Showing results by narrator "Bianca Bryan" in All Categories

Elizabeth thought she'd planned for everything. Her son's seizure disorder meant constant routines, strict safeguards, unbreakable structure. But one brief stop at a gas station shatters her fragile world. In a heartbeat, her car is hijacked—with Timothy still inside. She throws herself into the moving car, but that's only the beginning of the nightmare. As hours stretch into days, they're held captive in a remote house—cut off from everyone. No phone. No medication. Elizabeth must keep her son alive while navigating the mind of the man holding them captive, and her own spiraling fear.

In this sequel to Setting the Stage, there's one week left until opening night of Curie: The Musical, and nothing is going right backstage. The set has collapsed, the crew's headsets don't work, and Ella, the stage manager, just quit in a fury. The cast and crew are playing pranks on each other, and Willow, the soundboard operator, is working on a scheme that will turn the feud into all-out war!

Sally's childhood wasn't a childhood at all. Cold nights in the backseat of a car. Empty cupboards. A mother who disappeared when she was needed most. By twelve, she was the one holding the family together―barely. Years later, Sally does the unthinkable―the one thing people say no mother should ever do. But what if it was the only way to protect her children? So she let them go. Now the past is circling back. One of the children she gave up is standing on her doorstep. And with her return come the questions Sally has tried her whole life not to answer.

After surviving a brutal kidnapping, Elizabeth is determined to protect her son and reclaim their quiet life. No more strangers. No more threats. Just safety. But safety is a fragile illusion. A courtroom mandate forces her to open their home to a psychologist and a social worker—two people who claim to help but begin asking the wrong questions. Her parenting. Her past. Her sanity. When Timothy begins to withdraw and show signs of distress, Elizabeth suspects something is very wrong. But is it the trauma resurfacing—or something far more dangerous?

When a silent little girl is abandoned at court, Anna isn't the obvious choice to take her in. But something about the child feels painfully familiar—and impossible to walk away from. She thinks it's temporary. Just until the system finds a better option. But then a figure from her past resurfaces—the one she thought she'd escaped for good. He's watching. Waiting. And the closer he gets, the more Anna's carefully rebuilt life begins to splinter.

Worn down by the loss of her husband and bills she can't keep up with, Cynthia agrees to homeschool two teenage girls. One is a sweetheart. The other unsettles her. At first, she blames her unease on nerves, on guilt, on the pressure of raising her young daughter alone. But something about the second girl isn't right. The way she watches. The stories that don't add up. The way even the dog keeps his distance. Then a man from the past reappears—someone with ties to terrible things. And suddenly, Cynthia's fragile home doesn't feel safe anymore.

Childhood friends Griffin the dragon, Jackson the hyena, eight-year-old boy Cattails, and 10-year-old girl Alexandra discuss how best to deal with a bully.

Ripple: An Intimate Exchange of Urgency and Hope Between an Ecologist and His Daughter is a narrative of letters written by an ecologist dad to his daughter upon her coming-of-age. Drawing upon his personal history, family anecdotes, and shared memories, Powers envisions a path for humanity's reintegration with nature, and a chance to save the life force that runs through all of us.

Eighth grader Ella Amani has been waiting her whole life to be the stage manager of the middle school musical, and this is her year! Somehow she'll have to find jobs for Willow, who's doing stage crew instead of detention, and Sebastian, a shy sixth grader whose sister is the star of the show. She'll have to wrangle Kevin, the clumsy new kid who was homeschooled on a boat, and Levi, her best friend, who used to tell her everything. Still, Ella's pretty sure she can handle the crew. The cast? That's a different story.

The eastern oyster, the humble bivalve and delicious treat, are the living bones of the Chesapeake, as well as the ecological and historical lifeblood of the region. When colonists first sailed these impossibly abundant shores, they described massive shoals of foot-long oysters but the bottomless appetite of the Gilded Age and great fleets of skipjacks took their toll. Disease, environmental pressures and overconsumption decimated the population by the end of the twentieth century.