Showing results by narrator "Cassandra Campbell" in All Categories

Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, believed that our national character was defined by three key moments: the writing of the Constitution, our declaration of independence from England, and the beginning of slavery on the North American continent.

We're the D'Artigo sisters: savvy half-human, half-Fae operatives for the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. My sister Camille is the Queen of Dusk & Twilight and married to three hunky men. Menolly is a vampire married to a gorgeous werepuma and a vampire prince. And me? I'm Delilah, a Death Maiden werecat, and I'm about to marry the love of my life. But in the midst of joy, we are facing the escalating war with Shadow Wing.

Aspiring entrepreneurs are told that to launch a business, you must go all in, devoting every resource and moment to making it work. But following this advice comes at an enormous personal cost: divorce, addiction, even suicide. It means sacrificing the intangibles that make life worth living. Sheryl O'Loughlin knows there is a better way. In Killing It, she shares the wisdom she's gained from her successful experiences.

Jonah King has no desire to leave his close-knit community. All his hopes and dreams lie in Lancaster County, and many of them revolve around his longtime love for Annie Stoltzfus. For years he’s been trying to get her to see what burns inside his heart, yet he remains all but invisible to her. Annie’s beautiful eyes reflect only her affection for Jonah’s older brother - and her sadness when he chooses another. Jonah knows that he must speak up, but when he’s around Annie his calm, capable demeanor flees, leaving him tongue-twisted and awkward.

Although Sadie King is blessed with the voice of an angel, she never thought that following the song in her heart would take her far beyond the strict boundaries of her Amish faith and away from the only home she’s ever known. But during her rumspringa, one road leads to another and suddenly she’s secretly performing with a band. Now she faces an impossible choice between the music in her heart and the traditions branded upon her soul.

Charlotte Ramsey is the new girl again. After causing the biggest cafeteria blunder in history, Charlotte's assigned lunch partners - the very stylish Katani, irrepressible Avery, and super-friendly Maeve - can't wait to dump her. Can it get any worse? Absolutely! Nobody is talking, and Katani wants out of the group. What a mess! Can the girls become true friends or will they remain worst enemies forever?

Everyone deals with grief in their own way. For Carol Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist struggling with the sudden death of her seven-year-old son, Christopher, the way to cross the river of sorrow was through work. In Crossing the River, Smith recounts how she faced down her crippling loss through reporting a series of profiles of people coping with their own intense challenges, whether a freak accident, a debilitating injury, or a terrifying diagnosis.

Five hundred and thirty years ago, a young woman sat before a Grecian-nosed artist known as Leonardo da Vinci. Her name was Cecilia Gallerani, and she was the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan. Sforza was a brutal and clever man who was mindful that Leonardo’s genius would not only capture Cecilia’s beguiling beauty but also reflect the grandeur of his title. But when the portrait was finished, Leonardo’s brush strokes had conveyed something deeper by revealing the essence of Cecilia’s soul.

This breathtaking saga, set in the 1990s, tells the story of the landlords and tenants of a derelict canning factory in Southern Portugal. The wealthy, always-scheming Leandros have owned the building since before the Carnation Revolution, a peaceful coup that toppled a four-decade-long dictatorship and led to Portugal's withdrawal from its African colonies. It was Leandro matriarch Dona Regina who handed the keys to the Matas, the bustling family from Cape Verde who saw past the dusty machinery and converted the space into a warm - and welcoming - home.

Faye Longchamp doesn't believe in ghosts. But she's an archaeologist - dead people are her life. While working in Rosebower, a rural New York town founded by spiritualists, Faye is surrounded by people who talk to the dead on a regular basis. When the most influential spiritualist in town, Tilda Armistead, invites Faye and her project assistant to commune with the dead, she can't say no. An hour later, her crystal ball shows Faye things no rational mind can explain. Tilda is dead.

Time is not on Faye Longchamp’s side. She and her husband Joe are working near the mouth of the Mississippi, researching archaeological sites soon to be swamped by oil. The Deepwater Horizon disaster has morphed her run-of-the-mill contract job into a task that might swamp her fledgling company. It isn’t helping that an injured babysitter has left Faye to work with a toddler underfoot.

Back at dinner, somebody said that the goose thinks it’s a dog. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t think it’s a dog. The goose doesn’t think. The goose just is. And what the goose is is goose. But goose is not goose, Robert thinks. Even the goose isn’t goose. In Good Trouble, the first story collection from Joseph O’Neil, author of Netherland, characters are forced to discover exactly who they are - and who they can never quite be.

Each of these eight remarkable stories by Danzy Senna tightrope-walks tantalizingly, sometimes frighteningly, between defined states: life with and without mates and children, the familiar if constraining reference points provided by race, class, and gender. Tensions arise between a biracial couple when their son is admitted to the private school where they'd applied on a lark. A new mother hosts an old friend, still single, and discovers how each of them pities - and envies - the other. A young woman responds to an adoptee in search of her birth mother, knowing it is not she.

Beware the man of the year. You may praise him, resent him, even want to be him: but beneath the elegant trappings that define him, danger looms.

For misfit Libby Archer, social expectations for young women in Rochester, New York, in the mid-1950s don't work. Her father has died, leaving her without parents, and her well-meaning friends are pressuring her to do what any sensible single girl must do: marry a passionate, persistent hometown suitor with a promising future. Yet Libby boldly defies conventional wisdom and plans to delay marriage - to anyone - by departing for her uncle's Belfast estate.

As her 30th birthday approaches, spirited and unconventional Carlotta is a little nervous. She's just been fired because of her irrepressible frankness, her family is a mess, and her love life is nonexistent. Plus, living in Rome isn't cheap, so she's forced to rent out a room in her apartment to make ends meet.

Two prophecies. Two heroes. Only one can be right. Kostan sits upon a splintering throne. Savra huddles in a makeshift cell, awaiting the judgment of those she betrayed. The land grows dark with the blood of Prov and Atal alike. But beyond the human struggles, a graver threat looms. Aided by the rogue mage, Havialo, the Breaking strains at the bones of the Empire. As the land shatters, a dark tide rises. Two prophecies offer slim hopes for humanity. One names Savra as the Empire's savior. The other envisions Kostan leading the war against the darkness. Both can't be right.

When Jenny, a graduate student in ornithology, is assigned to a birding project in a remote area of Panama, she is given one directive by her superior: Don't piss anyone off. Almost immediately, this proves difficult, for the study site is located near an indigenous village. At first, Jenny finds the Kuna people to be a prickly lot, quick to take offense. But as the weeks pass, she becomes better acquainted with the natives, including Pedro, a man cynical and detached from his own culture.

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of the small town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible loss and their place in it. In this brilliantly written novel, one girl's story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her.

Archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth has dug herself a deep hole, and she can't make her way out of it. As she struggles to recover from a shattering personal loss, she sees that everyone she loves is trying to reach out to her. If only she could reach back. Instead, she's out digging holes all over her home, the Florida island of Joyeuse.