Showing results by narrator "Stephanie Ellyne" in All Categories

Latticing one cherry pie after another, an Ohio housewife tries to bridge the gaps between reality and the torrent of meaningless info that is the United States of America. She worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of happy couples, Weapons of Mass Destruction and how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg. A scorching indictment of America's barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster - a heresy, a wonder - and a revolution in the novel.

Some describe it as the town at the edge of the world. When Melody and Michael Devereux come to Collinsport on their honeymoon, they don't know the secrets that are hidden behind closed doors. But those secrets will be unearthed when an innocent is viciously murdered. Collinsport will be a town divided. One woman's rise to power will lead to further death and destruction. Families will be ripped apart. Blood will be spilt. And the dark forces that wait in the shadows will wait no more.

Some describe it as the town at the edge of the world. When Melody and Michael Devereux come to Collinsport on their honeymoon, they don't know the secrets that are hidden behind closed doors. But those secrets will be unearthed when an innocent is viciously murdered. Collinsport will be a town divided. One woman's rise to power will lead to further death and destruction. Families will be ripped apart. Blood will be spilt. And the dark forces that wait in the shadows will wait no more.

Provocative, smart, angry, wise and very, very funny, the essays in Things Are Against Us cover everything - from feminism to environmental catastrophe, labour strikes to sex strikes, Little House on the Prairie to patriarchal terrorism. Lucy calls for a moratorium on air travel. She rails against bras. She gives Agatha Christie a drubbing. And she pleads for sanity in a world that has spent four years in the company of Donald Trump. Things Are Against Us is electric. It’s vital.

Lottie Kristin is independent from the start. Born in the middle of the century to a middle-class family in the very middle of America, Lottie is set apart by her smarts and sensuality. A girl who'd rather carry out dissections on a snowy back porch than join her family for Christmas dinner is a strange and exotic artifact in the town of Sleeping Bay. But by her early 20s, Lottie finds herself trapped in a marriage gone stale, with a daughter she adores but whose existence jeopardises her place in the lab and her dream of becoming a scientist.

Cyrus Longworth - the man who has carried the Son of the Dark Lord in his head since the day he was born. Sabrina Jennings - the woman who murdered her husband on their wedding night. Alfie Chapman - the British tourist with a psychopathic streak. And Danielle Roget - the French murderess who possesses his girlfriend's body. Unknown to all of them, they are caught in a tangled web of the Dark Lord's making, which on this night will bring them together and see the culmination of a diabolical plan stretching back to the dawn of time.

Collinsport is broken after recent events. David Collins is intent on rebuilding the town he almost helped to destroy and enlists the help of his old friend Amy Cunningham. As these two childhood companions begin to reconnect and discover feelings they never knew existed, another woman from David's past is about to make her own timely return.

'You drank from me, vampire. Shurafa draws closer because of you.' Barnabas Collins is a desperate man. In Cairo's great cemetery, the City of the Dead, an ancient tyrant is plotting his return from the grave, and Barnabas has been chosen to assist in his rebirth. When the city begins to burn, Barnabas is coerced into assisting his escape by murdering a young girl. But the reluctant vampire faces resistance from his conscience: a brilliant scientist by the name of Julia Hoffman.

Artifact is the dazzling, half-century-spanning story of biologist Lottie Kristin. Born in Michigan in the early 1940s to a taciturn mother and embittered father, Lottie is independent from the start, fascinated with the mysteries of nature and the human body. By age 16, she and her sweetheart, cheerful high school sports hero Charlie Hart, have been through a devastatingly traumatic pregnancy. When an injury ends Charlie’s football career four years later, the two move to Texas hoping for a fresh start.

Carolyn Stoddard is lost. Widowed at an early age, she's the lonely rich girl, drinking her life away as her friends grow up and move on. But Carolyn's life is about to change. Because Carolyn is about to be given a set of choices. And those choices will determine whether she is allowed to live or die. It's closing time at the Blue Whale, but for Carolyn Stoddard the night is far from over. It's time to face the music....Dreams that are becoming nightmares for them both.

"Don't live in the darkness, Amy Jennings." Adolescence is difficult enough, especially when your family members are vampires and werewolves. But somehow Amy Jennings survived it. Now a young woman, Amy has come back to Collinsport, determined to forget the horrors of childhood and start anew. But growing up means confronting the truth about the world around you and Amy's rite of passage has only just begun.