Showing results by narrator "Natalie Naudus" in All Categories

A month before graduating from Willowgrove Christian Academy, the principal’s perfect daughter, prom queen Shara Wheeler, kisses Chloe Green and vanishes. On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s long-time sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad-boy neighbour with a crush. Thrown into an unlikely alliance, Chloe, Smith and Rory follow Shara’s trail of annoyingly cryptic clues, and Chloe starts to suspect that there might be more to this small town—and to Shara—than she thought.

Lin Sukai has won her first victory as Emperor, but the future of the Phoenix Empire hangs in the balance - and Lin is dangerously short of allies. As her own governors plot treason, the Shardless Few renew hostilities. Worse still, Lin discovers her old nemesis Nisong has joined forces with the rogue Alanga, Ragan. Both seek her death. Yet hopes lies in history. Legend tells of seven mythic swords, forged in centuries past. If Lin can find them before her enemies, she may yet be able to turn the tide. If she fails, the Sukai dynasty - and the entire empire - will fall.

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty plain, a seer shows two children their fates. For a family’s eighth-born son, there’s greatness. For the second daughter, nothing. In 1345, China lies restless under harsh Mongol rule. And when a bandit raid wipes out their home, the two children must somehow survive. Zhu Chongba despairs and gives in. But the girl resolves to overcome her destiny. So she takes her dead brother's identity and begins her journey. Can Zhu escape what’s written in the stars, as rebellion sweeps the land?

Moving to New York City is supposed to prove cynical twenty-three-year-old August right: magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist. But then, she meets this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane is displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help Jane.

For decades Meditation: The First and Last Freedom has been the essential guide to meditation and Osho meditation techniques. Developed specifically for a contemporary audience, this foundational guide shows that meditation need not be a specific “spiritual discipline” that is set apart from the real world. Rather, in essence, it is simply the art of becoming aware of what is going on inside and around us and developing the capacity to respond creatively to whatever comes our way.

As an FBI agent, she specialized in hunting America’s most elite thieves. Now, she’s become one of them. Blair Morgan’s world is in shambles. After being used as a scapegoat by a corrupt former boss, she is unceremoniously fired from the FBI. Now, with her reputation, pride, and years of service stripped away, Blair just wants to start over. But when a chance date turns into a mysterious job offer, her past comes crashing back to haunt her. In a flash, Blair becomes entangled in a high stakes bank heist.

Through blood and sacrifice, Amora Montara has conquered a rebellion and taken her rightful place as queen of Visidia. Now, with the islands in turmoil and the people questioning her authority, Amora cannot allow anyone to see her weaknesses. No one can know about the curse in her bloodline. No one can know that she’s lost her magic. No one can know the truth about the boy who holds the missing half of her soul.

It's summertime and 17-year-old Coley is alone, again. Forced to move to middle of nowhere Oregon after losing her mother, she is in no position to risk her already fragile heart. But when she meets Sonya, the attraction is immediate. Coley worries she isn't worthy of love. Up until now, everyone she's loved has left her. And Sonya's never been with a girl before. What if by opening her heart, Coley's risking it all?

Shattered by her sister's murder, Princess Ophir's gift for fire magic spirals in her grief, threatening to incinerate the castle. That is until mysterious siren Dwyn arrives from the sea, pledging both assistance and something more. They work to quench Ophir's flames, all the while Dwyn's longtime rival watches from the shadows. Tyr, who has tracked Dwyn's abilities across the continent now finds himself embroiled in a sinister competition with her for Ophir's heart.

So many stories begin the same way: With a prophecy. A chosen one. And the inevitable quest to slay a villain, save the kingdom, and fulfill a grand destiny. But this is not that kind of story. It does begin with a prophecy: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom. And that prophecy did anoint a hero, Jian, raised since birth in luxury and splendor, and celebrated before he has won a single battle.

The first issue in the second century of Weird Tales features a new HELLBOY story by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. Editor Jonathan Maberry has built a collection of cosmic horror that will destabilize your worldview.

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Cameron has lost her spark. After an embarrassing run-in with her ex-boyfriend, she’s told that she needs to get back out there and take risks. What she doesn't expect is to be transported to Regency England! Lucy Sinclair has her own problems – stifled by her father and trying to avoid an unwanted marriage proposal – when Audrey lands into her life, claiming to be from two hundred years in the future, it's a welcome distraction. While the girls try to understand what’s happening and how to send Audrey home, their sparks make a comeback in a most unexpected way.

The tournament is past, the Inner Sect achieved, and Ling Qi has chosen the path of her life going forward. Retainer to the heir of the province, an absurd step up from a girl who lived on the street a year before. Now she faces a strange prospect, peace. There are no great tournaments in her immediate future, no desperate battles to maintain her station. Formal duels and skill challenges just aren't the same. But she has much to learn, and now that she has proven herself, the Argent Peak Sect has much to teach an inner disciple.

Liyen, the heir to the mortal kingdom of Tianxia, has been taught that her most important duty is to serve the immortal Queen of the Golden Desert, who rescued them from the shadowy Wuxin. Since then, Tianxia was bound in service to the immortals. But when her grandfather steals a magical flower from the queen to cure Liyen from a vicious poison, the powerful God of War is sent to attack Tianxia, plunging it into chaos.

Since the dawn of humankind, mental illness has been one of our greatest causes of suffering as a species. But for the majority of our history, its causes have remained a mystery. Professor Karl Deisseroth shares his breakthrough discovery, optogenetics, a biological technique that allows us to decipher the brain's inner workings using light. With moving and revelatory stories from both personal and professional experience, he reveals what mental illnesses really are, why we suffer from them and the unexpected role they have played in our evolution.

Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible—actually invisible. When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price.

A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Many highly successful people are backed long before they are qualified. We tend to view these people as lucky. But the decision to back them is neither an accident nor a mistake and rarely the result of good luck. Drawing from his own business experience, countless interviews with some of tech's biggest innovators and compelling case studies of classic success stories such as Howard Schultz and Elon Musk, Gupta breaks down the qualities of backable people.

Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love. But then Stevie has a terrible fall and the last two years of her life are erased overnight. Suddenly Stevie finds herself in a life she doesn’t quite understand – she’s estranged from her parents, drifting away from her friends and dating a boy she can’t remember crushing on.

The Mad Thinker, with the aid of the Red Ghost and his Super Apes, has hatched a worldwide conspiracy. He has placed lifelike duplicates of hundreds of key people throughout the world - including Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four! The remaining members of the Fantastic Four must work frantically to uncover the Thinker.