Showing results by narrator "Patricia Rodriguez" in All Categories

With no water, no air and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships travelling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop. One of the many establishments present is the Five-Hop One-Stop. When a freak technological failure halts traffic to and from Gora, three strangers are thrown together at the Five-Hop.

Stay-at-home mother Marta lives in her successful husband’s shadow, overlooked by him ever since her darling son Owen went to medical school. She’s not about to let the beautiful Gina take Owen away from her. Marta will play nice, get Gina to trust her. And then she has a plan of her own.

After the birth of her daughter, Emma, the usually resilient Majella finds herself feeling isolated and exhausted. Then, at her childhood home, Majella discovers the diary of her maternal ancestor Ginny and is shocked to read a story of murder in her family history. With the famine upon her, Ginny Doyle fled from Ireland to America, but not all of her family made it. What happened during those harrowing years, and why does Ginny call herself a killer? Is Majella genetically fated to be a bad mother, despite the fierce tenderness she feels for her baby?

Virginia, 1933: Lauren Greenwood was born to look pretty and land a rich husband. For her and her high-society family, it’s easy to forget that America is in the devastating grip of the Great Depression, where children run wild in the streets, endless queues for soup kitchens line sidewalks, and desperation hangs in the air. But when a young servant comes to Lauren, pregnant and begging for help, her world crumbles. Someone she loves is responsible, and when she finds out the shocking truth she must decide: Protect the Greenwood name or be cast out?

Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shutdown and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She's never felt so alone. But she's not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it's anything but empty.

When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The ship, which has seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy and distance from her troubled past. But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running.

Claire and Eva lead very different lives, but they have one thing in common - they are both in huge danger and need to disappear. A chance encounter at the airport presents the two women with a simple but crazy solution: switch places and then drop off the grid when they land. But one woman will never reach her destination.

The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain. In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the 20th century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events.

In her new novella, Sunday Times best-selling author Becky Chambers imagines a future in which, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the solar system instead transform themselves. Adriane is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel, she and her fellow crewmates sleep between worlds and wake up each time with different features. Her experience is one of fluid body and stable mind and of a unique perspective on the passage of time. Back on Earth, society changes dramatically from decade to decade, as it always does.

Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation. It's humanity's last hope for survival, and Naomi, Valerie's surrogate daughter and the ship's botanist, has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity like this - to step out of Valerie's shadow and really make a difference.

Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body following a total system shutdown and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She's never felt so alone. But she's not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.

So, you're losing your sh*t with your kids. You scream, you shout, you snap at them. You're cranky and irritable more often than you'd like to admit. You know how you want to parent; you want to be a calmer, more rational and intentional parent, but no matter how hard you try, you can't help it. You keep losing your shit.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this formula that Christians recite as though on autopilot lie the secrets for healing our world, rekindling our visionary imagination, and manifesting the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It’s an astonishing claim, but one that is supported by Cynthia Bourgeault’s exploration of Trinitarian theology—and by her bold work in further articulating the deep truth it contains.

When Ella Tate stumbles into Black Rock Falls, her exhausted and bloodied body is a terrifying sight, but not as frightening as the story she has to tell. Ambushed on their way into town when they stopped to help a man by the side of the road, Ella and her friend Sky ran when he pulled a knife on them. But only one of them got away.

Olivia Hanson’s husband, Lucas, is her rock; charming and successful, he offers her safety, security and the life she always dreamed of. In return, Olivia is a picture-perfect housewife, smiling and supportive. Until she meets Lucas’s new colleague, Natalie, and sees the flash of hatred in her eyes. Olivia only wants to clear up the misunderstanding. But when she befriends Natalie, secrets come tumbling out that expose the ugly side of Olivia’s beautiful marriage and she realizes there is another young woman caught up in Lucas’s lies.

Sicily, 1939. Seventeen-year-old Concetta has just received life-changing news: her family is leaving their sun-drenched Sicilian village and moving to America. Desperate to stay with her secret love Gaetano—a fisherman's son her father would never accept—Concetta spends one last night with him beneath a blanket of stars. There, among the citrus-scented air and cricket song, he hands her a leaving gift: a fountain pen, with a promise to keep their love alive through letters – and return to one another one day.

When Detective Casey White discovers the body of a beautiful teenage girl in a white nightgown near the shoreline in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a familiar fear floods through her. Could this be Hannah, her sweet, blue-eyed daughter snatched from home 14 years ago? But it only takes one look to confirm that the girl with dark bruising around her throat is another family’s tragedy. Putting her own grief aside, Casey digs into unsolved missing child cases in the area. The victim is Cheryl Parry, one of two little girls taken during a family beach vacation nine years ago.

When secretary Annie Parkes is snatched from the street outside of her workplace, David Kane is tasked with finding her. Strong, highly skilled, and secretive, he’s a loner and an outsider; the only man the military trust to find Annie before her kidnappers make good on their promise to kill her. But as Kane pulls Annie from a derelict building, gunshots ringing through the deserted streets around them, he realizes rescuing her is just the beginning. He needs to keep her close to find out who is behind her capture, and to keep her safe.

Fifteen-year-old Lindy Rosen has been having nightmares for weeks, waking in a panic, screaming that there’s a man in her room watching her sleep. Her parents assumed it was her overactive imagination, but when one morning they find Lindy missing from her bedroom, they’re not so sure. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate. Within hours of the schoolgirl going missing, the kidnapper reaches out to Jenna with a video of Lindy bound and tied to a chair, crying to be set free. And a simple message - you’ve got 24 hours to find her or I kill her.

For centuries, Westerners have tried to ‘fix’ African economies. From the abolition of slavery onwards, missionaries, philanthropists, development economists and NGOs have arrived on the continent, full of good intentions and bad ideas. Their experiments have invariably gone awry, to the great surprise of all involved. In this short, bold story of Western economic thought about Africa, historian Bronwen Everill argues that these interventions fail because they start from a misguided premise: that African economies just need to be more like the West.