Showing results by narrator "Tavia Gilbert"

You're waiting for your beloved husband to get home from work. You're making dinner, looking forward to hearing about his day. That's the last thing you remember. You wake up in hospital, with no idea how you got there. They tell you that you were in an accident; you lost control of your car whilst driving in a dangerous part of town. The police suspect you were up to no good. But your husband refuses to believe it. Your best friend isn't so sure. And even you don't know what to believe....

After a brief visit to the Blighted Lands in hopes of recovering something useful from Shadye's Dark Fortress, Emily returns to Whitehall for her fourth year, bracing herself for the exams that will determine her future. But as she resumes her education, she discovers that the shadows of the past are hanging over the school. A teacher wants to break her, some of her friends are acting oddly, and, worst of all, a boy intends to court her.

Frieda is one of Emily’s closest friends, a young girl she saved from Mountaintop and brought back to Whitehall. But Frieda found herself the victim of a deadly soul-destroying plot - and the true target may well be Emily herself. Now, after Emily saved Frieda from a magician who was slowly driving her mad, Frieda stands accused of attempted murder - and worse. She must now stand trial for her crimes. Worse, Fulvia - Matriarch of House Ashworth - has returned. Humiliated by Emily years ago, Fulvia burns for revenge - and the chance to regain her lost power.

Humans expanded into space...only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement...for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more.

Emily is a teenage girl pulled from our world into a world of magic and mystery by a necromancer who intends to sacrifice her to the dark gods. Rescued in the nick of time by an enigmatic sorcerer, she discovers that she possesses magical powers and must go to Whitehall School to learn how to master them. There, she learns that the locals believe she is a "Child of Destiny" - someone whose choices might save or damn their world, a title that earns her both friends and enemies.

When your fairy godmother threatens to enslave you with a curse - when a malevolent piper solves your rat problem but steals your children - when you seek revenge on the prince who turned you into a frog - who can you turn to in your hour of need? The band of scoundrels known far and wide as the Bastard Champions - the swashbuckling trio who travel a world of legend, seeking adventure and righting wrongs - as long as there's enough gold to be earned.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

How did truth become an endangered species? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and political campaigns, Kakutani identifies the trends - originating on both the right and the left - that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant. 

The Magical Families of Ashworth and Ashfall have been feuding for countless years, ever since something happened to split one family into two. Now, they have been invited to Cockatrice Faire - when no other magician would dare invite them both. And when it becomes clear that the Ashworth Heir and the Ashfall Heir have fallen in love with one another, Emily finds herself caught in the middle between two powerful families, each one capable of destroying her once and for all.

Southern girl Verity Long is about as high society as her pet skunk. Which is why she’s surprised as anyone when the new head of the Sugarland social set invites her to join the "it" girls. But this is no social call. Verity’s new client needs her to go in undercover and investigate strange happenings at the group’s historic headquarters. But while spirits are whispering hints of murder, the socialites are more focused on Verity’s 1978, avocado-green Cadillac. And when Verity stumbles upon a fresh body, she's going to need the long-dead citizens of Sugarland to help her solve the crime.

After completing her first year of learning magic at Whitehall School, Emily accepts an invitation from Princess Alassa to accompany her on her progress back to her home country of Zangaria, where the princess may meet her future husband. Alassa, who was a spoiled brat before she met Emily, wants to show off her friend - and impress potential suitors. For Emily, it is a chance to relax and explore a world very different to Earth, meet new people and come to terms with her reputation in the Nameless World.

After her victory over Master Grey, Emily wants nothing more than to relax and give herself time to recover from the duel. Her magic, pushed to the limits, is no longer reliable, forcing her to learn to control it from scratch. Every time she delays using her magic, she risks headaches...or worse. But she must return to Whitehall to complete her fourth-year exams and bid farewell to those of her friends who are not returning for fifth year. And then, she must return to Zangaria to play her role in Princess Alassa's wedding to Jade.

The post of Head Girl of Whitehall looks fantastic on anyone's resume. It places the lucky winner on equal terms to the staff, granting them authority, power, and responsibility that no other student can even dream of possessing. Naturally, Emily doesn't want it. But when she returns to Whitehall for her sixth and final year, she discovers that the staff has elected her to the post - and refusal isn't an option. Reluctantly, she starts to carry out her new duties, unaware that deadly enemies are waiting in the shadows, preparing themselves to strike at her when her back is turned.

Brimming with new ideas for magical research, Emily returns to Whitehall School for her second year of magical education, looking forward to returning to her studies. And yet things are different; her new roommates harbor their secrets, her old friends are becoming distracted by sports and games, and one of the teachers seems to dislike her. As she starts new classes, she discovers she has to work far harder to keep her place in the school. But her second year will be far more adventurous than her first.

A plot is being hatched at Mountaintop Academy, a plot that threatens the lives of Emily and her friends...and the integrity of the Allied Lands. In a desperate bid to uncover the secrets of Mountaintop and recover her stolen notes, Emily goes undercover into Mountaintop, a mission that may cost her everything.

In the summer between second and third year at Whitehall, Emily accompanies Lady Barb on her rounds of the Cairngorm Mountains, bringing magical help to the locals and searching for new magicians. For Emily, tired and broken after the events of Study in Slaughter, it should be a chance to relax as well as to visit a new part of the Nameless World, to put her responsibilities aside and just be herself. But the locals aren't quite what she expects, with problems of their own, and Lady Barb is a different person away from Whitehall.

The greatest military leader of his time. The most talented code breaker her people have. Sworn enemies. When deadly secrets from the ancient past are unearthed, secrets capable of fracturing the world and destroying all life on the planet, these two enemies will have to work together. They are humanity's only hope.

"I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player in a interstellar chess match to save humanity. Seventeen years old. Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope."

The war is over. But the scars remain. Emily's New Learning has been good for Beneficence. In the years since she arrived on the Nameless World, the city has been at the forefront of technological advancement and social development. Thousands of newcomers are moving to the city, railways span the gorge and drive into Zangaria, the first steamboats are plowing the ocean wave and a whole new banking system is reshaping national and international trade. A true golden age appears to be on hand. But all is not well.

Emma and Bobby Ross enjoy a charmed life on the shores of Miami Beach. They are a model family with a successful business, an uncomplicated marriage, and two blessedly typical twin daughters, Zoe and Lily. They are established members of a tight-knit community. Then, on the night of the girls’ fifteenth birthday party, they learn of Zoe’s heartbreaking mistake - a private and humiliating indiscretion that goes viral and thrusts her and her family into the center of a shocking public scandal.