Showing results for "Ballad" in Literature & Fiction

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the 10th annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to out charm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low.

Ballads are the kinds of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the cliche ones where a diva hits her dramatic high note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up.

Darcy believes in love at first sight. Even though it’s never happened to her, she’s spent her whole life waiting for that perfect, magical moment. But right now, her life is anything but perfect. In the aftermath of a music festival, she’s stranded at a bus station until morning—the day before she leaves for college. Her phone is dead, she has no cash, and she’s convinced nothing good can come of this night...but then she meets Russell.

Dinah Caldwell has been filling her father's role since he abandoned their family four years ago. She and her grief-stricken mom run their subsistence farm deep in the Ozarks, making sure her younger brother never has to worry. Until the day Gabriel Gates, who owns everyone in Charlotte County, kills her mother to steal her family's well.

Raised in isolation at Heavenly Shepherd, her family's trailer-dealership-turned-survival compound, Ami Miles knows that she was lucky to be born into a place of safety after the old world ended and the chaos began. But when her grandfather brings home a cold-eyed stranger, she realizes that her "destiny" as one of the few females capable of still bearing children isn't something she's ready to face.