Showing results by narrator "Catherine Ho" in All Categories

Ex-Rider Keiko "Kei" Springs was living with her adopted daughter Becky away from her previous life of crime. Unfortunately, the past is not easy to escape and her sadistic former sensei, Snake, gives her an ultimatum: perform eight tasks for him or die. The final mission before her freedom is nearly impossible, though. Snake wants her to take down a luxury resort where the super-rich are implanted with their heart's desires, only to be brainwashed into serial killers for blackmail potential.

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate.

Reiki master and best-selling author Diane Stein has been a dedicated hands-on healer since 1988. Stein believes strongly that this powerful healing art, once a closely guarded secret tradition, should be accessible and available to all. Since she began teaching in 1990, Stein has initiated thousands of students in all three levels of Reiki healing. Through these efforts she developed a comprehensive teaching method that encompasses the fundamentals of this ancient system.

Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me.

Before Carl Linnaeus began classifying organisms, before John James Audubon drew birds from the wild, before Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, there lived a 13-year-old girl named Maria Merian who loved to draw bugs. With no formal training or university education, Maria Merian took on the role of artist, adventurer, and scientist in 17th-century Europe - a time when women were rarely allowed responsibilities outside the home, and unusual interests led to accusations of witchcraft.

Aster, a farmer’s daughter turned mage, narrowly survived the apocalypse and now seeks an ancient magical entity to save what remains. But when she offers herself to this entity, she receives a vision from Maven, the deceased Demon King. With what little remains of his magic, Maven sends Aster back in time to thwart the apocalypse. Like with all spells, there is a catch: she cannot reveal what she knows of the future. When Aster wakes, Maven has already chosen the girl destined to kill him.

Lacey Chu has always dreamed of working as an engineer for MONCHA, the biggest tech firm in the world and the company behind the "baku" - a customizable "pet" with all the capabilities of a smartphone. But when Lacey is rejected by the elite academy that promises that future, she's crushed. One night, Lacey comes across the broken form of a highly advanced baku. After she repairs it, the cat-shaped baku she calls Jinx opens its eyes and somehow gets her into her dream school. But Jinx is different than any other baku she's ever seen.... He seems real.

Raised among the ruins of a conquered mountain nation, Maren dreams only of sharing a quiet life with her girlfriend Kaia - until the day Kaia is abducted by the Aurati, prophetic agents of the emperor, and forced to join their ranks. Desperate to save her, Maren hatches a plan to steal one of the emperor's coveted dragons and storm the Aurati stronghold.

When Elizabeth Chen’s ever-hustling realtor mother finally sells the beloved if derelict community center down the block, the new owners don’t look like typical New York City buyers. Brendan Lee and Darcy Wong are good Chinese boys with Hong Kong money. Clean-cut and charismatic, they say they are committed to cleaning up the neighborhood. To Elizabeth, that only means one thing: Darcy is looking to give the center an uptown makeover.

Inside a century-old row house in Brooklyn, renegade Sister Evelyn and her fellow nuns preside over a safe haven for the abused and abandoned. Gruff and indomitable on the surface, warm and wry underneath, little daunts Evelyn, until she receives word that Mercy House will be investigated by Bishop Hawkins, a man with whom she shares a dark history. In order to protect everything they’ve built, the nuns must conceal many of their methods, which are forbidden by the Catholic Church.

A year has passed since the disastrous Elysium massacre that left Keiko "Kei" Springs traumatized and hungry for revenge against her former mentor, Snake. However, going after the world's second most powerful man is not as easy as it sounds. Kei must make a series of deadly alliances and navigate the complicated web of politics that will give her a chance to take him down. But will going after him destroy the family she's managed to build?

Once, I knew this girl who sent a video of herself to her brother's best friend…while she was hopped up on pain meds. And he didn’t reciprocate her feelings. Sounds like a hilarious story, right? WRONG. This really happened…to ME, Melanie Taylor. That was five years ago, so I’m over it—over him. At least, I thought I was…until West got traded to the D.C. Eagles and moved to the same city as me! Oh yeah, did I forget to mention my brother’s best friend is Weston Kershaw? An incredibly talented and famous professional hockey player?

Space: a tycoon's playground. From a space station full of women to a monastery on the moon, from a Martian reality-TV contest to a solar shade large enough to cool the Earth, the dreams of a handful of trillionaires dictate the future of humanity. Outside the reach of Earthly law and with the vast resources of the inner solar system at their disposal, the “Four Horsemen” do exactly as they please. The governments of Earth are not amused; an international team of elite military women are set to infiltrate and neutralize the largest and most dangerous project in human history.

When pirates attacked her town and the captain took a liking to her, she saw a way out. Zheng Yi Sao agreed to marry him only if she got an equal share of his business. When her husband died six years later, she took command of the fleet. Over the next decade, the pirate queen built a fleet of over 1,800 ships and 70,000 men. On land and sea, Zheng Yi Sao's power rivaled the emperor himself. Time and again, her ships triumphed over the emperor's ships.

With his 2003 announcement of a program known as PEPFAR, George W. Bush launched an astonishingly successful American war against a global pandemic. PEPFAR played a key role in slashing HIV cases and AIDS deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the brink of epidemic control. Resilient in the face of flatlined funding and political headwinds, PEPFAR is America’s singular example of how to fight long-term plague - and win.

In a world of magic and war, a fierce Demon King formed a pact with the mortal kingdoms: Every 25 years he will choose a human partner that he must try to love for 100 days. If he falls in love, the partner will have the power to kill him. Many centuries later, the Demon King meets a gruesome fate at the hands of the girl he loves. His death sparks the beginning of the end of the world. Aster, a farmer’s daughter turned mage, narrowly survived the apocalypse and now seeks an ancient magical entity to save what remains.

From 1949 to 1950, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made crucial decisions to establish a navy and secure China's periphery. The civil war had been fought with a peasant army, yet in order to capture key offshore islands from the Nationalist rival, Mao Zedong needed to develop maritime capabilities. Mao's Army Goes to Sea is a ground-breaking history of the founding of the Chinese navy and Communist China's earliest island-seizing campaigns.

Sara Chae is the founder of One Last Word, an app that allows you to send a mes­sage to anyone you want after you pass. Safeguards are in place so the app will only send when you’re definitely, absolutely, 100% dead, but when another Sara Chae dies and her obituary is posted online, Sara discovers that drafted messages she had drunkenly uploaded on one night have been released —one each to her emotionally charged mother, to her former best friend who ghosted her, and to her unrequited high school crush, Harry Shim.

Bike cop Ellie Rush dreams of becoming a homicide detective, but it's still a shock when the first dead body she encounters on the job is that of a former college classmate. At the behest of her Aunt Cheryl, the highest-ranking Asian-American officer in the LAPD (a source of pride for Ellie's grandmother, but annoyance to her mom), Ellie becomes tangled in the investigation of the coed's murder—with equal parts help and hindrance from her nosy best friend, her over-involved ex-boyfriend, a smoldering detective, and seemingly everyone else in her extended family.

These stories contain a cross section of narratives, people, and places: an unusual couple requests to be flown to a remote island near Alaska; a series of beached whales vex a US military officer in Vietnam and cause unrest in a local village; an ecoterrorist’s bomb at an upscale ski resort has unintended consequences; and mysterious killings thought to be the work of a monster in Japan turn out to be something much more real.