Showing results by narrator "Cindy Kay" in All Categories

Talia Eden loved Foster Madden for one year, two months, and eleven days. It was on day 438 that her love died. The day he chose to marry her best friend. The day she vowed never to think of Foster again. Until years later, when he has the audacity to show up in her small hometown of Quincy, begging for her help. The ink on his divorce papers is barely dry, yet he comes armed with apologies and promises. She knows it’s all a ploy. Foster is the king of games and secrets. But he’s got delusions the size of Montana if he thinks she’ll help him train for a world championship fight.

The Brotherhood of Assassins has been all but eradicated by the Chinese Emperor. Restoring the Order to its former glory is no easy feat, but it is Shao Jun's duty, and her best chance of survival. When she learns that an old foe has acquired a powerful artifact with which he intends to lure remaining assassins to their deaths, Shao Jun hastens to Mongolia. There, intrigue between Mongolian royalty, an exiled prince, and tensions between Mongolia and China draw her into their web. When she discovers an even more sinister actor, Shao Jun vows to do everything in her power to stop it.

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: It’s close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and, ideally, very little thinking. Her first gig - watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods - turns out to be inconvenient. Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all but something altogether more meaningful.

Nellie Rivera is trading traffic for tranquility. When the quiet streets of small-town Montana beckon, she leaves Denver behind and moves to Calamity. It would be the perfect adventure if not for Cal Stark. When her archnemesis dares to show his face one Saturday morning, declaring he is moving there too, she vows to make his life a misery. The town isn’t big enough for the both of them and besides… She was here first.

She offered him $10,000 to seduce her father's gold-digging fiancee. He countered with $15,000 and a kiss—from her. At any time he chose. Kris should've said no, but she was desperate to get rid of her stepmother-to-be, and the gorgeous actor with the wicked grin was perfect for the job. So she agreed to his terms—not knowing that doing so would cost her a lot more than money and a kiss . . . He did it for the money—which he desperately needed. The kiss was just a bonus-or so he told himself.

A beautiful resource for nature advocates, parents-to-be, animal lovers, and anyone who seeks to restore wellbeing on our planet, The Evolved Nest reconnects us to lessons from the animal world and shows us how to restore wellness in our families, communities, and lives.

Ying Yue believed in love . . . once. Yet when she's chosen to wed the Crown Prince, Ying's dreams of a fairy tale marriage fall apart. Her husband-to-be is cold and indifferent, confining Ying to her room for reasons he won't explain. And whispers swirl: of seven other brides who mysteriously disappeared after their own weddings.

Noelle Tom really shouldn’t have eaten those dumplings at the night market. But the old woman at the stall said they’d give her what she needed most, and what Noelle desperately needed after another long workweek was food. Except now she’s reliving the same Friday. Every morning her alarm goes off at 6:45, and the Wordle answer is always “happy.” Worst of all, any work she does at her job as an engineer? It’s erased when she wakes up. Monday might never come in this workaholic’s nightmare.

China, 16th century. The Assassins are gone. Zhang Yong, the relentless leader of the Eight Tigers, took advantage of the emperor's death to eliminate all his opponents, and now the Templars hold all the power. Shao Jun, the last representative of her clan, barely escapes death and has no choice but to flee her homeland. Vowing to avenge her former brothers in arms, she travels to Europe to train with the legendary Ezio Auditore. When she returns to the Middle Kingdom, her saber and her determination alone will not be enough to eliminate Zhang Yong.

After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled Ariane’s death as a suicide, but the trio is determined to find out what really happened. When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events that no one could have predicted. As the girls retrace their friend’s final days, they discover a dark secret about Grimrose - Ariane wasn’t the first dead girl. They soon learn that all the past murders are connected to ancient fairy-tale curses....

Exercise. Eat a balanced diet. Go to therapy. Most wellness advice is focused on achieving and maintaining good physical and mental health. But Harvard-trained social scientist and pioneering social health expert Kasley Killam reveals that this approach is missing a vital component: human connection. Just as we exercise our physical muscles, we can strengthen our social muscles. Weaving together cutting-edge science, mindset shifts, and practical wisdom, Killam offers the first methodology for how to be socially healthy.

Five thousand years in the future, humankind has spread across thousands of worlds, and more than a dozen different governments exist in an uneasy truce. But human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. This changes when scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann, traveling the void just beyond the edge of the galaxy at such a high speed that it cannot be natural. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped, with but a single megaplex upon it - close to perfectly preserved.

A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully. Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

It's a hard life for a young mortal girl, living on the streets. After Lee Jia narrowly escapes a fate worse than death, her last ditch effort to flee her pursuers and survive the winter finds her accidentally enrolled in a brand-new academy for immortals. Now faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Lee Jia will have to survive a violent roommate, arrogant young masters, and—worst of all—social hierarchies in order to carve out a place for herself in the world of magic, martial arts, and cultivation.

Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: To escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four.

Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets. Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop's new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families' consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sosuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sosuke's brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital.

A striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To listen to these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish.

After sacrificing her relationship with Roma to protect him from the blood feud, Juliette has been a girl on the warpath. One wrong move, and her cousin will step into usurp her place as the Scarlet Gang's heir. The only way to save the boy she loves from the wrath of the Scarlets is to have him want her dead for murdering his best friend in cold blood. If Juliette were actually guilty of the crime Roma believes she committed, his rejection might sting less.