Showing results by narrator "Carolina Hoyos" in All Categories

Kate Burns grows up wanting attention from her Ma, but her Ma wants only money and Kate learns how to get both. She and her childhood friend, Lacey, run kissing lessons for cash in the janitor’s closet of Fenbrook High, and just like that, they find themselves in the sex work industry. From there, they go on to work at The Purple Panther, a strip club in Auckland. When Ma dies of cancer, Kate discovers that the men her Ma was always inviting over to their home were, in fact, clients. Ma was no stranger to sex work either. 

Few in sleepy Sumner’s Mills have stumbled across the Octagon House hidden deep in the woods. Even fewer are brave enough to trespass. A man had killed his wife and two young daughters there, a shocking, gruesome crime that the sleepy Upstate New York town tried to bury. One summer night, an emboldened 14-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into the Octagon House. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did. 

This powerful essay collection is a natural extension of the #MeToo movement, revealing the interior experience of women after they’ve inevitably been underestimated or hurt—the epiphany that the world is different than they thought it to be—and how they’ve used this knowledge to make change.

The Actual Star takes listeners on a journey over thousands of years and six continents—collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle. An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

From a simple robbery gone horribly wrong to a grisly murder in a secret love dungeon, this stellar collection of crime fiction short stories showcases some of today's finest voices of color. Edited by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Abby L. Vandiver, this thrilling anthology will keep you on the edge of your seat. Includes "Midnight Escapade" by Jennifer Chow, "Lucky Thirteen" by Tracy Clark, "Murderers' Feast" by H.C. Chan, "In the Matter of Mabel and Bobby Jefferson" by Christopher Chambers, and many more.

Luca Laine Thomas lives on a cursed island. To the outside world, Parris is an exclusive, idyllic escape accessible only to the one percent. There’s nothing idyllic about its history, though, scattered with the unsolved deaths of young women—deaths Parris society happily ignores to maintain its polished veneer. But Luca can’t ignore them. Not when the curse that took them killed her best friend, Polly, three years ago. Not when she feels the curse lingering nearby, ready to take her next.

When their mother passed away a decade ago, Evie Ross and her sister, Suda Kaye, were each left a stack of letters, one to be opened every year on their birthday. While the letters encouraged Suda Kaye’s wanderlust, taking her away from Evie for years, their free-spirited mother’s wish for her more cautious daughter was to discover what her heart truly desires. But steadfast Evie discovered long ago that wishes rarely come true. A successful life stems from planning, building a stable career - and keeping your heart guarded at all costs.

Baking is Isabeau Collins’ life. Back from studying under the finest chefs in France and Italy, and with a newly minted culinary degree in hand, Izzy is ready to pursue her dream: whipping up creative confections in her own custom cake shop. But her perfect plans are waylaid when two women claiming to be her half sisters show up with a stack of letters addressed to Izzy from their late mother.

April 1910. Women's rights activist Alvera Fields mysteriously vanishes from her home one night, leaving her newborn baby and husband behind, and the case is never solved. 

As a child, horses consumed Halimah Marcus' imagination. When she wasn't around horses she was pretending to be one, cantering on two legs, hands poised to hold invisible reigns. To her classmates, girls like Halimah were known as "horse girls," weird and overzealous. Decades later, when memes about "horse girl energy" began appearing across social media, Halimah reluctantly recognized herself. The stereotypical horse girl is also white, thin, rich, and straight, a daughter of privilege. Yet so many riders don't fit this narrow, damaging ideal.

In a world with an uncertain future, do you imagine for the best or for the worst case scenario? Twelve writers tackle extreme solarpunk utopias and apocalyptic or political dystopias—and the gray areas in between—in Biketopia, the fourth volume of the Bikes in Space series of feminist science fiction stories about bicycling. Some find love and fierce resistance in the end times; others imagine an ecological future of saving technology, with solarpunk ecotopian visions, at times paired with crushing social control.

Luca Laine Thomas lives in Parris, the beautiful island plagued by the unsolved deaths of young women—most significantly, Luca's best friend. All Luca wants is to heal from the traumatic loss and leave her feelings of guilt and helplessness behind. Then Luca comes home to find the police at her house. Her sister, Whitney, is dead. Luca and Naomi, the new girl next door, decide to take the investigation into their own hands, and along the way, their connection deepens.