Showing results by narrator "Elisabeth Ashby" in All Categories

What if you could reach the most innocent part of yourself and treat that essential being with kindness? Author Natasha Levinger teaches how to locate this inner child, get to know them, and parent this most vulnerable part of yourself so that you can self-soothe even when the world around you is chaotic. By eliminating false personal narratives and creating a nurturing inner voice, you can heal past traumas and live in the present with understanding and grace

Dar Roberts, corporate raider for a multi-national tech company, is cold, practical, and merciless. She does her job with razor-sharp accuracy. Friends are a luxury she cannot allow herself, and love is something she knows she'll never attain. Kerry Stuart left Michigan for Florida in an attempt to get away from her domineering politician father and the constraints of the overly conservative life her family forced upon her. After college she worked her way into supervision at a small tech company, only to have it taken over by Dar Roberts's organization.

When Sheriff Red Hammergren welcomes billionaire Vance Judson back to Lykkins Lake for his high school reunion, his return stirs up more than nostalgia—it unearths old grudges, long-buried betrayals, and a reckoning sixty years in the making. At the same time, a young podcaster, drawn to whispers of an unsolved hit-and-run from the same era, begins asking questions—questions that cut too close to the truth and put a target on her back.

Facing execution, or worse, at the Agency, Sebastian Parker's life hangs in the balance. As Sebastian grows in power, he learns shocking truths about his true identity and his ultimate destiny. Will he assist the Agency in their battles? Are they fighting the real enemy? Can Sebastian evade his terrifying fate?

They seemed like ordinary housewives. Until the killing started. When a woman from an affluent LA neighborhood is brutally murdered, Detective Marcy Kendrick and her partner Angel Reyes are sent to investigate. And soon discover that the victim is no ordinary housewife. She is one of several wealthy women who are connected to organized shoplifting rings—they receive stolen goods from the gangs, then sell the merchandise through online "discount" stores.

When LAPD Homicide detective Marcy Kendrick and her partner Angel Reyes investigate the bizarre death of a drug dealer in an abandoned warehouse, they discover he was waterboarded—with baptismal water. As the death toll continues to rise, it becomes clear the killer is on a religious mission. It's the kind of sensational case the press loves, and they make the most of it, stirring up a frenzy, dubbing the killer the Templar.

Caroline McAlister, college professor and lifelong skeptic, is reeling from the loss of her father and her marriage. Her once promising career has come to a standstill. When her father bequeaths the family cabin to her, it comes with a ghost who haunted her childhood. When she discovers a century-old journal in the attic, she awakens the voice of Carson Quinn. The journal reveals Carson's love for the same hollow that enthralled Caroline growing up. A little sleuthing uncovers rumors that the kind, curious boy in the journal grew up to murder his brother. 

A Southern white writer, educator, and activist, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) spoke out all her life against injustice. In Killers of the Dream, her most influential book, she draws on memories of her childhood to describe the psychological and moral cost of the powerful, contradictory rules about sin, sex, and segregation—the intricate system of taboos—that undergirded Southern society.

Egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. Their stories reveal the extent to which it is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects.

In the late 1960s, Patsy Channing, a stunningly beautiful young woman, was suspended from the venerable Mississippi State College for Women for breach of conduct. The resulting scandal reached all the way to the Columbus courthouse, and the press ate it up. But Patsy's story starts long before that, living with a preoccupied and troubled mother in Memphis, Tennessee. Music becomes her ticket out and a vehicle for the one thing she covets most—a chance to be crowned Miss America. In Confessions of a Southern Beauty Queen, Julie Hines Mabus provides a peek into that world.

The Trebors are in more danger than ever before. The tribe is divided, Mt. Bor spits fire as its caverns boil, and the Borian Sea holds a secret of its own. When the malpeds flew away with seeds from the great tree, scouts are sent to retrieve them, but the power of the seeds is so great they grow immediately into a field of fledgling trees. Within days, the tribe is divided between those seeking a new way of life in the field nestled at the foot of Mt. Bor, and those choosing to stay with the great tree.

Stunning, stubborn, and independent, Philadelphia Fox lost her best friend because of the fabulously rich and powerful Lightfoot family of Washington state. Now she's got her friend's controlling shares in Lightfoot Industries—an inheritance that brings Nick, the family's prodigal and supremely attractive son, knocking at her door.

Peace reigns in the Land of Bori. Growth springs from the earth as the great tree pushes its power through its mighty roots. But there's a noise at the edge of the forest. It darts into the dark. A voice calls to the Trebors. Come and play with us. Come and play with us. But when Ebert decides to follow what lurks in the forest, he has an unexpected encounter. The malpeds have returned. Pitter pat. Pitter pat. Their tiny legs run their rhythm. Pitter pat. Pitter pat. Look what we can do, they say. We are changed, they say. Can this be true?

Bori is ravaged, the earth scorched, homes destroyed. Stella longs for the days of peace, where Trebors danced and sang, where her tree home held all she needed. Now devastation surrounds her and worse yet, her father is missing. He didn't make it home before the storm ripped through the land. The devastated forest calls Stella to journey into it, to look for her father, and face down whatever hides in its deep crevices. But a shifting shape of evil lurks nearby and threatens to destroy everything she knows and loves.

In a trio of popular gender rituals—sorority rush, beauty pageants, and the Confederate Pageant of the Natchez (Mississippi) Pilgrimage—young white southern women have readily ditched contemporary modes of dress and comportment for performances of purity, gentility, and deference. Clearly, the ability to "do" white southern womanhood, convincingly and on cue, has remained a valued performance. Based on ethnographic research and taped interviews, Southern Beauty goes behind the scenes of the three rituals to explore the motivations and rewards associated with participation.

Instead of mentors, they got monsters. That's what Xerak, Vereez, and Grunwold think when three strange creatures shimmer into being within the circle of Hettua Shrine. Their conclusion is reasonable enough. After all, they've never seen humans before. As for Margaret Blake, Peg Gallegos, and Tessa Brown—more usually known as Meg, Peg, and Teg—they're equally astonished but, oddly enough, better prepared. Age and experience have accustomed them to surprises.

Panic grips LA as a cop killer stalks the streets. So far, three officers from the Downtown Precinct have been murdered and there are no clues as to who is doing this or why. Detective Marcy Kendrick and her partner Angel are assigned the case. The dead cops' friends and partners at the Precinct insist they have no idea why the victims were targeted.

LAPD detective Marcy Kendrick and her partner, Angel Reyes, are called to investigate the brutal sex murder of an up-and-coming starlet. A calling card has been left at the crime scene. This was the work of a professional, Alejandro 'El Gato' Gómez, an infamous drug lord who has evaded LA police for over a decade. Gómez has a right-hand man, a mysterious assassin known as El Mariachi de los Muertos. The assassin, for reasons unknown, is on a murderous rampage across LA. The bodies are piling up. But why? 

When Joanie Crea is found strangled on the grounds of the crumbling Grandgeorge estate, Sheriff Red Hammergren faces a chilling mystery as dark as the dense forest surrounding the crime scene. All eyes turn to Derek Grandgeorge, the reclusive heir with a penchant for wearing a green jacket—even in the sweltering Minnesota summer.

Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, she is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935). With the help of a besotted Francis and her top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peek-a-boo striptease routines, a queer mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love.