Showing results by narrator "Elena Rey" in All Categories

A haunted Aquarius finds love behind the veil. An ambitious Aries will do anything to stay in the spotlight. A foodie Taurus discovers the best eats in town (with a side of romance). A witchy Cancer stumbles into a curious meet-cute. Whether it’s romantic, platonic, familial, or something else you can’t quite define, love is the thing that connects us. All Signs Point to Yes will take you on a journey from your own backyard to the world beyond the living as it settles us among the stars for thirteen stories of love and life.

For most of her life, Lacey has been a prisoner without even realizing it. Her dad rarely let her, her little sister, or her mama out of his sight. But their situation changes suddenly and dramatically the day her grandparents arrive to help them leave. It’s the beginning of a different kind of life for Lacey, and at first she has a hard time letting go of her dad’s rules. Gradually though, his hold on her lessens, and her days become filled with choices she’s never had before.

No one has ever called Frani Gonzalez squeamish. Seriously, whether it’s guts (no big deal), bugs (move aside, she’s got this), or anything else that you might find at the Central Texas Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, to her and her dad, the university’s body farm is just home. Having bodies buried in her backyard doesn’t exactly make Frani the most popular kid in school, and the imaginary spider that lives in a web in her brain isn’t helping either.

Dolores Huerta always knew that helping others in her community was important. So when she became a teacher and saw how hard it was for her students from farm families to find enough to eat, she knew there was more she could do. Dolores became a labor rights activist, fighting for better conditions for farm workers. She started unions so that workers would be treated more fairly. And she was also a leader of the women's rights movement.

People pleaser Evie Whitmore can’t believe her art and architecture class trip has brought her to Venice—home of gondolas and crumbling palazzos, and the inspiration for both her art and her hidden passion, Elven Realms, a series of novels set in the very city she’s about to explore. Rumors about an underground Elven Realms fan club swirl, and Evie, wearing a costume and mask, sneaks out at night to find it. There’s no way she can tell anyone what she’s doing—not her friends, and certainly not Gabriel Martinez, the bad boy loner she’s been partnered with on the trip.

Sixteen-year-old Mia is stranded in the middle of the Caribbean. After a mortifying incident in the school cafeteria, her parents decide there is only one way to deal with her meltdown: move onto a battered sailboat and leave everything behind. Her mom and dad think it’s the best decision they’ve ever made. Mia feels like she’s been kidnapped and imprisoned in paradise with no internet and no destination. Her only hope is to hack together a solar-powered satellite phone so she can call her best friend and fix everything.

Princess Lyss can’t wait another second to meet the griffin that’s joining her father’s royal menagerie, so she ditches her lessons and heads for the stables. But the griffin isn’t the only new creature she finds. A boy is hiding—or at least trying to—in the griffin’s stall. The boy is Devin, the griffin’s trainer, and he’s refusing to leave his beloved Tam. Lyss agrees to help him. But their arrival coincides with the revelation that someone is stealing creatures from the king’s menagerie.

Maren the whale shark loves her life as the biggest, brightest fish in the sea. She spends her days exploring the water around her and finding fresh new snacks as she travels. But one day, the ocean goes dark and Maren’s adventures come to a halt. With only the glow from the scales on her back and her best friend, Remy the remora, by her side, Maren sets out on her greatest quest yet—to cross the ocean and ask the Aztec goddess Huixtocihuatl about the darkness and to figure out how to bring back the light. Along the way she meets new friends and exemplifies the power of sharing!

‘Wayne Le—known as "Invisible-D 'Wayne" at school—has been invited to participate in a seemingly ordinary, innocuous adolescent health study by a prestigious university. The study has a few nice perks, but most important to ‘Wayne, is the opportunity to give his immigrant father an accomplishment to be proud of—something that's been in short supply since 'Wayne's mother left. But the study quickly proves to be anything but ordinary and innocuous.

When Four Stories by American Women was first published by Penguin Classics in 1990, it understandably reflected the second-wave feminist interpretations of that time—a period marked by an impressive recovery of what were then considered to be minor American writers. This updated and expanded volume, Twelve Stories by American Women edited by Arielle Zibrak, offers a more diverse selection of writers—including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, María Cristina Mena, Zitkala-Ša, Sui Sin Far, and Barbara E. Pope.

Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict.

We all have stories to tell, but not everyone gets the mentoring and training or encouragement to become a great storyteller. Founded a quarter century ago, Girls Write Now has empowered young women and gender-expansive youth to harness their creative talents, gaining confidence, skills, and a community supporting them in sharing stories the world needs to hear.

When Lexi receives an invitation to participate in a brand-new escape room, along with her best friend Tess, she’s thrilled. They could both use the distraction after a recent tragedy. But once inside, they learn that they must compete against one another. What do you do when your best friend suddenly becomes your biggest adversary, and every choice you make puts her in danger? How far will you go to win?

In Dancing with Butterflies, Reyna Grande renders the Mexican immigrant experience in “lyrical and sensual” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) prose through the poignant stories of four women brought together through folklorico dance.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there's her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out—like it did once before.

Killing a god was only the beginning of Lucha Moya’s story...Her mission is simple—eradicate olvida, the forgetting drug, once and for all. But something sinister is lurking in the Night Forest, eager to claim its prize…Will Lucha’s training allow her to survive the machinations of the Forest and save the vulnerable people at its mercy? In this captivating conclusion to this Latine folklore-inspired duology, Lucha must face long-avoided fears to save the people she cares for—or risk losing everything she's fought so hard to obtain.

Sam Osborne may have helped her new friend Hector Griggs save St. Lawrence’s Catholic School for Boys from a terrifying monster, but she is still trying to prove herself as a member of Kairos, the secretive and shadowy government agency devoted to investigating the strange and unusual. And her unique ability to control how others see her makes her the perfect agent…if she can learn to play by Kairos’ rules.

Alex Eager lives in Faillin, OR with her grandmother, a retired librarian. Life should be great for Alex, since she finally worked up the courage to ask her best friend PJ if they could be more than friends and she said yes. But their new relationship will have to be long distance, because PJ is moving. On top of that, Alex is worried that something is wrong with her increasingly forgetful grandmother. And to make matters worse, Faillin is holding a referendum on library funding, and things aren’t looking good. Will anything good for Alex ever last?