Showing results by narrator "Andi Arndt" in All Categories

It's not against any formal rule for us to sleep together. It is, however, strictly forbidden to have feelings for each other. I can't do one without the other at this point. Which means I am doomed. When you don’t know who you can trust, reality distorts, reformulating to meet whatever needs its masters demand. Just like me. Just like Kina. Except everything is different now that we know who we really are. But there’s a second reality. This one can’t be manipulated. Solid and true, it takes our mission, our training, our orders, turning them into nothing but secrets and lies.

When you’re born without a trace, no one knows you’re a weapon. I lie for her. I hunt for her. I kill for her. And above all, I betray my mission for her. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t care why. I do. Treason comes in many forms. Love is one of them. Our training taught me to be a sociopath. A machine. A pawn. Nothing more than a tool for a larger goal, without attachments or feelings. Our teachers forgot one important detail: Pawns shouldn’t have hearts. Yet we do.

It all started with the bereavement flowers with my name on them. Not the best way to wake up, right? I work in a flower shop. I know a funeral arrangement when I see one. I know a killer when I see one, too. And one is standing in my hospital room right now, straight behind the man who saved my life. I can’t tell anyone the truth, because that’s the fastest way to really die. So I do the next best thing. I “lose” my memory. I fake my amnesia. Pretending not to remember a brutal attempted murder has its perks.

In the title story, set five minutes in the future where you not only have a credit score but also a dating score, a woman who’s been banished from all dating apps attends a weekly help group with others who have been “banned for life,” and finds herself falling in love. In “Backwards,” a twist on Benjamin Button, a woman reconnects with her estranged father as he de-ages ten years each day they spend together. In “Welcome to Oxhead,” all the parents in a gated community “shut off” when the power goes out.

The Project - the terraforming of Venus - was begun centuries ago. And generations more will come and go before the planet's surface has been rendered fully habitable and its human settlers, the Cytherians, can finally leave their protective domes. There are those, however, whose patience has grown dangerously thin -- malcontents unwilling to resign themselves to never enjoying the fruits of freedom promised to their descendents.

This isn't how my life is supposed to end. Then again, a case of mistaken identity got me here. No one is ever who we think they are. Especially my kidnapper, a man whose entire life is designed to deceive. Powerful people want my rescuer to die. I'm just a lure. A pawn. An object. But objects hold meaning. Emotions attach themselves without logic. Like love. I now know that Duff will do everything to protect me. If he gets here in time. And if I can hold on long enough. Because my body can only handle so much. Pushed to the limits, it's finally giving out. Giving way.

When I was nineteen years old, I was faced with a choice that changed my life. Keep the safety of what I already knew or risk losing everything with the young, hotheaded soldier who stole my heart. I chose the wrong man, and for seventeen years, I paid in tears, blood, and shattered dreams for that decision. Now, there’s a man in my house, holding a gun to my head on the order of my ex-husband—given from his prison cell. That hotheaded soldier I was too afraid to choose? He’s now a six-foot-three wall of muscle who works at the country’s most premier bodyguard agency. I’ve always wanted him, but now, I’ve never needed him more. It’s the call I’m terrified to make. I’m sure he still hates me… Even though I’ve never stopped loving him.

Steph Jagger had always been a force of nature. Dissatisfied with the passive, limited roles she saw for women growing up, she emulated the men in her life - chasing success, climbing the corporate ladder, ticking the boxes, playing by the rules of a masculine ideal. She was accomplished. She was living "The Dream". But it wasn't her dream. Then the universe caught her attention with a sign: Raise Restraining Device.

On the same day Bells Walker learns that her IUD has failed, her husband Harry is denied tenure at his Manhattan university. So Bells, Harry, their two adolescent children, and her baby bump move to New York’s Hudson Valley, where Harry has landed a job at Dutchess College in the town of Pigkill. When the farm-to-table utopia Bells envisioned is anything but, she turns to the blogosphere. Under the pen name the County Dutchess, she anonymously dishes about life in Pigkill, detailing the activities of hypercompetitive parents and kombucha-drinking hipsters.

Winning has always come naturally for stud ice hockey defenseman Gus "the Bus" Persson. On the ice or off, he's never had any trouble scoring, racking up goals - and girls. As the best player in his rookie class and the number-one draft pick of the Malibu Suns, he's taking his game to the next level and is justifiably full of swagger. So why does one of the Suns' ice girls treat him like he's invisible?

Recently and abruptly divorced Veronica Barrington is anxious for a new direction when she answers a listing for a travel companion. It’s from Mariah Ellsworth, a young woman adjusting to an injury that ended her Olympic career. She’s also grieving her mother, Rachel, a lauded food writer, and Mariah aims to trace the steps of her mother’s final, unfinished project so she can heal and also honor the woman she misses.

I lie for her. I hunt for her. I kill for her. And above all, I betray my mission for her. Our training taught me to be a sociopath. A machine. A pawn.

The definitive guide to navigating divorce in today’s world from one of America’s top matrimonial lawyers. Marriage as we know it in America has changed - and so, too, has divorce. Women are out-earning men. Fathers are winning custody battles. Same-sex marriage is law. In this remarkably insightful and clear guide, elite New York City divorce attorney Jacqueline Newman shares her secrets from over two decades in the trenches.

The Venus Project calls upon the strongest and most courageous to create a prosperous world in the dismal wilderness of Venus. Those who demonstrate the skill and the passion to embark on this adventure must transform the barren planet in the midst of political and cultural unrest. When Risa and Benzi, children of Iris, one of the first people to partake in this project, find themselves in opposing forces on the battlefield, it is their love and perseverance that will determine the destiny of the new land.

Rules are necessary for a functional society, but many “rules” we follow are simply conventional wisdom, norms, or limited interpretations. We’re expected to play along by conforming, following the crowd, and steering toward comfortable paths. But viewing rules as a starting point rather than as an endpoint opens worlds of opportunities for your success. Unruly is your manual to identify your best maneuvers in the gray areas that allow you to authentically create and secure your own path to success.

Colleen McElroy grew up wealthy and pampered, the daughter of a prominent society family in Lexington, Kentucky. But her privileged upbringing could not prepare or protect her from her cruel and abusive first husband. Although her calamitous marriage left her with physical and emotional scars that have yet to heal, they haven't prevented her from doing her best to rebuild her life.

Maggie O'Shea knows that because of her dark past, there's no place for love in her life. She owns a successful store in Philadelphia, where she uses her special gifts to help the people she meets. Though this doesn't fulfill her, she is content. Most of the time.

The Grayson sisters are trouble. Everyone in their small town knows it. But no one can know of the secret that binds them together. Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness. Together, they have balance. But one night the balance is toppled. A match is struck. A fire is started. A cruel husband is killed. The potential for a new life flickers in the fire's embers, but resentment, guilt, and jealousy suffocate like smoke. Their lives have been engulfed in flames. Will they ever be able to put them out?

Have you ever been walking home from work and unexpectedly took a different path just to learn more about your neighborhood? Or have you been on a vacation and walked around a new city just to take it all in? Then chances are, you’re a flaneur and you didn’t even know it! Originally used to describe well-to-do French men who would stroll city streets in the 19th century, flaneur has evolved to generally mean someone who wanders with intention. Even if you’ve already embraced being a flaneur, did you know that flaneuring has benefits beyond satisfying your craving for wanderlust?

When single mom Jo Dykstra was at her lowest—jobless and penniless—her childhood friend Dana McFarlane helped her out big-time by securing her a teaching job and thus an opportunity for a new life in the affluent Pacific Northwest town of Glebes Bay. So, when Jo gets a frantic late-night call from Dana, sobbing and desperate for help, it feels like a chance to help her friend in return.