Showing results by narrator "Natasha Soudek" in All Categories

After the death of her fiancé, Catherine Johnson, a New York schoolteacher in 1902, travels to Nebraska to teach in a one-room school. When violence erupts in the sleepy town, Catherine saves deaf stable hand Jim Kinney from torture by drunken thugs. As she begins teaching Jim to read and sign, attraction grows between them. The warmth and humor in this silent man transcends the need for speech, and his eyes tell her all about his feelings for her. But the obstacles of class difference and the stigma of his handicap are almost insurmountable.

When Joseph was a baby, his grandfather made him a wonderful blanket. But as Joseph grows older, the blanket becomes tattered and worn. Throw it out! cries Joseph's mother. Luckily, Grandpa is an extraordinary tailor. He can fix anything! And so with a snip! snip! here, and a few stiches there, Grandpa transforms the treasured blanket into a jacket, a vest, a Sabbath tie, a handkerchief, and finally, a beautiful button. But when the button is lost, even Grandpa can't help. After all, how can you make something from nothing?

Given as a sexual toy to a violent warrior, Katya fights for freedom. In her world, a sect of indoctrinated fighters protect the villages and occasionally "brides" are given to the caged men. Katya finds her warrior is an innocent and gentle man, just as much a prisoner as she is. Passion blooms as the lovers search for a way to save themselves, overcome their masters, and change their world.

As the new emperor of Pemdas, Levi begins restoring hope to the grieving lands and the people who lost so much during the battle of Armedias. With the healing initiated, Levi moves quickly to make Reece his wife. Not long after their enchanted wedding, the appearance of an enigmatic man coincides with newfound supernatural powers in Reece that she and Levi struggle to understand.

Navy SEAL Griffin Caldwell is not happy with his team's top-secret mission, training the first female SEALs. Griffin's determined to prove that his trainee Sherri Tate - a former beauty queen - doesn't have what it takes to join the world's most elite warrior's club. But then he sees what she's capable of, and even this hard-nosed SEAL has to admit she's tough as nails. What he won't admit to is the attraction sizzling between them.

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.

Lady Firebird was born to the royal family of Netaia. Because of her birthplace in the family, however, her life is expendable. Honorable suicide is the highest calling she could hope to attain. When she is chosen to lead an attack on the neighboring planet of Veroh, her death is expected. Instead she is taken prisoner during the battle and is held by the enemy.

A young girl is suddenly all alone and on the run from the Nazis in her hometown in Poland. Having survived an aktion that was intended to completely rid Czestochowa of all the Jews, she and her father try to make their way back to their home during the late hours of the night.

A mother is a dissident, a refusenik, and a prisoner in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in the 1970s and '80s. Her daughter, eleven years old, is left without a family. A grandmother is in the USA, waiting for her daughter and granddaughter and not knowing if she'll ever see them again. "I am fine," the three of them write to each other in their letters. How can you be "fine" when you have to fight to survive? When you must be silent? When the place that you love turns against you?

I just rebelled against the Guardians in an act they'd consider treasonous. But not me. I'm finally standing up for myself and doing the right thing. And I've never felt so vulnerable. What can one girl do against the Three Societies? Who in the world would be stupid enough to join the army of a seventeen-year-old girl?

Luckily for humanity, scientist Marie Curie applied her brilliant mind and indomitable spirit to expanding the frontiers of science, but what if she had instead drifted toward the darkness? At the cusp of between child- and adulthood, at the crossroads between science and superstition, a teen Marie Curie faces the factual and the fantastic in this fabulous collection of stories that inspire, delight, and ask the question: What if she had used her talents for diabolical purposes?

Midnight, June 13, 1942: Peter Burger stands on a foggy beach, ears primed as a submarine hull scrapes the sandy sea bottom. He has endured seventeen months in a Gestapo prison and seventeen days on a Nazi U-boat only to have landed on American shores with six boxes of explosives and no escape. After slipping into New York City, Peter finds himself at a massive military parade where he meets Grete Baum, a German-Jewish refugee grappling with loneliness and loss. Grete is drawn to Peter’s brooding vulnerability, and the pair instantly bond.

Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) was a German film director and animator best known for The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which was released in 1926 and is the oldest surviving animated movie. (It came out a full 11 years before Disney’s Snow White!) As a little kid, Reiniger loved reading fairy tales and fell in love with puppetry. At school, she learned about paperschnitte, or papercuts, which helped her create her signature style of silhouettes. She grew up to make more than 40 films throughout her long career.

Lash by bloody lash, the she-devil from Dallas would get her revenge.

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.

Award-winning journalist Caitlin Bergman's mother is dead - at least that's what she’s told everyone for the past 40 years. It’s easier to lie than to explain how Maya abandoned her only daughter before dropping off the map forever. But when a rural sheriff invites Caitlin to the woods of coastal Oregon to identify her mother's remains, Caitlin drops everything to face the woman she's spent a lifetime hating. Unfortunately, the body - abandoned on the land of a reclusive cult, the Daughters of God - was left faceless.

Forced to forsake her royal heritage, Lady Firebird now faces new and powerful enemies. Firebird is pregnant with twins when her new husband, Brennen Caldwell, is left as the only heir to ancient messianic prophecies. Meanwhile, on another world, Firebird’s sister defects to the enemy camp and is made a prisoner. Brennen’s superiors ask him to try to rescue her, and Phoena’s desperate husband travels light-years trying to enlist Brennen’s aid. But Brennen is not tempted to comply...until a divine dream sends him exactly where he does not want to go.

Times have changed for the telepathic Sentinels in the realm of the Federate Whorl. Persecution sends these genetically altered people fleeing to their sanctuary world, but a shipboard disaster exposes High Commander Brennen Caldwell to fatal radiation.

Taken from her home world of Mikuhr at a young age, Wind Haworth was raised by the conquering Sentinels. Although her loyalties are torn, she is determined to bridge the gap between the two cultures and their opposing ideologies, even if she must stand alone. Conflict explodes when apprentice priest Kiel Caldwell arrives on Mikuhr to explore rumors of new spiritual revelation, but he is kidnapped by a demon-possessed telepath who thinks Kiel might be a predicted messiah.

Lady Firebird Angelo Caldwell has been sentenced to death "in absentia" for treason, sedition, and heresy. The last thing she expects is a summons to return home and be confirmed as an heiress of her royal house. But merciless foes are destroying entire cities of the Federate worlds. These renegades are trying to wipe out the messianic Caldwell bloodline, and they have almost eradicated the royal Angelos.