Showing results by narrator "Kristen Sieh" in All Categories

At The Night Owl, a legendary TV comedy sketch show, newly divorced scriptwriter Sally Milz requests for her latest sketch mocking the social rule where average men always seem to date beautiful women to be cut. Especially as it reflects the real life of her schlubby-looking office-mate and fellow scriptwriter Danny who has just announced his engagement to Annabel, a beautiful and starry actress. When Sally goes to stay with her elderly father-in-law and his decrepit dog, she receives an email from one of the guests on their latest show, a famous and exceedingly handsome singer.

In ‘Lost But Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives listeners of her novel Prep a chance to see how our beloved character Lee Fiora is doing twenty years later, when she returns for a school reunion and grapples with memories of an incident that happened while she was a student. In ‘Pretzels are for Biting,’ a woman looks up two best friends that she moved away from after her divorce. In ‘Creative Differences,’ a photographer from the mid-west quickly realizes that the ‘documentary’ she stars in is actually a commercial for a multi-national corporation.

It’s the summer of 1969, and the shock of conflict reverberates through the youth of America, both at home and abroad. As a student at a quiet college campus in the heartland of Indiana, Terry Ives couldn’t be farther from the front lines of Vietnam or the incendiary protests in Washington. But the world is changing, and Terry isn’t content to watch from the sidelines. When word gets around about an important government experiment in the small town of Hawkins, she signs on as a test subject for the project, code-named MKULTRA.

This is a story about a life lived in two halves. It’s about what happens when real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen. It’s about where we go when existential threats loom and the high stakes of reality that claim us back. It’s about living in world that contains both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy and justice in the universe and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.

From the aftermath of Order 66 comes a new group of former Jedi, each with their own reason to serve the Empire under Darth Vader. Among them is Iskat, who survived the destruction of her old Order to claim a new destiny in the Force. Iskat joins the Inquisitors in the hope of uncovering her hidden past that the Jedi refused to share with her.

Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside, is destroying us. It wasn't built for people, it was built for profit. This is a book that tears open the seams of reality as we know it-the way we experience time itself-and rearranges it, reimagining a world not centered around work, the office clock, or the profit motive. Explaining how we got to the point where time became money, Odell offers us new models to live by that make a more humane, more hopeful way of living seem possible.

Rhoda West has the world at her feet. As the luminously charismatic CEO of Radical, a fast-growing start-up, Rhoda has built a wellness company whose core mission is the betterment of women’s lives. But just as Radical announces the latest fundraising round that will take it over the top, an anonymous Twitter account begins revealing the company’s secrets and starts questioning its beliefs and approach, and Rhoda herself. Is Rhoda really the nurturing leader that she presents to the world, or a fraud on a mission to exploit the women she claims to want to help?

After a college party, two boys drive a girl home: drunk and passed out in the back seat. Rumours spread about what they did to her, but later they'll tell the police a different version of events. Alice will never remember what truly happened. Her fracture runs deep, hidden beneath cleverness and wry humour. Nick - a sensitive, misguided boy who stood by - will never forget. That's just the beginning of this extraordinary journey into memory, fear and self-portrayal.

Jedha. The worn streets of this ancient world serve as a confluence for the galaxy. Visited by all, yet owned by none. Here, the Jedi are but one creed among many worshipping and studying the Force. From the Guardians of the Whills to the Path of the Open Hand, countless beings come to learn, and to share, in peace. As all of Jedha prepares for its Festival of Balance, the galaxy still reels from the violence on Eiram and E'ronoh. But after foiling a plot to escalate the war between the two planets, the Jedi believe that a lasting peace may be within reach.

In Other People We Married, Straub creates characters as recognizable as a best friend, and follows them through moments of triumph and transformation with wit, vulnerability, and dazzling insight.

Daphne Brink doesn’t follow baseball, but watching “America’s Snoozefest” certainly beats sitting at home in the days after she signs her divorce papers. After one too many ballpark beers, she heckles Carolina Battery player Chris Kepler, who quickly proves there might actually be a little crying in baseball. Horrified, Daphne reaches out to Chris on social media to apologize . . . but forgets to identify herself as his heckler in her message. Chris doesn’t usually respond to random fans on social media, but when a DM from “Duckie” catches his eye, he impulsively messages back.

It was supposed to be the perfect prom weekend getaway. But it's clear something terrible happened when Claire wakes up alone and bloodied on a hiking trail with no memory of the past 48 hours. Now everyone wants answers - most of all, Claire. She remembers Friday night, but, after that...nothing. And now Kat and Jesse - her best friends - are missing. What happened on the mountain? And where are Kat and Jesse? Claire knows the answers are buried somewhere in her memory. But as she's learning, everyone has secrets - even her best friends.

Joy and Annie are friends and roommates whose thirty-something lives aren’t exactly what they’d imagined. To make ends meet, they decide to rent their extra bedroom to Theo, who charms Joy with his salt-and-pepper hair and adoration of their one-eyed cat. When Annie goes to live with her boyfriend, Theo and Joy settle into a comfortable domesticity. Then Theo brings home Celine, the girlfriend he’s never mentioned, who is possibly the most stunning woman Joy has ever seen. Joy resolves to do whatever it takes to hold on to him, falling deeper into a hellscape of her own making.

Lourna Dee is not a villain. She’s not a hero. She’s a survivor. The former Tempest Runner, wanted by both her Nihil allies and the Republic, has evaded imprisonment and death from both groups more times than she can count. But even Lourna cannot outrun the mysterious blight that devours everything wherever it appears. And Marchion Ro, the Eye of the Nihil, has announced that only he knows the secret to stopping it.

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.

Fifteen-year-old Morgan has a secret: She can't wait to escape the perfect little island where she lives. She's desperate to finish high school and escape her sad divorced mom, her volatile little brother, and worst of all, her great group of friends...who don't understand Morgan at all. Because really, Morgan's biggest secret is that she has a lot of secrets, including the one about wanting to kiss another girl. Then one night, Morgan is saved from drowning by a mysterious girl named Keltie. The two become friends, and suddenly life on the island doesn't seem so stifling anymore.

The holidays are fast approaching, and the Belvedere siblings are a mess. Liz, a Hollywood showrunner and responsible eldest, has no idea how to follow up her hit show’s first season, or how to deal with her giant crush on its star, Violet Grace. Birdie turned her chronic middle-child syndrome into a career as a stand-up comic, but since she spends more time wooing women than working on new material, she’s facing one-hit-wonder status, especially once she gets axed by her manager.

Estranged for a decade, sisters Leslie and Robin must reunite if they are to claim the fortune their father left them. Leslie desperately needs that money, but when she arrives at her sister's apartment, she finds her body instead. Leslie needs another plan. Without Robin, she won't see a penny. Mary, an aspiring actress, spends her nights slinging beers at a seedy restaurant. She'd do anything to start her life over. When Leslie offers her a huge sum of money and the chance to be someone else - to be Robin - she takes it.

Stella and Ellie Steckler are only a year apart, but their different personalities make their relationship complicated. Stella is single-minded, driven, and she keeps to herself. Cross-country running is her life and she won't let anything get in the way of being the best. Her sister Ellie is a talented runner too, but she also lets herself have fun. She has friends. She goes to parties. She has a life off the course.

Ever since her journalist mother died on assignment, Marin has played it safe, refusing to set foot outside of Tennessee. Her wild-child younger sister, Sadie, has trotted the globe as a photographer, living off of art and adrenaline. When Sadie returns from a tough assignment abroad and looks a little worse for wear, Marin reluctantly agrees to a sisters' spa weekend on the tropical island of Saba. But her lifelong fear of travel is affirmed when Sadie misses the flight, Marin's luggage gets mixed up, and turbulence sends her hurtling into the lap of handsome stranger Lucas Tsai.