Showing results by narrator "Laurence Bouvard" in All Categories

UN covert negotiator Yael Azoulay has travelled to Europe to help in the investigation of a people-trafficking ring linked to a series of terrorist attacks. Azoulay's boss, UN Secretary General Hussein, asks Yael to broker a secret meeting with the Iranian president in Reykjavic. All parties want the violence to stop. But Azoulay realises that the terrorist chain leads to someone she's met before. Someone for whom terror is just the beginning.

From best-selling author Kristin von Kreisler comes a poignant, uplifting novel of one woman's journey to healing, and the surprising soul mate that helps guide her there. Lila Elliot knows she's lucky. A shooting rampage at her office left several colleagues dead and others seriously wounded. Lila's injuries will heal in time. Yet though she gratefully retreats to her best friend's house to recuperate, Lila can't quite move past her fear and anger.

In Good Bones and Simple Murders, Margaret Atwood displays, in condensed and crystallized form, the trademark wit and virtuosity of her best-selling novels. Among the jewels gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and the five methods of making a man. There are parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, reconfigured fairy tales, and other miniature masterpieces. In The Tent, Margaret Atwood has penned a collection of smart and entertaining fictional essays.

Meet the utterly irresistible Miss Petitfour (an odd name but possibly descended from bakers of tiny delicious cakes). She loves baking and making and dancing with her cats, but most of all she loves to fly.

When Leah and her husband, Clay, move from Seattle to Maine, she envisions a vibrant new neighbourhood packed with families - playmates for her twins, new friends she can confide in and bond with. But while Clay works long hours to establish his brewery, Leah is left alone each day in a nearly deserted housing development where the only other occupants are aloof and standoffish.

What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on an 11-year-old girl grappling with emotional changes in her own life? One morning, Julia and her parents wake up to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing....

The Washington Post said, "Nobody does smart, gutsy, funny, sexy women better than Susan Isaacs". Add to that praise the adjective "strong", and you've got Susan's latest protagonist, Marianne Kent. Her life may not seem thrilling - living with her widowed mother, majoring in economics, working in an elegant dress store after classes to put away money for graduate school - but she's determined to make a better life for herself and her mom.

I knew it would end in disaster, but I didn't listen to reason. I didn't care. Because I loved him so much. Kalvin Kennedy ruled my heart. Until he destroyed it. Shattered it so completely that I became someone else. Someone I loathed. Someone who repeatedly lied to her loved ones. So, I ran. From him. From myself. Desperate to hide my new reality. But I could run only so far. When he reappears in my life, I'm terrified. Unbelievably scared of facing the consequences of my actions.

Is love always worth saving no matter what the cost? Peter Webster, a rookie paramedic, pulls a young woman from her wrecked car. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma - streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes and fierce desires. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair. Eighteen years later and Peter is raising their teenage daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering off course and Peter fears for her future. He seeks out the only person who may be able to help her...

Sheikh Asad has returned to his kingdom ready to secure his legacy, and Iris Carpenter barely recognises the man standing before her. He’s even more magnificent than he was six years ago, and even more dangerous. Iris can resist all she likes, but Asad knows it’s just a matter of time before the flame-haired temptress is back in his bed – where she belongs!

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador in the far north-east of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret – the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne.

Bitter life lessons have taught Crown Prince Maksim Yurkovich that duty must come before desire. His country needs an heir, so when he discovers his lover can’t have children he must sever their ties. Only Maks can’t resist spending one last night in her bed… Against all odds Gillian Harris falls pregnant, and Maks’s is not above using their mutual passion to convince Gillian that she must be his queen!

When Zoe meets Dan, he's everything she is looking for in a man - intelligent, charming, supportive. It's only after they're married that she realises that he's controlling, aggressive, paranoid. And there's no way out. Or is there? Zoe knows she has to escape, but Dan's found her once before, and she knows he can find her again. But Dan has plans of his own. Plans that don't necessarily include Zoe. Be careful whom you trust....

Money. Power. Prestige. These were the riches that destiny had awarded Edward Enger, but a greedy, ruthless family conspired against him and his own relentless desires enslaved him! As the descendant of a German immigrant, Edward built a business empire and dominated three generations of his family. Caldwell weaves the tale of a modern financial genius and the secret passions that obsessed him.

Anise can't wait to spend the summer before her senior year surfing and hanging out on the beach with friends. Santa Cruz is more than her home - it's her heart. But when her aunt is in a serious car accident, Anise must say goodbye to California to go help care for her three young cousins in Nebraska - the last place Anise wants to be. As much as she loves her family, it's hard to put her past behind her when she's living in the childhood house of the mother who abandoned her.

A celebration of the huge linguistic diversity that is open to all of us at birth, and that has inspired and fascinated humans since the invention of speech. The acclaimed novelist Sophie Hardach - a German native who writes in English - explores languages, and multilingualism, as an expression of human creativity and identity, and a way to connect in an often fractured world - a necessary and important pursuit in these politically divided times.

David Moloney’s Barker House follows the story of nine unforgettable New Hampshire Correctional Officers over the course of one year on the job. While veteran guards get by on what they consider survival strategies - including sadistic power-mongering and obsessive voyeurism - two rookies, including the only female Officer on her shift, develop their own tactics for facing “the system”. 

Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the sheriff whose shoes she's filling. 

Euridice is bright and ambitious. But this is Brazil in the 1940s, and society expects her to be a loving wife and mother. While Antenor is busy congratulating himself on his excellent catch, Euridice spends her spends her humdrum days ironing his shirts and removing the lumps of onion from his food, dreaming of the success she could have made of herself - as a writer, dressmaker or culinary whiz - in another life. 

Rainey Bliss Adams' perfect life came to an end one spring afternoon, when her husband was killed in an explosion that horrifically burned their 14-year-old daughter, Ariel. Desperate for a new start, she takes Ariel to live in the beautiful family house. Once there, Ariel starts to mysteriously heal. But as a series of tragedies begins to unfold, it becomes clear that a darkness lurks behind the dignified façade of Bliss House…