Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Woodward" in All Categories

A young woman struggles to finish her PhD on stars and galaxies. Instead, she obsessively tracks the experience of her own body, listening to its functions and rhythms, finally locating in its patterns the beginning of illness and instability. As she discovers the precarity of her self, she begins to turn her attention to the distant orbits of her family members, each moving away from the familial system and each so different in their experiences, but somehow made similar in their shared history of illness and trauma, both political and personal.

Erica Cantelli feels weighed down and it has nothing to do with the extra pounds she's trying to lose. Juggling a successful career with two children and a deadweight husband, most days can feel she's biting off more than she can chew. In fact fantasising about getting rid of her increasingly disinterested husband is just about all that keeps Erica sane. That and daydreaming about the incredibly handsome new school Principal, Julian Foxham. So when her husband jokes about trading her for a size 0 model, Erica knows something has to change.

Karen Rainey lives a sheltered life on the edge of the city. For the last five years, she has rarely left the home unless it was unavoidable. She has her food and anything else she needs delivered to the front door. She works from home to avoid venturing outside. But Karen isn’t agoraphobic. She’s terrified of her ex-boyfriend, Zach, who is serving a life sentence in prison for a string of bank robberies after Karen testified against him. With the constant threat that Zach might send someone to find and kill her, Karen keeps a low profile.

Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets, and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. These stories are about the spectrum of feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.

It's spring 1971 and Vera Kelly and her girlfriend, Max, leave Brooklyn for an emergency visit to Max's estranged family in LA. Max's parents are divorcing—her father is already engaged to a much younger woman, under the sway of an occultist charlatan and her mother has left their estate with no indication of return. Max prepares for the trip with equal parts dread and anger. Upon arriving, Vera is shocked by the size and extravagance of the Comstock estate, while Max attempts to navigate her father and the occultist, who is charming but appears to be siphoning family money.

On their first date back in law school, Natalie and Will Clarke bonded over drinks, dinner and whether they could get away with murder. Now married, they'll put the latter to the test when an unchecked danger in their community places their son in jeopardy. Working as a criminal defence attorney, Nat refuses to rely on the broken legal system to keep her family safe. She knows that if you want justice...you have to get it yourself.

Annie Shepherd is represented by the biggest entertainment agency in the world. Annie Shepherd has the perfect literary life. But Annie Shepherd has a secret. A huge secret she's tried to hide her entire career, which is bought to the surface when her National Book Award-winning boyfriend (and Annie’s former professor) suddenly dies.

The facts are that a canary is dead, as is Mr. Foster. His wife, Minnie, is the prime suspect. Sheriff Peters can't crack the case, but two clever women can. Glaspell originally wrote the story as a play entitled Trifles in 1916.

As penance for a bet, millionaire Rafe King must complete one job as an everyday carpenter. And that’s when he hit the jackpot – an introduction to Katie Charles. With every word, every touch, the sweet, sexy lady made Rafe feel like more than the cold-hearted tycoon he was reputed to be. There was only one problem: Katie despised all wealthy men, especially the King family. But if he kept this secret, it might cost him…everything.

One woman. A million-dollar card game. A city in darkness. Fearless Florida bounty hunter Lori Anderson travels to Chicago to trap the head of a notorious crime family, in a high-stakes, nail-biting mission that sees her trapped in one of the city’s tallest buildings during a blackout.

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

It's the winter solstice in a Philadelphia that has been eroded by extreme weather, economic collapse, and disease-carrying mosquitoes. The Saturnalia carnival is about to begin - an evening on which nearly everyone, rich or poor, forgets their troubles for a moment. Nina hasn't attended Saturnalia in three years, since she walked away from the elite Saturn Club. But when she gets a chance call from Max, her last remaining friend from the Club, Nina will put on a dress of blackest black and attend the wild solstice masquerade, on a mysterious errand she can't turn down.

This is a biography of Earthopolis, the only Urban Planet we know of. It is a history of how cities gave humans immense power over Earth, for good and for ill. Carl Nightingale takes listeners on a sweeping six-continent, six-millennium tour of the world’s cities, culminating in the last 250 years, when we vastly accelerated our planetary realms of action, habitat, and impact, courting dangerous new consequences and opening prospects for new hope.

There’s something in Jack’s past she doesn’t want to face, an evil presence that forever changed the trajectory of her family. It all began when the Toy Thief appeared, a being drawn by goodness and innocence, eager to feed on everything Jack holds dear. What began as a mystery spirals out of control when her brother, Andy, is taken away in the night, and Jack must venture into the dark place where the toys go to get him back. But even if she finds him, will he ever be the same?

After a long overdue divorce, Erica has finally made it to Italy with her two children and, amazingly, her now dreamy fiancé Julian Foxham. The plan was to start fresh and for Erica to run a country B&B, but two years in and her business is failing miserably, while Julian's career as a novelist is soaring and taking him all over the world with his gorgeous agent. Despite having set a wedding date, with every day that goes by, their dreams are heading in opposite directions. And when her sexy Italian chef Alberto offers her a shoulder to cry on—as the saying goes, When in Rome.

Lois and Carly-May are just 12 years old when they're abducted, driven across the country, and imprisoned in a remote, isolated hunting lodge for two months. That summer, under the watchful gaze of their kidnapper, they form a bond which will never be broken.... Decades later both Lois and Carly-May have built new lives and identities for themselves.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year...but not for Angie Martinelli. Having lost her boyfriend, job and apartment all in the space of a week, Angie has no choice but to leave California and return to her family in New England. Determined not to let life weigh her down, Angie finds work at the local mall where she worked as a teenager. After an embarrassing run-in with a handsome stranger, Nick, she’s convinced her luck is about to change.

A skeletal hand clutching an iron key lies hidden within a mermaid's wooden sarcophagus; a hand-drawn map is stolen from beneath the floorboards an old museum. All while an eccentric inventor - the Sleeper - dreams of a passage to the centre of the hollow earth. And by dreaming, brings the passage into being....

There’s one sure fire way of steering clear of heartbreak, and that’s not to get your heart involved in the first place. So what is that irritating flutter she feels every time she sees Brooks Hudson, and why is she finding him so hard to ignore?

When investment banker Adrian and software engineer Rowena started the day, they didn’t expect to end it engaged! But Adrian has invented a fake fiancée to impress his CEO, regretting the lie almost immediately, and now he is in hot water. Meanwhile, Rowena's career has just gone up in flames, leaving her unemployed, unexpectedly expecting with no father in the picture, and short of options. When fate throws these two hot messes into a meet-cute of epic proportions, it's a match made in rock-bottom heaven.