Showing results by narrator "Maria" in All Categories

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action.

Unstoppable is the fiercely honest, fearless, darkly funny autobiography of global tennis star Maria Sharapova. In the middle of the night, a father and his daughter step off a Greyhound bus in Florida and head straight to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. They ring the bell, though no-one is expecting them and they don't speak English. They have arrived from Russia with just 700 dollars and the conviction that this six-year-old girl will be the world's next great tennis star. They are right.

From the pages of Penthouse Variations - for over two decades America's boldest explorer of the most adventurous frontiers of the sexual revolution - come 28 sometimes shocking, always exciting stories by people who dare to be different. They range from risque role players to sexy bi-sirens, from casual encounters to the delights of domination. And they just might inspire you to walk on your own wild side.

Welcome back to Bayview High.... It is a year after the action of One of Us Is Lying, and someone has started playing a game of truth or dare. But this is no ordinary truth or dare. This game is lethal. Choosing the truth may reveal your darkest secrets, accepting the dare could be dangerous, even deadly. The teenagers of Bayview must work together once again to find the culprit, before it's too late....

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Calm by Michael Acton Smith, read by Maria Teresa Creasey. Trains delayed, kids squabbling before bedtime, endless emails filling the inbox: everyone needs more calm in their life. The evidence in favour of calmness is huge. Practices like meditation and mindfulness improve life expectancy, productivity at work, health and even personal happiness.

Falls du dich je gefragt hast, warum Squibs niemals einen Platz in Hogwarts erhalten, was eigentlich passiert ist, als Vernon Dursley und James Potter sich das erste Mal getroffen haben, oder wie die lebenslange Freundschaft zwischen Dumbledore und McGonagall entstanden ist, dann sollte Aus dem Zaubererarchiv ganz oben auf deiner Wunschliste stehen! Es enthält 80 Artikel, die J.K. Rowling für die Original-Pottermore-Website geschrieben hat. Nur bei Audible sind diese jetzt erstmalig als Hörbuch verfügbar. Ein wahres Fest für die Harry Potter-Fangemeinde!

Maria Bamford is a creative genius. But the process of creating is not something that “comes easily” or “is enjoyable” for her. So, over the years, she’s invented a number of helpful techniques for tricking, shaming, coercing herself into doing things. You Are (A Comedy) Special is 15-step comedic send up of a self help guide that examines Maria’s approach to stand-up in a hilarious fashion.

On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women. Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope....

Con men are artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust. They hold a deep, enigmatic fascination for us. But how do they do it? Whether it's a suspicious-looking email or a multimillion-dollar global swindle, Maria Konnikova investigates the psychological principles that underlie each stage of the confidence game and the profile of both the con artist and his mark.

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines them from distinct angles.

A somatic approach to treating trauma, anxiety, and depression has never been more popular. Perhaps that’s because recent studies show that 80% of mind-body communication originates in the body—the vagus nerve is the superhighway that facilitates this communication. Healing Through the Vagus Nerve walks you through how the nervous system and the vagus nerve function, with approachable, non-academic language and helpful illustrations. Amanda Armstrong (founder of Rise as We) teaches all about vagal tone and the impact it has on your mental health and everyday life.

Poetry and science, as Popova writes in her introduction, "are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply." In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists—many of them women, many underrecognized—and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal.

Janka was a Polish Jewish girl, and Alberto, a Spanish Greek Jewish man. This tale reveals how love and hearts of kindness came out of the horrors of the concentration camps. In 1949, they came to Australia, bringing two cultures, 13 languages and their toddler Nina, to forge a new beginning. These two people would never have met and fallen in love, if they hadn’t survived the attempted extermination of a race in the death chambers of Europe. They knew and taught their children, that we cannot move on without forgiveness.

Mireya cree tener una mano ganadora como jugadora de blackjack en Las Vegas, pero su suerte cambia con cada nueva carta y se involucra en el tráfico de personas en México. Orgullosa y autosuficiente, nos cuenta en su propia voz cómo encuentra una forma para rescatar a las mujeres, sólo para descubrir que la mano que está jugando no es tan buena como pensaba...

Hop in your rocket ship for a trip to the stars! In this fantasy rhyming poem about flying through space, listeners will visit Mars, the purple kitties of the planet Fuzz, and an asteroid inhabited by dinosaurs—all in plenty of time to return home for lunch!

When volcanoes blow their top, watch out! They can blast out dangerous lava, rocks, ash, and steam that can contain clouds of poisonous gas. But when lava cools, it becomes rock, which in turn creates new land.

Max is so proud to celebrate his new baby brother, Charlie, that he could tell the whole world!

Multiple times a day, in cities across the US and beyond, a simple yet powerful message is repeated by the well-meaning, the ignorant, and the bigoted: “don’t go”—avoid at all costs those Black and Brown disinvested neighborhoods that have become bywords for social disorder and urban decay. This book is a collection of intimate stories that uncover the hidden influence of both subtle and overt “don’t go” messages and the segregation they perpetuate in Chicago.

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the 75-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of 44 of its best stories from (so to speak) home.