Showing results by narrator "Whitney Dykhouse" in All Categories

My lips are white. Sixteen-year-old Sep stares into the bathroom mirror. It’s not some weird lipstick (she never wears lipstick). Her lips are just - white. In a panic, she digs up an old lipstick and smears it on her colorless lips. But soon, more and more white spots begin to bloom, spreading their chalky tendrils across her olive brown skin. Does she have a disease? Is she turning into some kind of freak?

Lawyer turned stay-at-home-mom Sarah Shaw is struggling to be present for her two young sons and law professor husband, three years after the death of their infant daughter. Then one day, walking in L.A., Sarah’s heart catches at the sight of a young homeless mother and toddler, and saving them becomes her secret, obsessive mission. When tragedy threatens them, Sarah discovers she is capable of deceptions and transgressions she never imagined. Her lies unleash a downward spiral that will threaten her marriage, family, and her sanity.

Eleven years ago, Hannah Hawkins’ parents disappeared while traveling abroad. Presumed dead, Hannah and her uncle are shocked when a letter from her mom arrives right after Hannah’s 16th birthday. By piecing together cryptic hints from the note and other clues left behind, Hannah realizes her parents disappeared while trying to find the mysterious Code of Enoch, an artifact they believed could hold the key to curing disease - or creating it. Hannah’s parents had been determined to destroy the code, no matter the cost.

Twelve years ago, Alyssa Rossi fled Louisiana under a cloud of scandal and criminal accusations. But her self-imposed exile in Italy comes to an abrupt end when she has to return to New Orleans for the sale of her jewelry company to an international conglomerate. There, she comes face-to-face with Clay Duvall, the duplicitous lover who betrayed her.

Everyone has a tiger inside them. . . It's the part of you that only comes out when you're about to be pushed off a cliff, poisoned in your family’s kitchen, framed for a crime, and anything else that awaits artist Cate Finley upon her homecoming. Back in the summer of 2000, having suffered enough under the iron fist of her older sister, Margaret, sixteen-year-old Cate raids the safe at her family's rural Arizona ranch and hops a bus for New York City, hoping to pursue an art career.

Grace was one paycheck from becoming a single mother-to-be on the streets, until she's offered the job of a lifetime: live-in maid for millionaires Naomi and Jack Hamilton. Grace doesn't belong in the Hamiltons' luxurious world of privilege, wealth, and power, but she willingly cleans the messes they make.

Professional organizer Crystal Ward has nothing against publicity—as long as it's the truth. But a local reporter is putting Crys in the headlines for her role in solving crimes, not clearing out clutter. Now she's receiving requests for services that aren't on her website, and the spotlight is wearing on her family.

What's it like to be a trail angel and can romance truly blossom from first meeting to marriage on the Pacific Crest Trail? How do trail names get bestowed and what does it mean when you find yourself roaring back at a mountain lion? How have climate change, technology, and the sheer number of hikers affected life on the PCT? Find the answers to all these questions, and so many more, in the diverse writings gathered in Crossing Paths, an anthology of stories and poems written by PCT hikers.

Even though Mindy hasn't updated the house she inherited from her grandmother, her house is favorite to hold Rom Com Movie Club, where she and her best friends since college gather to swoon over cheesy, unrealistic rom coms.

Sure, I hate how everyone was over the moon about her TikTok fame. And I suppose I got a little bit carried away with vengeance when she tried to ruin my life. But seriously, when my friend gave me that leather journal, I’d never had so much power in my life. It was intoxicating. Who wouldn’t have done what I did to Eva? Now everyone thinks that just because she vanished in the forest after a party, that I killed her. That the blood on the jackets is proof. Or the text messages. The slightly weird thing I had with Eva's dad. The fire.

Lydia Morgan spent the better part of 15 years avoiding Phillip Smythe out of resentment. Through her therapy, after a brutal attack, she now realizes he’s the only person who can help her move on. Having Lydia's full attention was something Phillip wasn’t used to—and neither were the rest of of their friends—but never having given up on her, he wasn’t about to walk away when she said she needed his help. Could the years of resentment simply be shrugged off, or would the deep secrets that Lydia still carries force Phillip to finally step away?

Once a month, for as long as they’d been friends, Lisa, Mindy, Ruby, and Tina gathered for Rom Com Movie Club night. Facial masks, nail polish, and wine could settle the world around them as they dished on movies that made them want to love—even if the premise of happily ever after seemed far-fetched. Lisa didn’t have much of an idea of what happily ever after was supposed to look like, but life had always thrown obstacles at her. She never considered it might throw a man her way, which would cause a rift with her best friend before her wedding.

The world whipped around her in a dizzying funnel of lights and shouts, people in uniforms pressing in from all directions. Noelle sat motionless in the street, barely able to breathe. His little body was too still. Too broken.

Olivia Dawson can’t seem to catch a break. Her boss is retiring and her immediate supervisor, an awful woman with a personal vendetta against her, looks to be getting his job. Her love life is in shambles, her best friend won’t shut the hell up about Star Trek, and her elderly neighbor won’t stop hitting her car with his pickup.

Carlos Keller was finally moving on. He'd asked Kathy to marry him, and now he could forever put behind him the disappointment of his failed first marriage to the only woman who ever held his heart, Madeline.

The rebels have been disbanded, their plans ruined. Betrayed by those she trusted most, Skylar finds herself herded, along with a small group of Earthlings, into a living museum - a human zoo - on the Kemyates' space station, subject to her captors' every whim. Any move Skylar makes could result in the extinction of her people - but giving in means losing any hope of freedom.

Seventeen-year-old Skylar has been haunted for as long as she can remember by fleeting yet powerful sensations that something is horribly wrong. But despite the visions of disaster that torment her, nothing ever happens, and Sky’s beginning to think she’s crazy. Then she meets a mysterious, otherworldly boy named Win and discovers the shocking truth her premonitions have tapped into: that our world no longer belongs to us.

Professional organizer Crystal Ward's latest client, her neighbor Roscoe Tremaine, is changing his will, an announcement that sets off an explosive reaction within his family. That same night, a gas leak ignites, destroying his house, killing him, and rocking the Ward family at its foundation. Her husband, Rick, is injured in the blast, so Crys hires Roscoe's former caregiver, Wink Keller, to help him recover after surgery. But trouble is just beginning. Both Crys and Wink are beneficiaries in Roscoe's will, and their alliance sends accusations flying from the Tremaines' side of the fence.

Maddie Fynn knew from the moment she laid eyes on Aiden Faraday that their destinies were intertwined. Born with the unique ability to see the exact date a person will die, Maddie is definitely an expert on destinies. She and Aiden have a deathdate exactly one day apart, far off in the future, sixty years from now. So how could it be that they wouldn't be destined to spend all those years together. But when Maddie gives birth to their baby girl, she sees immediately that her daughter's deathdate will be less than a year away, and there seems to be nothing she can do to prevent it.

Gwen is back with the Twelve, but she must redeem herself to the others and, more importantly, Lucifer himself. In order to prove herself, she must capture Berlin and Moscow, but there is a problem—there are still two Gargoyles left to destroy and they still have Collin, a half-demon, half-human who has the same powers as the demons.