Showing results by narrator "Kaitlyn Lansing" in All Categories

Sophia Weber is an anxious 22-year-old, utterly dependent on her mother’s care. Gertrude Weber, Sophia’s mother, spends her time whipping her matriarchal household into shape while obsessing over her daughter’s well-being. But Gertrude uses her maternal power only to manipulate her daughter into living a life of fear and dependency. The novel takes listeners on a tormenting ride through Sophia’s memories while she struggles in the present day with a mother who has not yet allowed her child to grow up.

Selected to perform as the Queen of the Wilis in the ballet, Giselle, Dawn Hayes is determined to prove to the other dancers that she is the most worthy of a professional career in ballet. Her dance teacher has trained her up to this point to use her body as it was meant to be—to show off its lines and curves of delicate bone beneath taut skin gracefully. The unspoken essence of classical ballet was taught as a set of purposeful movements aimed at ennobling man. But when a new teacher enters the studio, Madame Angulaire opens up a peculiar world of modern ballet and what it preaches.

A newly married couple with a flair for the macabre buys a Queen Anne-style manor that echoes their gloomy insides. Once the pair met and committed themselves, both knew there was no way to escape from the other—even in death. Conrad and Elizabeth Fleischer, their surname meaning “butcher”, are beautiful and find that they need only each other to satisfy their sliver of desire to be social. They seldom leave their beloved manor, which is occupied by their united souls.

Hidden away from the outside world, tucked in the corners of rolling hills, lies a monastery. Only open to the public during certain times of day that align with the monks’ strict schedule, a young girl, Mary Baptisia, and her parents volunteer to work in the garden. While there, Mary ogles at the immense beauty of the monastery with its draping tapestries, terrifying gargoyles, and divinely high nave. Mary discovers a particular monk, John Abelard, who sticks to her immediately as if she is his muse.