Showing results by narrator "Katie Koster" in All Categories

A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.

Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug—and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears.

Ambitious intern Ashton Bailey is about to get closer to her dream of being a sports announcer. All she has to do is prove that too-perfect-to-be-true NFL quarterback Evan Dawson isn’t quite as wholesome as his contract requires. It’s also the perfect opportunity to get delicious payback on the boy who broke her teenage heart. At least that’s her plan. But she forgot just how easy it is to crush on the irresistible charmer. #OhNoNotAgain.

Becky Thompson doesn't take no for an answer. She knows what she wants, and his name is Scott Jones. Scott Jones's future was stolen along with his heart. He cannot love Becky, but can he keep her safe? After months of illness, deprivation and betrayal, with the end in sight have their problems only started?

As one of the most popular influencers on social media, Mia Bell has lived her life online for years. With her celebrity dog and gorgeous fiancé, she is planning the ultimate virtual wedding - expensive, elaborate, and entirely paid for by sponsors. But off-camera, her world is far from picture perfect. After being jilted by her fiancé and faking her nuptials to please her sponsors, Mia finally has had enough. She heaves her phone off a cliff, ready to live - and maybe find love - offline for a change.

Johanna Thompson understands her father's wish to go to Oregon. Can she use the time together to convince him to let her follow her dream? Rick Hughes inherits two small children, a wagon and a dream to go to Oregon. But it's not his dream. Johanna and Rick need to work together to save their families from disaster but doing so could comprise both their dreams. Can they find a way to overcome the difficulties on the trail and find a new life together?

Elise Beaumont is cursed. With every touch, she experiences exactly how her loved ones will die. And after her brother's death — a death she predicted but was unable to prevent — Elise is desperate to get rid of her terrible gift, no matter the cost. Claire Montgomery also has a unique relationship with death, mostly because she’s already dead. Technically, anyway. Claire is a vampire, and she's been assigned by the Veil to help Elise master her rare Death Oracle powers.

Can Almanzo, now a grown up, take control of his destiny or . . . will he let being an orphan destroy his chance of happiness? He needs to leave what happened on the trail behind him but fate intervenes. Matilda Masterson is rescued from the trail, yet the danger she's in continues. Can the citizens of Portland save her? Or will the price they pay be too high?

At home, Maggie is the odd one out. Her parents are preoccupied with the new baby they're expecting, and her younger brothers are twins and always in their own world. Maggie thinks a new puppy is the answer, but when she goes to select one on her birthday, she breaks out in hives and rashes. She's severely allergic to anything with fur! Can Maggie outsmart her allergies and find the perfect pet? Megan Wagner Lloyd draws on her own childhood to tell a heartfelt story of family, friendship, and finding a place to belong.

Lolly Blanchard's life only seems to give her lemons. Ten years ago, after her mother’s tragic death, she broke up with her first love and abandoned her dream of opening a restaurant in order to keep her family’s struggling Seattle diner afloat and care for her younger sister and grieving father. Now, a decade later, she dutifully whips up the diner’s famous lemon meringue pies each morning while still pining for all she's lost.

“Kill it with fire”, the typical first reaction to a legacy system falling into obsolescence, is a knee-jerk approach that often burns through tons of money and time only to result in a less efficient solution. This book offers a far more forgiving modernization framework, laying out smart value-add strategies and proven incremental techniques that work equally well for ancient systems and brand-new ones.

Story isn't just one way to persuade. It's the way. It's built into the architecture of the brain, and has been since early humans gathered around the camp fire, trying to figure out how to outsmart the lion next door. In Story or Die, story coach Lisa Cron sets out to decode the power of story, first by examining how the brain processes information, translates it into narrative, and then guards it as if your life depends on it.

In Catherine Lowell's smart and original debut novel, the only remaining descendant of the Brontë family embarks on a modern-day literary scavenger hunt to find the family's long-rumored secret estate, using only the clues her eccentric father left behind and the Brontës' own novels. Samantha Whipple is used to stirring up speculation wherever she goes. Since her father's untimely death, she is the presumed heir to a long-rumored trove of diaries, paintings, letters, and early novel drafts.

1852 Illinois. Eva Thompson has her future mapped out. Marriage to David Clarke and a family is all she wants. Her Pa has other ideas. He insists on taking the Oregon Trail to a better life and favors Harold Chapman as Eva's suitor. Marriage to Harold will provide Eva with everything she needs except . . . love.

Pregnant and alone, Sarah Hughes finds herself in a village at the mercy of strangers. Along comes Bear who is determined to bring her home. She doesn't want to leave but having killed a man she is left with little choice. On the run with an Indian who calls her a spoiled brat isn't the best of starts to romance. Over time, she comes to see the person behind the stony face. Bear is intent on staying single due to his mixed heritage. Can Sarah prove to herself and Bear, not to mention their respective friends that they belong together?

Ricky and Nini, who play Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez, share chemistry on and off the stage, but with their understudies E.J. and Gina plotting to take over their roles, will these talented performers make it to opening night? 

As a mom, you always want to give your best to your family. The Better Mom Devotional will help you focus who you are becoming rather than what you are accomplishing. Find freedom from mom-guilt, the myth of perfection, and the endless to-do list of motherhood and step into your greatest adventure yet: becoming the better mom.

Thirteen-year-old Gabby Woods is looking forward to another summer vacation at her family’s lake house, even though she would rather bury herself in a mystery novel than make new friends. But soon Gabby befriends Paige, a snarky kid from Chicago, and they get caught up in a local mystery: the sudden disappearance of a glamorous couple and the extravagant lake house they left behind. To gather clues about the missing couple, Paige coaxes Gabby into trespassing, even though she knows it’s wrong. Yet, each sneaky visit to the abandoned lake house uncovers new mysteries.

Kat Finn and her mother can barely make ends meet living among humans. Like all vampires, they must drink Hema, an expensive synthetic blood substitute, to survive, as nearly all of humanity has been infected by a virus that’s fatal to vampires. Kat isn’t looking forward to an immortal life of barely scraping by, but when she learns she’s been accepted to the Harcote School, a prestigious prep school that’s secretly vampires-only, she knows her fortune is about to change.

For years, Edna Miller has found herself drawn to Emery Hoschtettler with an attraction she can explain no better than she can put a stop to it. Other suitors come and go, but none make her feel the way she feels around Emery - that incredible floating feeling, as if she was walking on air, mixed with a painful desperation to be ever nearer to him. Despite the fact that Emery seldom seems to pay her much attention, she decides it would be unfair to marry anyone else when her heart longs only for him. He hasn’t seriously dated anyone else either.