Showing results by narrator "Stacy Gonzalez" in All Categories

On Christmas Eve, 85-year-old Miriam Caravasios steps onto the ice that surrounds her seaside estate on Maine's Mount Desert Island. As a younger woman, she used to steal out on winter nights to meet her lover, walking across the frozen reach to their secret meeting place. She knows the way—but not the year. Miriam, her mind clouded by dementia, doesn’t hear the snap of thin ice until it’s too late.

Right now, you are conscious energy manifested in physical form. You can learn how to release that energy from the physical body to venture into other realms. This guide will take you on an amazing journey through seven of the astral realms of energetic worlds you never imagined existed. Chapter by chapter, you will discover the limitless potential of the universe, and what lies beyond will be revealed. From the home of spirit guides to the masters of the multiverse, you will learn how to explore them all through soul travel.

I have a plan. A goal. It never occurred to me how sheltered I was until I played—and failed—a game of Never Have I Ever. Now, I have a list of firsts I want to experience. And there's only one person who can help me with it. Grayson is the complete opposite of me. Tattoos, dark hair, piercings. You name it, he's probably done it. And now I'm on the way to ask him to take my virginity and to show me his world, how he lives, how I can be like him.

In his introduction, guest editor S. A. Cosby observes that writing short stories is “a special skill that combines brevity with wit and cleverness and the hint of the existential malaise that imbues crime fiction with its gravitas.” The stories in this collection overflow with gravitas in the most unexpected ways: a cryptic note left on a windshield, a murder for hire meets a game of Mouse Trap, a swipe right on a dating app goes horribly wrong.

Journalist Jazmine Prado has always believed that timing is everything. So when her magazine reveals plans to lay off writers as they pivot to video content, she'll do whatever it takes to stay on the pay roll. Like agree to take part in the magazine's first web series, Our Big Day, chronicling her Cancún wedding to her gorgeous, internet-famous fiance, Hudson Taylor. It's not the way fiercely private Jaz envisioned getting married. But at least she'll keep her job . . . right?

Emi Vargas, whose parents helped save the world, is tired of being told how lucky she is to have been born after the climate crisis. But following the public assassination of a dozen climate criminals, Emi’s mother, Kristina, disappears as a possible suspect, and Emi’s illusions of utopia are shattered. A determined Emi and her father, Larch, journey from their home in Nuuk, Greenland to New York City, now a lightly populated storm-surge outpost built from the ruins of the former metropolis. But they aren’t the only ones looking for Kristina.

At eighteen, Soledad couldn't get away fast enough from her contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights. Two years later, she's an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up. But when Tia Gorda calls with the news that Soledad's mother has lapsed into an emotional coma, she insists that Soledad's return is the only cure. Fighting the memories of open hydrants, leering men, and slick-skinned teen girls with raunchy mouths and snapping gum, Soledad moves home to West 164th Street.

Maggie Carpenter is a small-town Southern girl who’s never been kissed. She’s ready for a change—and to leave her ordinary life and a failed attempt to get into Harvard behind. She accepts a scholarship to the International School in London, where she’s suddenly mingling with the privileged offspring of diplomats and world leaders.

One hot summer night, Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. Their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes suspects it's something else—something far more ancient and powerful.

Dr. Estevez guides artists at all levels and in all disciplines to build a creative life that resonates deeply with their core values, and to cultivate an artistic practice that is joyful and sustainable. She shares her discoveries and insightful coaching exercises that stem from the belief that when we are connected to what resonates deeply within us, the "tortured artist" trope simply doesn't hold. By looking at creative work through a new lens, she provides us a mean to begin—or to begin again—in sustaining ways.

Washington Territory, 1888. With contacts on the docks and in the railroad, and with a buyers' market funneling product their way, Alma Rosales and her opium-smuggling crew are making a fortune. They spend their days moving product and their nights at the Monte Carlo, the center of Tacoma's queer scene, where skirts and trousers don't signify and everyone's free to suit themselves.

Uncle Chip Proctor believes he has the hang of this raising-kids thing. Settling into his role as the human stay-at-home dad for two enchanted wards, the former financial exec is still learning to navigate a newly discovered world. But when the little future queen enters first grade, he’s alarmed when his partner-in-parenthood spots a dangerous Fae hunter on the prowl.

When the adults of Brockton, Connecticut, morphed into bloodthirsty monsters nine months ago, the students at Jefferson High barricaded themselves inside their school. Now eighteen-year-old Kay is trying to keep her classmates from starving. Kay has no poker face and can't keep her mouth shut, so when she learns a secret that threatens the delicate power balance at Jefferson, she's dragged out of the school in a secret assassination attempt.

Fourteen-year-old Renata Santiago is the most powerful godborn of them all, a bruja with a unique combination of DNA. The Mexica blood from her dad's side gives her the ability to manipulate shadows. Her mom Pacific, a Maya goddess, gifted her a magical rope that controls time, and Ren recently used it to save a few gods from getting stuck forever in 1987. She brought them back to the present, but her BFF Ah Puch, the once fearsome god of death, darkness, and destruction, is now a teenager with no divine powers.

Rosa Galvez’s attraction to Officer Wyatt Townsend is as powerful as the moon’s pull on the tides. But with her past, Rosa knows better than to act on her feelings. When Wyatt and his adorable son become Brambleberry House’s newest tenants, Rosa finds her resolve slipping. Her solo life slowly becomes a sun-filled family adventure - until dark secrets threaten to break like a summer storm.

Gillian Armstead-Bancroft—Pride of the East Side and once-perfect bruja, wife, and mother—is going to spend her summer getting good at being bad. The first time she left Freedom, Kansas, behind, she did it by doing everything right. This time, she’ll hide from the large Mexican American family welcoming her home and work in secret to break the curse that’s erased her magical life. Only by doing it all wrong can Gillian get herself and her two children away from the ghosts of her hometown by summer’s end.

Charles Henderson Chip Proctors life is filled with cash, supermodels, and success. Enjoying the fast lane of the wealthy elite, the prominent NY investment executive can't believe it when his brother and sister-in-law die in a car crash that makes him guardian of their children. And it just gets worse after he discovers his four-year-old niece and six-month-old nephew are the secret half-Fae heirs to an enchanted throne.

Cari Dix didn't know her whole life was a lie; she only knew she didn't belong here. Growing up with the most ordinary parents ever, all Cari wanted was a life of adventure and a little bit of fun. When she discovers an old, restored computer from her father's past, Cari stumbles into a fantasy game world she'd always thought a part of her childhood imagination. Taking her combat fencing skills with her, she sets out to explore a world her parents said didn't exist.

October 2021. Whitney Lyn Allen’s happiness came screeching to a standstill. Stunned by her husband Ryan's rare allergic reaction to a bee sting, the 35-year-old felt hopeless after Ryan succumbed to irreversible brain damage. With his unexpected death leaving a massive gap in their close-knit family, she feared she would never be enough to raise their two young boys.

In the spring of 2018, Guatemalan American high school senior Milagros "Millie" Vargas knows her life is about to change. She's lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, ever since her parents sought asylum there when she was a baby. Now a citizen, Millie devotes herself to school and caring for her younger siblings while her mom works as a housekeeper for the wealthy Wheeler family. With college on the horizon, Millie is torn between attending her dream school and staying close to home, where she knows she's needed.