Showing results by narrator "Thérèse Plummer" in All Categories

Alice and her husband Jake own a barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas. Hardworking and popular in their community, they have a loving marriage and thriving business, but Alice still feels that something is missing, lying just beyond reach. Carla is a strong-willed young girl who's had to grow up fast, acting as caretaker to her six-year-old brother Junior. Years ago, her mother left the family behind in Honduras to make the arduous, illegal journey to Texas.

Thirty years in the future, when AI is so advanced that humans live side by side with cognizant robots called Artificials, Kestrel Hathaway must come to terms not just with what machines know, but what they believe. Soon after experiencing a personal tragedy, Kestrel witnesses a terrorist attack and is drawn into a world of conspiracies and lies that she and Jordan, her Artificial, have to untangle. With a second, more brutal attack looming on the horizon, their best chance of stopping it is teaming up with federal counterterrorism agent Nick Vernon.

At 49, famed Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales was nursing a broken heart and wondering, “How did I wind up alone?” On the advice of a young friend, she downloaded Tinder, then a brand-new dating app. What followed was a raucous ride through the world of online dating. Sales, an award-winning journalist and single mom, became a leading critic of the online dating industry, reporting and writing articles and making her directorial debut with the HBO documentary Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age. Meanwhile, she was dating a series of younger men.

In Russia, in the summer of 1914, as war with Germany looms and the czar's army tightens its grip on the local Jewish community, Miri Abramov and her brilliant physicist brother, Vanya, are facing an impossible decision. Since their parents drowned fleeing to America, Miri and Vanya have been raised by their babushka, a famous matchmaker who has taught them to protect themselves at all costs: to fight, to kill if necessary, and always to have an escape plan. But can they bear to leave the homeland that has given them so much?

Stella Ainsley leaves poverty behind when she quits her engineering job aboard the Stalwart to become a governess on a private ship. On the Rochester, there’s no water ration, more books than one person could devour in a lifetime, and an AI who seems more friend than robot. But no one warned Stella that the ship seems to be haunted, nor that it may be involved in a conspiracy that could topple the entire interstellar fleet.

From the outside, Rebecca Wright had an enviable life, and she enjoyed that envy. She had a beautiful house, handsome husband, and a no-limit credit card. What she didn't have was empathy. But, it's never too late in Middle Falls. A lesson that isn't learned in one lifetime can be learned in the next, or the next. Rebecca may need every chance she can get.

One of 12 children raised in a shack in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Dolly Parton grew to become an international superstar. She is a reflection of the American dream, a role model for the ages, and a mentor to a whole new generation of entertainers. There is much to be learned from her unique brand, her big heart and spirituality, her grit and work ethic, which prompt the question, "What Would Dolly Do?" This lively collection - part biography, part inspiration, part words of wisdom and life lessons - highlights the very best of the "Dolly Mama".

Brilliant heart surgeon Suzette Kendall is stunned when Hyland, her husband of 15 years, admits his yearning for a child. From the beginning they'd decided that having children was not an option, as Suzette feared passing along the genes that landed her mother in a mental institution. But Hyland proposes a different idea: a baby via surrogate. Suzette agrees, and what follows is a whirlwind of candidate selections, hospital visits, and Suzette's doubts over whether she's made the right decision.

Critically acclaimed author Kathryn Cushman explores difficult social issues. Here, she tackles the child vaccination debate in a gripping portrait of life’s uncertainties. At her sister’s insistence, Grace Graham returns to backwoods Shoal Creek, Tennessee, with her four-year-old son in tow. As Grace struggles to reconnect with her estranged father, her unvaccinated son becomes ground-zero for a measles outbreak. But should she take her son and run—or stay and help?

Creatocracy takes everything you thought you knew about pilgrims and their plainly puritanical sensibilities, flips it on its head, throws glitter on it, sets it to a flashy pop score, then throws it a big coming out party. In a movie version of this American origin story, Baz Luhrmann would be calling all the shots. Elizabeth Wurtzel has masterfully written a crash course in American history and the arts, wise and witty, full of humor and insight. This is pop patriotism in book form.

We are in the middle of a cultural revolution, where the spectrum of gender and sexual identities is seemingly unlimited. So when author and journalist Lisa Selin Davis's six-year-old daughter first called herself a "tomboy", Davis was hesitant. Her child favored sweatpants and T-shirts over anything pink or princess-themed, just like the sporty, skinned-kneed girls Davis had played with as a kid.

When Gwen Lacrosse learns her mother has taken in the famous novelist Luke Powers as a boarder, she immediately catches a flight from New York to her hometown just outside New Orleans. Convinced the reputed womanizing author is going to break her mother’s heart, Gwen wants him gone. But when Luke turns his skills with words and seduction on Gwen, she finds her will collapsing under the weight of her growing desire.

What happens when The Firm meets Anita Blake? You get the Halls of Power - our modern world, but twisted. Law, finance, the military, and politics are under the sway of long-lived vampires, werewolves, and the elven Alfar. Humans make the best of rule by “the Spooks”, and contend among themselves to affiliate with the powers-that-be, in order to avoid becoming their prey. Very loyal humans are rewarded with power over other women and men. Very lucky humans are selected to join the vampires.

When Quinn Langston’s her best friend unexpectedly passes away, Quinn knows she'll do anything to protect Brooke’s three-year-old daughter, Lily, and her grandmother Margaret. Not only is Quinn the little girl’s godmother, but they are the family she always wished she had. Now she vows to do whatever it takes to help the three of them heal - even if it means letting a complete stranger into their lives - and into their hearts. Margaret is old-fashioned, and she has no compunction about finding a way to reach Lily’s dad, a sperm donor.

Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist's work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents' madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents' strange world.

For generations, we've been taught that women and men differ in profound and important ways. Women are more sensitive and emotional, whereas men are more aggressive and sexual, because this or that region in the brains of women is smaller or larger than in men, or because they have more or less of this or that hormone. This story seems to provide us with a neat biological explanation for much of what we encounter in day-to-day life. But is it true? According to neuroscientist Daphna Joel, it's not.

Working on death row is far from Kristy Tucker's dream, but she is grateful for a job that allows her to support her son and ailing father. When she meets Lance Dobson, Kristy begins to imagine a different kind of future. But after their wedding, she finds herself serving her own life sentence - one of abuse and constant terror. Kristy is a survivor, and as Lance's violence escalates, the inmates she's worked with have planted an idea she simply can't shake.

"If, on an early summer’s night, you wanted to kill a man, how would you do it? Would you lay a trap, sharpen a dagger, uncork a poison? Personally, I’ve always leaned toward the dramatic. But looking back, I wonder now if the events of last summer didn’t begin with a quieter sort of murder." So ponders Alexandra James, a beautiful, driven, yet troubled New England Chronicle reporter. She is assigned to cover the death of Thom Carlyle, son of one of the most powerful men in Washington. Just back from a year abroad, Thom falls from the top of a Harvard bell tower on a warm summer night.

Perfect for curious young listeners, these eight titles provide exciting details about notable tragedies throughout history. Learn about the impact of catastrophes like the Titanic, Pompeii, the San Francisco Earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, the Hindenburg, the Great Chicago Fire, and Pearl Harbor in this complete collection of iconic historical moments. With an easy-to-listen-to narrative in each book, listeners will be able to quickly learn about the shock and aftermath of these disasters.

Kathleen Held’s life is turned upside down when she arrives home to find her house on fire and her husband on the front lawn in his underwear. But the scandal that emerges is not that Bill, who's running for Senate, is having a painfully cliched affair with one of his young staffers: it's that the eyewitness photographing the scene accidentally captures a period stain on the back of Kathleen’s pants.