Showing results by narrator "Natasha Soudek" in All Categories

Born into the ruins of Rzolka's brutal civil unrest, Anna has never known peace. Here, in her remote village - a wasteland smoldering in the shadows of outlying foreign armies - being imbued with the magic of the scribes has made her future all the more uncertain. Through intricate carvings of the flesh, scribes can grant temporary invulnerability against enemies to those seeking protection. In an embattled world where child scribes are sold and traded to corrupt leaders, Anna is invaluable.

A magical collection of 17 original stories by an amazing list of contributors—including a Dune story by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson!

When Reece is almost violently kidnapped, her entire life begins to change. She soon learns about the man who saved her life in the park and instantly is filled with questions about who he is and why he seems so familiar. The answers she receives from Levi are something that Reece would never have imagined possible. There is life beyond Earth, and it exists because of her!

I knew that most people took one look at the ink and the impossibly big and strong body it covered and decided I was a brawler...a bruiser...a beast. However, I was hardwired to be a thinker, not a fighter - my mind being my greatest weapon and my biggest weakness. I should have chosen to use my brain and talents to be one of the good guys, a hero, a man with dignity and worth. I turned my back on dignity and sold my soul to the highest bidder, deciding to dance with the devil instead.

Winter finally has the answers to who she is, but everything else in her life is in question as she is thrown into the world of witches. How much of her past can control her future? Can Winter make the decisions she needs to save the future?

 The great Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser lived eccentrically on the fringes of society, shocking his Berlin friends by enrolling in butler school and later developing an urban-nomad lifestyle in the Swiss capital, Bern, before checking himself into a psychiatric clinic.

The two-hundredth anniversary of the Headless Horseman's legendary haunting of Sleepy Hollow is approaching, but Kat van Tassel wants nothing to do with the town's superstitious celebrations. As a descendant of the original Katrina van Tassel, Kat knows she's expected to fulfill her ancestor's legacy by someday marrying her longtime boyfriend and running the prestigious family estate. But Kat dreams of a life outside Sleepy Hollow.

An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction, Send for Me moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family.

Why has music so often served as an accomplice to transcendent expressions of gender? Why did the query "is he musical?" become code, in the 20th century, for "is he gay?" Why is music so inherently queer? For Sasha Geffen, the answers lie, in part, in music’s intrinsic quality of subliminal expression, which, through paradox and contradiction, allows rigid gender roles to fall away in a sensual and ambiguous exchange between performer and listener. Glitter Up the Dark traces the history of this gender fluidity in pop music from the early 20th century to the present day.

A girl who can speak to gods must save her people without destroying herself. A prince in danger must decide who to trust. A boy with a monstrous secret waits in the wings. Together, they must assassinate the king and stop the war. In a centuries-long war where beauty and brutality meet, their three paths entwine in a shadowy world of spilled blood and mysterious saints, where a forbidden romance threatens to tip the scales between dark and light.

Ruth Gruener was a hidden child during the Holocaust. At the end of the war, she and her parents were overjoyed to be free. But their struggles as displaced people had just begun. In war-ravaged Europe, they waited for paperwork for a chance to come to America. Once they arrived in Brooklyn, they began to build a new life but spoke little English. Ruth started at a new school and tried to make friends - but continued to fight nightmares and flashbacks of her time during World War II.

If you're ready to toss the OCD rulebook aside and start living with more freedom than ever before, this book can help you step by step.

“One of Mexico’s greatest living writers,” wrote Jonathan Lethem in 2018, “we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.” In the years since, Rivera Garza’s work has received widespread recognition: she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Yet we have still only started to discover the full range of a writer who is at once an incisive voice on migration, borders, and violence against women, as well as a high stylist in the manner of Lispector or Duras.

One of Canada’s most acclaimed horror writers, Gemma Files presents a mosaic of interconnected stories about interconnected families. After fleeing Scotland, five clans settled in the fictional town of Dourvale in northern Ontario. Known as the Five-Family Coven, they are the descendants of witches and witch-children, none of whom were spared persecution in their native country. Now shamans, spellcasters, singers, and thieves, the members of the Devize, Druir, Glouwer, Roke, and Rusk families survive by trading their occult powers and talents.

Dak Hamee is a unique Hork-Bajir. His people call him a seer. He learns more quickly and completely than the rest of his docile race. Hork-Bajir like him are born once a generation. Aldrea is a young Andalite. Daughter of the notorious Prince Seerow. It is only after she and her family are sent to the Hork-Bajir home world that she begins to fight the Yeerks—and, with Dak's help, ultimately discovers their hideous plan. Esplin 9466 is the Yeerk that will become the feared Visser Three. He has set out to defeat the Hork-Bajir, and begin the building of the Yeerk Empire.

Wonder Woman and Philosophy: The Amazonian Mystique explores a wide range of philosophical questions surrounding the most popular female superhero of all time, from her creation as feminist propaganda during World War II up to the first female lead in the blockbuster DC movie franchise. 

Alexander Weiss inadvertently insults Athena, goddess of wisdom, and she casts him away on a forgotten isle filled with statues. Being marooned is bad enough, but the fact that the island is also the home of Euryale, elder sister to Medusa, makes the situation a touch worse. The only thing keeping Alex from being petrified is the fact that Euryale has taken a liking to the blundering mortal. For now.  

Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind - and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary - they tell their stories and confront their destinies.

Newly conscripted into the Emperor's dragon corps, Tate Fisher is still trying to figure out all that her new position entails. Along with an elevation in status comes dangerous enemies. Enemies who would rather see the dragons fall into ruin than remain in their current place of power. When a dragon goes missing, followed by a child close to her, Tate is forced to confront the hidden agendas of those in the highest seats of authority. Her search for the truth takes her deeper into the maze of tunnels that lie beneath the city. 

Celebrated transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein has, with more humor and spunk than any other, ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it. Here, Bornstein bravely and wittily shares personal and unorthodox methods of survival in an often cruel world. A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive.