Showing results by narrator "Cat Gould" in All Categories

Raised by a mad mother and a half-mad sister, abandoned by her father, Praxis Duveen is a master of the art of survival. Her life, indeed, has been full: two marriages, unsuccessful; a brief but profitable career as a prostitute; a little dabbling in incest; a mercy killing; and an inadvertent reign as both apostle and victim of the women's movement. Buffeted and battered by life, Praxis has survived with energy and humor intact.

City girl Luce May's first year out of high school has been the worst. When she escapes her turbulent life in Sydney to start over at a university in the middle of nowhere, the last thing she wants is anyone in her new life to know of her past. Especially that to escape her chaotic, alcoholic mother, Luce also had to abandon her teenage sister. As Luce slowly starts to find another version of herself in this place, she also finds a new family in her eclectic group of friends.

What's wrong with preferring domestic assistants with feminine personalities? We like our assistants to conform to gender stereotypes - so what? For one thing, Strengers and Kennedy remind us, the design of gendered devices reinscribes outdated and unfounded stereotypes. Strengers and Kennedy offer a Smart Wife "manifesta", proposing a rebooted Smart Wife that would promote a revaluing of femininity in society in all her glorious diversity.

At a time when we suffer from unprecedented stress, comparison-itis and self-doubt, author Janine Garner asks us to slow down and turn our focus inward. She challenges you to take ownership of who you are and who you want to become, to rise above limitations, and unleash your brilliance within.

A life-threatening incident had changed Mac Donovan’s life. Now restricted to desk duties, she was focusing on recovery and returning to her old job. She also knew she had to make the break from a dangerous secret relationship. On the positive side, she was seeing more of her friends and realizing how much she’d missed them. Her best friend, Dee, didn’t want Mac to move on alone and informed Mac she knew someone who would be just right for her. Mac wanted no such complications.

Engaged by proxy to a man she’s never met, Lady Daintry Tarrant is dismayed when the war hero returns, introducing himself as her fiancé, Lord Penthorpe. She cherishes her independence and has turned away many suitors, but this one she must marry. Penthorpe is completely captivated by Lady Daintry - but he’s not who he claims to be. Penthorpe and Lord Gideon Deverill fought together at the battle of Waterloo, and when Penthorpe fell, Gideon assumed his identity in order to see the beautiful Lady Daintry. Gideon knows there’s bad blood between Lady Daintry’s family and his own, but he’s smitten....

It is Spring, 1874, and 20-year-old Sherlock Holmes is a lonely, mopey, friendless Oxford student. He attends classes and spends countless solitary hours conducting chemical experiments, reading, and playing his violin. Suddenly, his life changes because of a serendipitous moment on campus. While walking on the grounds of the university and practicing fencing moves with his foil, he encounters Victor Trevor and his sweetheart, Poppy Stamford, younger sister of the man who will one day introduce Sherlock to Dr. John Watson.

On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to the police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn't know.

Why did Elon Musk feel compelled to send a red Tesla into space? What accounts for the multiple rocket-themed playgrounds constructed after the Russians launched Sputnik? Gorman - affectionately known as "Dr Space Junk" - takes listeners on a journey through the solar system and beyond, deploying space artifacts, historical explorations, and even the occasional cocktail recipe in search of the ways that we make space meaningful. Engaging and erudite, Gorman recounts her background as a (nonspace) archaeologist and how she became interested in space artifacts.

It was 1954 in a construction camp for a hydroelectric dam in the remote Tasmanian highlands, where Bojan Buloh had brought his family to start a new life away from Slovenia, the privations of war, and refugee settlements. One night Bojan's wife walked off into a blizzard, never to return - leaving Bojan to drink too much to quiet his ghosts and to care for his three-year-old daughter, Sonja, alone.

In this beguiling, incisive book, critically acclaimed writer Katherine Angel examines the place of fathers in contemporary culture with her characteristic mix of boldness and nuance, asking how the mixture of love and hatred we feel toward our fathers—and patriarchal father figures—can be turned into a relationship that is generative rather than destructive.

In 1947 Tilly’s grandmother bought an island. Its name is Småhølmene and it sits just off the coast of Norway. At first sight, the island seems bare, hardly more than a collection of rocks rising determinedly out of the water. Glittering and bittersweet, Island Summers lovingly portrays three generations of women and the island that became so irrevocably part of their lives. Now Mor-mor’s great-grandchildren are taking their turn, enjoying endless summers on Småhølmene, continuing the story that was begun over 50 years ago.

In one vicious night, Kirby Brown's world is torn apart. Her best friend is dead, killed by a madman who is now after Kirby, and she has no idea why. When the police prove incapable of protecting Kirby, she has no choice but to trust a mysterious stranger. And while she finds herself inexplicably drawn to him, she fears the strange abilities he wields. An investigator for the Damask Circle, Doyle Fitzgerald, has come to Melbourne, Australia, to hunt down a killer.

When her father auctions her off to pay his gambling debts, Melissa Seacourt vows that she will be no man's bought bride. Desperate to escape her fate shackled to someone she could never love, Melissa instead is forced to honor and obey the seductive stranger who comes to her rescue.

I love you so much, Stella Hogan. You are the best part of my day. Vincent Booth's whole life has been one of responsibility, from his years in the military leading his men through battle to being president of the his club, the Wounded Souls. But with responsibility comes guilt. Death haunts him. To keep his family safe, he has to stay strong, but the club's beautiful cook could derail him. She has the power to bring him to his knees. He can't let her, can he? Will his deepest secret be his ultimate failure? Or can he trust Stella to be the light in his darkness?

While you might have the appearance of absolute success in everything you do, scratch below the surface the reality is that you are freaking out, even just a little. You have so many balls in the air that the juggle is becoming increasingly hard to sustain. You need to start doing things differently because trying to do it all represents a huge risk to your ongoing success and well being. This book teaches you how to successfully juggle your two lives and to be guilt-free, with a proven five-step process to help you identify and harness hours of lost time on the home front.

Those words changed my life forever...just not in the way it would for most. I had it all until one fateful evening transformed my life in ways I never imagined. Nine months later, I move to a sleepy little town, hoping to escape the demons of my past. As I attempt to claim back my life, Jude Montgomery enters my world, and things begin to change. I thought running would appease the nightmares, but I soon discover my past won't let go. Things are not what they seem, and I begin to question the world as I know it.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a longstanding problem that has increasingly come to the forefront of international and national policy debates and news. Yet, while we frequently read or learn about particular experiences or incidents of VAWG, we are often unaware of the full picture. Author Jacqui True provides an expansive frame for understanding VAWG in this book.

How does a mother cope when she is forced to walk away from her three children and never see them again? That is what happened to JB's mother, Myrtle. Eventually, rescued from her despair by tall, dark, and handsome George Rowley, who fell in love with her, Myrtle started a new life and had seven more children. She buried the grief of losing her first children deep within and kept her pain secret. JB and her siblings were unaware of the existence of Myrtle's first three children until after she died.

When Sylvia Jensen-Graham travels to London to inform her country neighbor, the new Earl of Greyfalcon, that his recently widowed mama needs him, she little realizes that she'll need to employ trickery just to see the Earl. But the Dowager Countess's complaints about her health and her rakish son have been driving Sylvia to distraction, so she poses as a messenger and boldly enters Greyfalcon's club. He unmasks her but soon begins minding his affairs - and Sylvia's - until Sylvia fears that she'll need rescuing from the consequences of her own good deed.