Showing results by narrator "Helen Laser" in All Categories

In this tale inspired by Cinderella (and for fans of The Last Airbender), Ellie is a firemage in a kingdom of water and windmages. Her worried stepmother warns her against showing off her powers, but when everyone at the king’s ball is in danger from a dragon, Ellie can no longer keep them secret. She works together with another firemage to save the entire kingdom. 

The dark side of the gig economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc.) and how to make it equitable for the users and workers most exploited.  

England, 2014: Audrey Collins knows only two things about her beloved grandmother's past: She was born into nobility and she immigrated to America at seventeen years old. So when Audrey inherits her gran's home in North Yorkshire, she arrives expecting a sprawling country estate fit for lords and ladies. Instead, she finds an abandoned stone cottage perfectly preserved as Gran left it when she fled in 1941—ration book and all—and begins to uncover what secrets her family has been keeping.

Kat Wallace is on a mission. After escaping tortuous enslavement, she sets her sights on ending the human trafficking that has flourished on 24th-century Earth. Adopted by the leader of the pirate nation of Bosch, Kat Wallace is determined to prove herself as a member of the Bosch Pirate Force and use her skills to avenge her enslavement and free other thralls. But unexpected love and a test of loyalty threaten to rob her of what she wants most: a home.

Meet Jessica Jones: retired superhero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK.

Kat Wallace has her hands full: three lively children, a floundering marriage to a diplomat who is barely ever home, a commission as an officer in the Bosch Pirate Force, and a driving desire to destroy her past enslaver. None of those things has kept her from her mission to eliminate human trafficking on New Earth.

Annae, a brilliant graduate student in psychiatric magic and survivor of academic abuse, can't stop reading people's minds. This is how she protects herself—using her abilities to know exactly how her colleagues view her—how she escapes the torturous experience of her own existence. When Annae moves to England to rebuild her life and finish her studies under the seminal magician Marec Gorski—infamous for bringing to life a homunculus made from his unwanted better self—she sees, inside his head, a man who is both a destructive force to everyone around him, and her mirror image.

Kat Wallace’s life is finally on track. She is poised to become the next leader of Bosch. She finally has a path to break up human trafficking on New Earth and destroy Rob Abernathy, the man who enslaved her. And as an extra delight, she is starting to explore love with a man who knows her worth.

Train-wreck antihero Charity Blake thrives at being a winged avenger, but exacting vengeance takes as much from her as it gives. To retain the humanity she’s fought tooth and claw to keep, she tries to walk away from her monstrous side for good. With no sense of purpose and a lifetime of failures haunting her, Charity struggles not to fall back into old, murderous habits. Until she meets a little girl who is more broken than herself. 

A grand-scale nuclear war between the US and the United Korean Empire leads to the contamination of Earth’s atmosphere, leaving the planet uninhabitable. Piper, a microbiology intern working under the world-renowned Dr. Landry, is surprised when she is selected to join a last-ditch effort to colonize a planet within a nearby solar system in the Goldilocks Zone.

Are you ready to listen about daring deeds and world-changing events? Meet the American Trailblazers, diverse historical and modern figures who accomplished incredible things. History books for kids age 9-12 should include a range of people and stories - here you'll learn about the greats in sports, civil rights, art, science, and more.

The calf plopped to the ground, looking as grumpy as she felt. She had energy to spare, but nowhere to run and no one to play with. She was trapped! Her mom let out an amused snort, and then licked her little snout clean. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the barn, and a loud braying sent her scurrying under her mother, cowering and shaking. 

When Ruby was eighteen, she ran away from her home in Stoneybrook, Montana, and vowed she'd never return—not to life under the control of her manipulative mother, Ida, a self-styled medium and psychic scammer who made a career out of ruining people's lives; not to the small town where enemies lurk at every turn. But now, twenty years later, Ruby is back. Her mother is missing, presumed dead, and Ruby reluctantly returns to a home filled with chilling memories and disturbing secrets to settle Ida's affairs.

The only mortal daughter of two sea gods, and a priestess of Athena, Medusa was a woman who thought she had found her place in the world. But when Medusa suffers a horrific violation at the hands of Poseidon, Athena is outraged over the desecration of her name and sends a message by transforming Medusa into the snake-haired monster of legend. With one look, any who meet her gaze is turned to stone. Word of her monstrosity travels fast, igniting a king’s fear so greatly that he commands the boy-hero Perseus to bring him her head.

Finley and Arthur are back at boarding school and neither quite knows where the other stands—are they a couple? Are they not a couple? What does one magical Christmas Eve kiss in Oklahoma mean for their relationship status? This confusion isn't helped by the re-entry of old enemies into their school lives, especially ones that may or may not be crushing on Arthur. Finley is at a loss when navigating the complexities of her new (maybe) relationship, which could very well turn into love. . . if she doesn't blow it. 

Summer after summer is the hottest on record. People’s homes are flooding, burning, blowing away. We live with the loss, pain, and grief of what’s happened, and anxiety for what might happen next, as the systems in which we live are increasingly strained. Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth addresses our collective concerns with empathy, grace, and practical strategies to help us all envision a viable future.

When the body of social worker Dermot Carine is discovered in a hotel room, the ripples of suspicion start to spread in many directions. Dermot’s sister has come to town searching for answers. But before the killer is identified, long-held secrets will threaten to break apart families, ruin marriages, and leave more than one person dead.

This powerful story is told from the collective perspective of the children who were rescued from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, as Hitler's campaign of hatred toward Jews and political dissidents took hold. The narrative starts in 1938 and follows the children as they journey to foster families in England for the duration of the war, return to Prague afterward in an unsuccessful search for their parents, and eventually connect with Nicholas Winton, a British former stockbroker who was instrumental in bringing them to safety.

Penny Crenshaw’s divorce and her husband’s swift remarriage to a much younger woman have been hot topics around Atlanta’s social circles. After a year of enduring the cruel gossip, Penny leaps from the frying pan into the fire by heading back to Kentucky to settle her grandmother’s estate. Reluctantly, Penny travels to her hometown of Camden, knowing she will be stirring up all the ghosts from her turbulent childhood. But not all her problems stem from a dysfunctional family. One of Penny’s greatest sources of pain lives just down the street: Bradley Hitchens.

Charity's half-baked, though valiant, attempt to save Rose from herself failed on a colossal level. Now she's alone again, shunned by the other Harpies and determined to leave her bloody past behind. Though she aches for the safety of an ordinary life, she struggles to fit into the monotony of one. And just when her insipid routine threatens to plunge her back into bad habits—bad habits come looking for her.