Showing results by narrator "Julia Whelan" in All Categories

Studious, obedient Elizabeth finally let loose one night, drinking too much at a nightclub and allowing a strange man’s seductive Russian accent to lure her to a house on Lake Shore Drive. The events that followed changed her life forever. Twelve years later, the woman now known as Abigail Lowery lives alone on the outskirts of a small town in the Ozarks. A freelance programmer, she works at home designing sophisticated security systems. Her own security is supplemented by a fierce dog and an assortment of firearms.

Nine brilliant scientists travel light-years on a one-way trip to an Earthlike planet. Their mission is to study from orbit the two species of intelligent lifeforms on the surface. The first: an isolated people embarking on civilization and building their world's first city. The second: a brutal race of massive predators, spread thick and still growing across the dominant landmass - destined to breed and eat their way to extinction within a few centuries.

It began on New Year's Eve. The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed - and more than half of the world's population was decimated. Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place.

Laney has just finished graduate school in California and sees her cross-country drive as the perfect chance to reflect on the past before facing her future back East. With 3,000 miles ahead of her and a box of mix tapes as her only companion, she envisions a trip spent reminiscing; whether it's her first camp kisses, high school parties and crushes, or college loves and losses, Laney's most treasured memories - good and bad - are all just a song away.

After the sickness known as the Doom destroyed civilization, magick has become commonplace, and Fallon Swift has spent her young years learning its ways. Fallon cannot live in peace until she frees those who have been preyed upon by the government or the fanatical Purity Warriors, endlessly hunted or locked up in laboratories, brutalized for years on end. She is determined to save even those who have been complicit with this evil out of fear or weakness - if, indeed, they can be saved.

After their mother’s probable suicide, Jazz and Olivia Moon struggle to move on with their lives. Olivia, an 18-year-old who can taste words and see sounds, blinds herself by staring at the sun, then decides to walk to the remote setting of her mother’s unfinished novel to resuscitate her hopes and dreams. Jazz, plagued by unresolved conflict with her mother and a hidden trove of her unsent letters, takes a job in a funeral home before being forced back into the role of her sister’s keeper.

Kat is on a mission, and the fate of the universe depends on whether or not she succeeds. She must journey into the heart of the underworld and track down Isfet before time runs out. Before the bonding withdrawals claim her bond-mate’s life and her ticket out of the afterlife vanishes. Before the Mother of All attacks. For once, luck is on Kat’s side. Some of her closest friends and most trusted allies have her back, even in the hereafter. But it doesn’t take Kat long to realize that the underworld is far more dangerous than she ever could have imagined....

America is in a state of turbulence, engulfed in civil unrest and uncertainty. Yet for Whitney Dane - spending the summer of her twenty-second year on Martha's Vineyard - life could not be safer, nor the future more certain.

Isabelle Scott and Mirabelle Monroe are still reeling from the revelation that they share more than just the roof over their heads. The media has pounced on their story and the girls are caught up in a flurry of talk-show appearances and newspaper interviews. They’ve put on a happy public face, but someone is leaking their true feelings to the press. While it seems like the world is watching their every move, at least they have each other. But with cotillion season right around the corner, Izzie and Mira have barely had time to process their newfound sisterhood.

Inertia, force, mass, gravity, velocity, acceleration...cause and effect. Liz Emerson doesn't understand any of it. But I do. I understand how we fall. Where we fall. Why we fall. I understand her sadness and loneliness and silence, her shattered heart. It doesn't have to bethis way, does it? It wasn't always this way, was it? Stay alive, Liz Emerson, stay alive.

Abridged edition: Fallon Swift, approaching her thirteenth birthday, barely knows the world that existed before - the city where her parents lived, now in ruins and reclaimed by nature since the Doom sickened and killed billions. Traveling anywhere is a danger, as vicious gangs of Raiders and fanatics called Purity Warriors search for their next victim. Those like Fallon, in possession of gifts, are hunted - and the time is coming when her true nature, her identity as The One, can no longer be hidden. In a mysterious shelter in the forest, her training is about to begin under the guidance of Mallick, whose skills have been honed over centuries.

Ellen has a lot to be thankful for. Her fiancé, Troy, is perfectly sweet. Her childhood friend Tanya, despite her edgier taste in men, is like a sister to Ellen: her closest friend—and rival. So familiar and yet, over the years, so many secrets between them. For Ellen, what lies ahead is a series of choices that will add up to a life she never could have imagined.

Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside a grim Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation: she becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in. All of them, like her, are lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives.

After rebounding from a broken engagement and relinquishing her job in sports PR, the irrepressible Waverly Bryson has a new man, a new career, and a new lease on life. Her part-time gig as an advice columnist has proven to be as entertaining as it is affirming, and her fledgling greeting card line, Honey Notes, is off to a promising start. After a series of disastrous romantic rebounds, she has settled into a long-distance relationship with handsome Jake McIntyre.

On the night her mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter. Next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, there is a lamp that catches her eye, its shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie sees a dead butterfly floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.

For decades, the Hollander Estates winery has been the premier destination for lavish parties and romantic day trips on the North Fork of Long Island. But behind the lush vineyards and majestic estate house, the Hollander family fortunes have suffered and the threat of a sale brings old wounds to the surface. For matriarch Vivian, she fears that this summer season could be their last - and that selling their winery to strangers could expose a dark secret she's harbored for decades.

A host of the smartest young adult authors come together in this collection of scary stories and psychological thrillers curated by Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea's April Genevieve Tucholke. Each story draws from a classic tale or two - sometimes of the horror genre, sometimes not - to inspire something new and fresh and terrifying. There are no superficial scares here; these are stories that will make you think, even as they keep you on the edge of your seat. This collection has something for any listener looking for a thrill.

This imaginative and stimulating Very Short Introduction audiobook goes beyond a simple retelling of the stories to explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical mythology. It is a wide-ranging account, examining how classical myths are used and understood in both high art and popular culture, taking the listener from the temples of Crete to skyscrapers in New York, and finding classical myths in a variety of unexpected places: from Arabic poetry and Hollywood films, to psychoanalysis, the Bible, and New Age spiritualism.

After she nearly ruins her family with a terrible misstep, Elena Spira is sent to Venice to escape disgrace and to atone by caring for the ailing Samuel Farber. But the crumbling and decaying Ca' Basilio palazzo, where Samuel is ensconced, holds tragic secrets, and little does Elena know how profoundly they will impact her.

Zara and Nick are soul mates, meant to be together forever. But that’s not how things have worked out. For starters, well, Nick is gone. He’s been taken to some mythic place for warriors called Valhalla, where Zara and her friends might be able to get him back. It’s just not going to be easy.