Showing results by narrator "Melissa" in All Categories

With the spirit of the holidays wafting through the Beacon Bakeshop, Lindsey thinks she has the recipe for the sweetest Christmas ever - winning the town-wide cookie bake-off. Low on staff and bombarded by visits from family, Lindsey can barely meet demands at work, let alone summon the confidence to face fierce competition.... Self-appointed Christmas know-it-all Felicity Stewart is determined to take the top spot in the bake-off, and she's not afraid to dump a little coal in everyone's stocking to do it.

Sobering is the story of an insecure teenager turned Liverpudlian party girl, schoolteacher turned alcoholic and now recovering alcoholic turned award-winning podcaster. Melissa’s story is as dramatic as her unique voice, but her message is universal: mental health issues often drive vulnerable people to addiction, and working on mental health and personal development can help recovery.

The electrifying first novel in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series.

As the only woman homicide inspector in San Francisco, Lindsay Boxer has to be tough. But nothing has prepared her for the honeymoon murders.

A brutal maniac begins a killing spree - slaughtering newlywed couples - and Lindsay takes on the case. She is sickened by the deaths, but her determination to bring the murderer to justice is threatened by personal tragedy.

Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox-Jewish woman intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam - by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family - and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk and honey.

At the psychologist's clinic of an NHS hospital, Noah needs help with procrastination, Bill compulsively lies, Steph is coping with rejection and their therapist, Dr Natalie, is dealing with her own emotional crisis, breathing into a paper bag between patient sessions. In this lively and honest memoir of training to be a psychotherapist, we meet the patients grappling with mental health issues, from OCD and addiction to self-deception and self-harming, and see how Dr Natalie helps them understand and change these attempts to self-soothe.

Summer Taft is a 27-year-old billionaire who founded a tech start-up with her brother while she was still in college. As that company’s CEO, she feels stuck and underappreciated. She also has to take care of the company while her brother goes off exploring the world, leaving her holding the bag. The company recently opened an office in Chicago, where Summer has met some new friends. As Summer decides to uproot her life and make the move to Chicago, she meets Lena.

Comparisonitis is a contagious, socially transmitted condition that occurs when you compare yourself to others so frequently and fiercely that you're left paralysed, with your confidence in tatters and your self-worth plummeting. It may sound trivial, but this affliction can have serious adverse effects on our mental health, leading to depression, anxiety, overthinking and regret. To make matters worse, our comparison culture is only expanding. Thanks to social media, we have more opportunities to compare ourselves than ever before, and even kids are falling into the trap.

Shortly after marrying her soulmate and the birth of their son, the lies begin. First, it's the phone calls, always held in secret, always deleted from his phone. Then it's his odd disappearances and the little nagging voice in her head screaming: Something is not right. When Palmer follows her gut - and her husband - she catches him with an unfamiliar woman in the park and in his biggest lie thus far. Learning from her past, she hatches a plan to protect herself and their child.

Grace Lawson is living a happy, straightforward life in the suburbs with her husband, Jack, and two young children. But that security is about to come to a brutal end. For when Grace picks up a set of holiday snaps, amongst them is one shot that doesn't fit: a faded image of a life that Grace doesn't recognise and of her husband as she never knew him.

Imagine searching your whole life for answers, and then finally finding them. A part of you is excited to know the truth. Another part of you is damaged, because you realize why it was so hard to learn answers. Secrets aren't usually very pretty. In the midst of all of it, the four monsters I've gotten too attached to are about to be reunited with the one woman they all once loved so deeply that they sacrificed everything for an eternity with her. They said they hated Arion, but I never see hatred when they're around him. I see frustration, resentment, anger, and pain, never hatred.

When I was three years old, I was found homeless in the woods, alone and feral. When asked how I survived all of those years by myself, I had one answer: the Shadow Man. I have no memory of that time. No memory of anything, really, before the accident. I rely on stories from my fathers about this supposed imaginary friend. Got into a fight at school? The Shadow Man made me. Stole from a store? He forced me to. Snuck out of the house? He came with me.

We may not realize it consciously, but negative feelings can be as toxic as physical poisons, wearing on us and causing depression, illness, and burnout. But how can we keep ourselves safe in a world too often ruled by resentment, jealousy, rage, and stress?

After a career on Wall Street, Lindsey is making a different kind of dough in a pretty lakeside village, and the upcoming blueberry festival—including the pie-eating contest her bakery is hosting—is the highlight of the summer. But soon Beacon Harbor runs into a patch of trouble. A local real estate agent gets pranked. A parade float gets pelted with water balloons. It's all laughed off until the stunts start escalating—and looking more like sabotage.

The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S. M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved.

Lola Barnes only wants one thing: to get her life under control. No more chasing alphas who abuse and toss away betas like her. No more hiding in her cousin’s apartment licking wounds that won’t heal. Armed with her dream job and her less than dreamy apartment, Lola is ready to start a new chapter of her life without alphas. But that’s easier said than done when one stumbling incident after another leads Lola closer to an alluring pack of captivating men.

Few will hire competitive rider, Viola Parker, since the famous jumper, Wastrel, crashed to his death with her aboard. Not only that, her attitude just landed her out of work...again. She can barely afford her whipped-cream-in-a-can addiction. Now, before she's 30, she must keep a job for one year and receive a glowing letter of recommendation to get a surprise trust fund set up by her absentee parents. A trust fund that could represent freedom and independence - or might be worth nothing.

Best-selling lesbian romance author Harper Bliss has collected all the short stories she has penned over the years. You can find all 28 of them in this sizzling hot collection. You will encounter women of all ages, from all over the world, and practicing a myriad of professions - ranging from police officers to rock band singers and from therapists to personal trainers.

Data analyst Cassie Howard may be brilliant (and, okay, a little awkward), but she's worked hard to get where she is. She definitely doesn't need some sexy new analyst coming in and taking credit for her work. Or the inappropriate thoughts that keep popping out of her mouth she'd rather he not hear. For undercover FBI Agent Drew Kerrigan, computers have always made more sense than people, but he'd better develop some slick social skills in a hurry if he's going to win over the too-tantalizing-for-his-sanity Cassie.

Magic can be used to find love, manifest prosperity, and protect yourself and those you love. But learning about magic has been a daunting task—until now. The Spell Book for Beginners is a gentle but thorough introduction to magic and will teach you everything you need to get started. This 3-in-1 book combines the contents of Bridget Bishop's The Candle Magic Spell Book, The Crystal Magic Spell Book, and The Herb Magic Spell Book.

Joan Rivers was known all over the world - from the Palace Theater to Buckingham Palace, from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the footlights of Broadway, from the days of talkies to hosting talk shows. But there was only one person who knew Joan intimately, one person who the authorities would call when she got a little out of hand. Her daughter and best friend, Melissa.