Showing results by narrator "Sandy Rustin" in All Categories

Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies. But Grace wants to finally have a home all their own. Just when she thinks she's found it, her mother says it's time to move again. Grace summons the courage to tell her mother how she really feels and will always regret that her last words to her were angry ones. After her mother's sudden death, Grace is forced to live with a grandmother she's never met.  

With her oldest son taking a gap year in Europe, her aging father losing his sight and his memory, and her husband of 20 years announcing that he's leaving her, Abbie Bartholomew Jowett is surrounded by overwhelming loss. Desperate to mend her marriage and herself, she follows her son, Bobby, to walk the famed Camino pilgrimage. During their journey they encounter Rasa, an Iranian woman working in secret helping other refugees, and Caroline, a journalist who is studying pilgrims on the Camino while searching for answers from her broken past.   

It is 1952, and nearly all the girls 16-year-old Bertha Harding knows dream of getting married, keeping house, and raising children in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Bertha dreams of baseball. She reads every story in the sports section, she plays ball with the neighborhood boys—she even writes letters to the pitcher for the Workington Sweet Peas, part of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

In the mid-21st century, dogs are all but extinct. An experiment gone awry caused every canine on Earth to become hyperintelligent. When as a species they stopped wagging their tails, hysteria ensued - followed by a program of mass euthanasia. Now the only surviving dogs are relegated to a sanctuary off the coast of Florida: Dog Island. There, they are studied in a wild, feral, and protected state. And there, too, their robot replacements are tested before being sold for mass consumption. Seventeen-year-old Nano Miller was born and bred on Dog Island, as were her two best friends, Jack and Wolf.

Alexa Parker and Braden Elliott fell in love when they were 12 years old. On a summer day, while searching for sea glass on the beaches of Washington State, they discovered an unusually shaped blue bottle. The ever-imaginative Alexa declared it a genie's bottle. Popping the cork, they were surprised by a rogue wave that sprayed them with a fine, cool mist. Closing their eyes, they each made a wish...

Fifteen-year-old Jo Chastain is about to take on her biggest con yet - impersonating a missing girl. The Lovecrafts are a wealthy Boston family with ties to the unsolved mystery of Vivienne Weir, who went missing at age nine. When Jo takes on Vivi's identity, the Lovecrafts give her everything she could want: love, money, security, and proximity to their intriguing daughter, Temple. But nothing is as it seems in the Lovecraft household, and as hidden crimes reveal themselves, Jo must choose between an illusion of safety or escaping the danger around her.

Sierra Ravenswood is the new part-time employee of the Flower House, a flower shop in Aerieville, Tennessee. Things take a decidedly negative turn when a customer drops dead in the middle of her new bouquet-arranging workshop at the store. The town is on edge, and Sierra knows that murder is something that an upbeat attitude and a bouquet of sweet-smelling roses can't fix. She's determined to figure out whodunit, before anyone else in town meets an untimely reason for needing funeral flowers. 

June, 1993. Claire has been dumped in rural Indianola, Texas, to spend her whole vacation taking care of mean, sickly Grammy. There's nothing too remarkable about Indianola: it's run-down, shabby, and sweltering, a pin-dot on the Gulf Coast. Except there is something remarkable. Memories shimmer and change. Lizards whisper riddles under the pecan trees. People disappear as if they never existed. And worst of all, a red-lightning storm from beyond our world may just wipe the whole town off the map, if Claire and her maybe-girlfriend Julie can't stop it.

Some secrets have deadly consequences. Brynlee Parker thought her biggest challenge would be hiking to Dead Man’s Bluff and fulfilling her dad’s last wishes. She never thought she’d witness two men being viciously murdered while on a mountainous trail. Even worse, the deadly predator is now hunting her. Boone Wilder wants nothing to do with Dead Man’s Bluff, not after his wife died there. But he can’t seem to mind his own business when a mysterious out-of-towner burst into his camp store in a frenzied panic. Something - or someone - deadly is out there.

When evil descends like fog on a mountain community, no one feels safe. After hearing about a string of murders in a Smoky Mountain town, journalist Harper Jennings realizes a startling truth. She knows who may be responsible - the same person who tried to kill her three years ago. Now Harper must convince the cops to believe her before the killer strikes again. Sheriff Luke Wilder returned to his hometown, determined to keep the promise he made to his dying father. The sleepy tourist area with a tragic past hadn’t seen a murder in decades - until now.

Corey and her best friend, Kyra, are inseparable. Corey is the only person who understands Kyra's high-highs and low-lows. So when Corey's family moves away from their Alaskan town, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winters and wait for her return. Except Kyra doesn't. Two days before Corey is to visit, Kyra is found floating underneath the ice. While everyone in Lost Creek deems Kyra's death a suicide, Corey knows something is wrong. With every hour, her suspicion grows.

On election day, Joan Gelfand casts her vote for George McGovern and boards a plane from New York to California. With one introduction to a woman musician, Joan’s journey to become a writer is born. Embraced by a thriving women’s community of artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and writers, Joan is encouraged to find her voice. Mentored by paradigm-changing writers, Joan finds the courage to face her darkest fears through poetry and art, mining the trauma she experienced after losing her father and questioning her Jewish identity.

The real-life Cinderella story of the very first professional woman astronomer—Caroline Herschel! Comet Chaser is the thrilling biography of a woman who made a lifetime of incredible contributions to science. She was the first woman to discover a comet, the first officially recognized in a scientific role, and the first to be given a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society.

Cora Mae Tipton knows every inch of Shadow Mountain. In the shade of the towering trees, amidst the thickets, streams, and smokehouses, the rhythm of life around her beloved holler hasn’t much changed for generations. Until now. For the first time, electrical power is coming to the rural communities of eastern Kentucky. Cora knows in her heart how much good could come of it. Electrical power means progress. Connection to the outside world. More light. And electricity might just help make her dreams of a life beyond Shadow Mountain come true.

In Jen Doll's young adult debut novel, Unclaimed Baggage, Doris - a lone liberal in a conservative small town - has mostly kept to herself since the terrible waterslide incident a few years ago. Nell had to leave behind her best friends, perfect life, and too-good-to-be-true boyfriend in Chicago to move to Alabama. Grant was the star quarterback and epitome of "Mr. Popular" whose drinking problem has all but destroyed his life.  

Sierra has embraced her role as owner of Flower House floral shop. Sierra’s team members are enjoying their new jobs too. At least until everyone realizes their lack of experience might be contributing to their lack of customers.... Sierra decides they need a change in luck, so she creates a special window display featuring lucky bamboo and auspicious flowers. The shop is flooded with customers the next day, including a van full of college students on a horticulture club field trip. Unfortunately, the students’ distracted professor has gone missing.

A 13-year-old girl seeks answers about her past in the fourth dimension - and beyond - in this think-outside-the-box adventure. What do you do when it turns out your whole life has been a lie? Jadie Martin was always told she was abandoned by her parents. Creatures from the fourth dimension rescued her and placed her with a loving adoptive family. Now, Jadie acts as an agent for the beings, also known as Seers. She uses the fourth dimension as a shortcut to travel anywhere on Earth, performing missions calculated to guide the world toward a brighter future.  

Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina's cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather, two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother - a bond Bina thought was unbreakable. Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her.

Reliance, Illinois tells the story of a young woman faced with choices that will alter the course of her own future, and offers a brilliant window into American life during a period of tumultuous change. Illinois, 1874: With a birthmark covering half her face, 13-year-old Madelyn Branch is accustomed to cold and awkward greetings, and expects no less in the struggling town of Reliance. After all, her mother, Rebecca, was careful not to mention a daughter in the Matrimonial Times ad that brought them there.

Break up with Chase Dexter, or I'll kill him. Holly Anna Paladin never expected such a gut-wrenching ultimatum. But the man threatening her makes it clear he's dead serious. With home invasions, hidden cameras, and bombs threats, Holly must make some serious choices.