Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Jill Araya" in All Categories

The characters in Happy Like This are smart girls and professional women—social scientists, linguists, speech therapists, plant physiologists, dancers—who search for happiness in roles and relationships that are often unscripted or unconventional. In the midst of their ambivalence about marriage, monogamy, and motherhood and their struggles to accept and love their bodies, they look to other women for solidarity, stability, and validation. Sometimes they find it; sometimes they don’t.

Daring aviators take the skies by storm in this historical romance filled with unconventional women - and the men strong enough to love them.

East Berlin, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eva, a retired nurse living in poverty in a slum-like apartment block, makes it through her day on a combination of stimulants and sleeping pills, wine and brandy. She waits for visits from her married lover and makes occasional attempts at contact with her distant daughter. Her friendly teenaged neighbor is her closest companion. Then her American niece, Maggie, arrives in Berlin. Eva is thrilled. But happiness begins to slide from Eva's grasp as Maggie's own fierce drug addiction reveals itself.

Hope Taylor is ready to start her new life as the first female pastor of Faith Chapel Episcopal Church in Apple Springs. The Northern California town's quaint cottages, bungalows, and shops promise a fresh start. But where is Father Christopher? The kindly old rector who hired Pastor Hope was supposed to meet her upon her arrival, but he's nowhere to be seen. Hope's faith springs eternal, so she explores the little white church hoping to find Father Christopher. But when she enters the columbarium, she instead finds church elder Stanley King - his skull crushed by a fallen burial urn.

When Nate Porter left Helen, Alaska, to become a firefighter with the Forest Service, he claimed it was because he craved adventure. The truth was, he couldn't stand to hang around, pining for a girl the town's century-old feud meant he could never have. But Nate got over Lydia Lipin years ago, or so he thought until he learns that an old rival has come sniffing around. The solution - a trip home with his rescue puppies to prove to himself he completely extinguished that old flame.

Glaciers have nothing on Kelsey Porter when she decides to freeze someone out. After getting burned once, she's not about to let it happen again. And right now all that icy contempt is focused on one annoyingly attractive and entitled interloper: Ian Roth. Not only is he looking to take advantage of her quaint, coastal community, tainting the small-town charm of Helen, Alaska, but he has committed the one crime she can never forgive - he doesn't like her dogs.

Taylor Lipin has made it her life's mission to leave her hometown and its ridiculous, century-old feud with the Porters behind. But when her sister needs help running the family inn, Taylor agrees to return to Helen, Alaska on a temporary, definitely not longer than two weeks, basis. Or so she thinks, until she's quite literally swept off her feet and into enemy territory by three happy huskies and their drool-worthy owner, Dr. Josh Krane. Though Josh didn't grow up in Helen with the rest of his Porter cousins, he's heard the stories: Porters rescue huskies. The Lipins are cat people.

Newbery Honor winner Kathryn Lasky, author of the Guardians of Ga’hoole series, delivers a riveting adventure about young British spies on a secret mission in Germany in WWII.

It’s not every day you discover you might be related to Anastasia…or that the tragic princess actually survived her assassination attempt and has been living as the woman you know as Aunt Anna. For Jess Morgan, who is growing tired of living her life to please everyone else, discovering her late aunt’s diaries shows her she’s not the only one struggling to hide who she really is. But was her aunt truly a Romanov princess? Or is this some elaborate hoax? With the help of a supremely dorky but undeniably cute local college student named Evan, Jess digs into the century-old mystery.

In this contemporary romance, young Caroline struggles with loneliness after her father's death, her brother’s military deployment, and her mother's deteriorating health. All the while, she juggles graduate school and a full-time job while remaining focused on her future. That is, until Hashim, an exotic stranger, moves into her garage apartment.

Time traveling Parminder - a.k.a. Pammi - must stop a power-hungry Able from the future from destroying the ancient city she visits, where Ables like her live freely. If she is unable to stop him, the city of Zanum vanishes forever, taking Pammi, and all other Ables with it.

Inga Belova leaves NYC for post-perestroika Moscow to launch her own business. She falls in love with two women along the way. Gary Shteyngart says, “If you're going to read one bisexual management consulting Russian novel this year, please, dear god, make it this one."

This Ally Parenting audiobook is the synthesis of 22 years of teaching parents through private parenting consultations, classes, and speaking engagements. Each chapter is an answer to questions parents have asked about how to get more cooperation from their children, or how to make them more responsible, or how to get their child to talk to them more. Parents who had tried many common strategies such as taking things away, isolating, yelling, pleading, threatening, shaming, questioning, and commanding, couldn't stand it anymore.

Do you ever feel like you have to be different things to different people? Do you struggle with pulling yourself together? Rachael ultimately realized this too, and finally discovered what it takes to make a fractured life whole again.

Laura Holland, a rising journalist, endures a night of terror when she is attacked in her home in the middle of the night. Although she fights off the would-be rapist, his parting words are a threat to return. At the urging of her husband, Laura undergoes therapy to recover from the trauma. Laura decides to write a hypothetical legal case, which plays out the events of that night had she had a gun and had shot and killed her assailant. She enlists the help of a young, black attorney, Thomas Bennett. Though Thomas proves to be clever in the rules of the criminal justice system, his striking resemblance to her attacker does not go unnoticed.

Nothing in Margo Simmons’ life comes easy. She can’t claim the inheritance on a condo apartment her uncle has left to her until she is gainfully employed in a job for a year. She meets the man of her dreams but anguishes over a loving relationship because he is still emotionally tied to his deceased wife. With great difficulty, she becomes the guardian to a recently orphaned child she had been tutoring. Margo evolves from an insecure, newbie elementary teacher into a woman determined to fulfill the secret desires locked in her heart.

Dawn was a fragile young woman scarred by pneumonia as a child; she was effectively wrapped in cotton wool to protect her most of her young life. In an effort to improve her health and possibly find a man, her mother sent her to live with her aunt over the summer period and at once caused upset when a man showed interest in her - the same man her cousin wished to court. Her world was complete...or at least it was until her new love was arrested for a most evil crime.

We’re meant to live in such ongoing satisfaction in Jesus and transformation by Jesus that others are drawn to him through us - and all without joining a convent, hauling our sleeping bags to church, or barricading ourselves in the bathroom with our Bibles and prayer journals. The truth is that we can invest in all those religious activities and still be God-starved refugees going through the motions unless we learn how to trust Jesus to do in us what God asks of us.

Through inspiring real-life testimonies, Paula Rinehart writes as both a kindred spirit and a compassionate counselor to women feeling robbed of their passions and trapped by life's disappointing realities. Women who long to be released from the burden of hard choices and perpetually empty souls will be empowered to rediscover dreams long lost and refocus energy misguided. Strong Women, Soft Hearts cries out for women to embrace passion and approach life as something to be lived, not merely survived.

Rocio Lopez and Finn Lockwood are finally reunited - but under desperate circumstances. Magic is raging, and the mage community is in chaos as the Confed struggles to hold onto its secrets. Rocio believes exposing those secrets is the key to saving the world's magic. She never wanted to become the leader of a revolution, but with her unique understanding of the crisis, taking charge may be the only way to see her mission through.