copies of the ancients’ books.

Many years ago, Jenny’s grandfather had been captain of the brig Amaryllis, sunk at sea during a terrible storm. Gram and Jenny’s father had stood on a bluff overlooking the sea, and watched in silent horror as the handsome ship was swallowed by merciless, churning waters. After that, Jenny’s father couldn’t get away from the sea fast enough. But Gram had stayed behind. Every night since the storm - for 30 years - Gram has combed the beach for a sign from her dead husband. Now, her ankle sprained, she needs Jenny to search for her. Every evening the two of them wander down to the shore and Jenny scans the sand for her grandmother.

It's 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island's women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is Pastor Silas, a widower with two wild young daughters, Beata and Ulrika. The sisters are outcasts: imaginative, oppositional, increasingly obsessed with the lore and legend of the island's dark past and their absent mother, whom their father refuses to speak of. As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone.

Best-selling author Kristen Heitzmann has inspired millions of fans with her colorful novels of Colorado, which include Honor's Pledge. In A Rush of Wings, a young woman seeking to escape her past finds refuge, romance, and a renewed faith high in the Rocky Mountains.

Three years after Ashanti spaced for Solar System, Turalon reappears in the Donovanian sky. The Corporation has returned. Donovan’s wealth is a lure for the powerful families who control the Board. Unburdened by morals, they are bringing their battle for supremacy to Port Authority and a showdown that could tear The Corporation apart.

Twenty-two-year-old Militine Scott is in training at the Madison Bridal School in Seattle, yet she has no intention of pursuing marriage. What respectable man would have her? But she has found the school provides the perfect opportunity to keep her unsavory past hidden.

Novelist Sheri Reynolds weaves lyrical prose and folksy dialogue into her spellbinding tales. The Rapture of Canaan, a New York Times best-seller, is the moving story of a teenaged girl clashing with her harshly controlled world. Growing up in a closed religious community deep in the rural South, 15-year-old Ninah Huff painstakingly and obediently follows her church’s many rules—she knows that public humiliation follows the smallest transgression

For a group of four New York friends, the past decade has been largely defined by marriage and motherhood. Educated and reared to believe that they would conquer the world, they then left prestigious jobs to stay home with their babies. What was meant to be a temporary leave of absence has lasted a decade. Now, at age 40, with the halcyon days of young motherhood behind them and without professions to define them, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen face a life that is not what they were brought up to expect but seems to be the one they have chosen.

It starts with a telegram. MGM wires young Lucille LeSueur to tell her that she's been placed under contract at a princely $75 a week, and is expected to report immediately to Hollywood, California. A fresh-faced 17-year-old with big eyes and an air of elegance, she would go on to become one of the greatest stars in Hollywood history: the fabulous Joan Crawford. Through four marriages, countless cocktail parties and more than 100 appearances in film and television, Joan lived the life of a legend from the first day she stepped onto the back lot.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman, trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's carer and her day job as a secretary at the prison. When the charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship.

The unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A series of shocking murders has occurred, the victims far too innocent and defenseless. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's a difficult case that just keeps getting harder. Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead.

Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator of The Lace Reader, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations. But the disappearance of two women brings Towner home to Salem and the truth about the death of her twin sister to light.

Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. Yet Ursa’s powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her son, Ray, and his pregnant lover, Cherry, to flee their home for Los Angeles and reinvent themselves far from Ursa’s insidious influence.

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon's Skookum National Forest. She would be eight years old now - if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder", Naomi is their last hope.

Waking on her tenth birthday, Ellen finds a silver crown on the pillow beside her. She wonders who might have given it to her. But before she can find out, her house goes up in flames, and her family disappears. Forced on a cross-country quest, Ellen flees deadly agents who want to grab the power of the silver crown for themselves.

Strong telepath Elle Drake has gone missing. Even her six magical sisters cannot find her. They all agree that she is alive and something terrible must have happened or she would have contacted them. Jackson Deveau, a deputy sheriff in the small village of Sea Haven, off the northern California coast, has known that Elle is destined for him. When she disappears, he gathers with his friends, Jonas Harrington and Ilya Prakenskii, and Elle's sisters to find her and bring her safely home.