Showing results by narrator "Allyson Ryan" in All Categories

Aside from her rock star looks, Catra Corbett is a standout in the running world on her accomplishments alone. And, unbelievably, she's also a former meth addict. After two years of addiction, Catra is busted while selling, and a night in jail is enough to set her straight. She gives up drugs and moves back home with her mother, abandoning her friends, her boyfriend, and the lifestyle that she came to depend on. Her only clean friend pushes her to train for a 10K with him, and surprisingly, she likes it and decides to run her first marathon after that.

Three unsolved murders spanning 70 years have befallen the same French family, each taking place two nights before Christmas at their Paris mansion - and blamed on the family ghost. When Jaya realizes the truth hits closer to home than she realized, she must risk everything as she flees San Francisco for France and Cambodia to find a missing sculpture known as the Serpent King and stop a flesh and blood killer.

When historian Jaya Jones receives a mysterious package containing a jewel-encrusted artifact, she discovers the secrets of a lost Indian treasure may be hidden in a Scottish legend. But she's not the only one on the trail. Helping her decipher the cryptic clues are her magician best friend, a devastatingly handsome art historian with something to hide, and a charming archaeologist running for his life. When a member of the dig's crew is murdered, Jaya must figure out which of the scholars vying for her affections might be the love of her life - and which one is a killer.

Hard work is irrelevant. Be radically honest. Adequate performance gets a generous severance. And never, ever try to please your boss. These are some of the ground rules if you work at Netflix. They are part of a unique cultural experiment that explains how the company has transformed itself at lightning speed from a DVD mail-order service into a streaming superpower - with 125 million fervent subscribers and a market capitalisation bigger than Disney. Finally Reed Hastings, Netflix chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries.

Amid the complexities of modern relationships, loneliness epidemics, and online dating burnout, there's a refreshing alternative: going Solo. "Solos," as coined by behavioral economist Peter McGraw, are people who choose to lead their lives authentically, purposefully, and passionately outside the confines of traditional relationship labels. In a world built for two, Solos break the rules and hold space for every type of individual—single and not.

Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break in and scamper through the world’s computer networks invisibly until discovered. One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to tap into any iPhone, dismantle safety controls at a chemical plant and shut down the power in an entire nation - just ask the Ukraine. Zero days are the blood diamonds of the security trade, pursued by nation states, defence contractors, cybercriminals and security defenders alike. In this market, governments aren’t regulators; they are clients.

When Kerry Cohen reached her early 40s, she realized she had a drinking problem - just enough to blur the edges of her life that had become a monotony of working, carpooling the kids to school, and everyday distractions. What she also realized was that she wasn't the only one. Lush is a gripping memoir that examines Kerry's struggles with alcohol, a struggle that a rising number of middle-aged women are facing. Wonderfully poignant and relatable, Lush follows Kerry as she attempts to rediscover the awe in her life, leaving mistakes, regrets, and the bottle behind her.

In her debut book, Modern Etiquette Made Easy, the Queen of Good Manners Myka Meier takes formal etiquette that she learned while training under a former member of the queen of England's household and breaks it down into five easy steps to help you feel 100 percent confident in the areas of social, dining, business, and networking etiquette. 

Finally free from his nightmare of a marriage, Toby Fleishman is ready for a life of Tinder dating and weekend-only parental duties. But as he optimistically looks to a future of few responsibilities, his life turns upside down as his ex-wife Rachel suddenly disappears. While Toby tries to find out what happened - juggling work, his kids and his new, app-assisted sexual popularity - his tidy narrative of a spurned husband is his sole consolation. 

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing....

Welcome to the neighbourhood. We do things differently here. Nora Spangler is a successful lawyer, but when it comes to domestic life, she's always the one doing more. She packs her daughter's lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are and buys the birthday cards. Her husband, Hayden, works hard, too...but why is she always working so much harder?

It's not every day you see your childhood friend and one-time crush on national news. Jackie Sellers just wishes that it were under different circumstances. She can't believe that Ian Lockwood is wanted in connection with a terrorist plot, and she's determined to find him and help him clear his name. But she's not the only one looking. The FBI wants him captured. The bad guys want him dead. Ian just wants to stay alive long enough to save thousands of innocent lives.

Mickey Fitzpatrick has been patrolling the 24th District for years. She knows most of the working women by name. She knows what desperation looks like and what people will do when they need a fix. She’s become used to finding overdose victims: their numbers are growing every year. But every time she sees someone sprawled out, slumped over, cold to the touch, she has to pray it’s not her sister, Kacey. 

At eight years old, Tuesday Storm's childhood is forever lost when the death of her older sister Audrey sends her family spiraling out of control into the darkest of dysfunction. In the wake of the tragedy, Tuesday's mother, distraught and looking for a scapegoat, singles Tuesday out from her siblings to take on the blame for Audrey's death, and then targets her for unspeakable abuse.

At last, stupidity explained! And by some of the world’s smartest people, among them Daniel Kahneman, Dan Ariely, Alison Gopnik, Howard Gardner, Antonio Damasio, Aaron James and Ryan Holiday. Stupidity is all around us, from the colleagues who won’t stop hitting ‘reply all’ to the former school friends posting conspiracy theories on Facebook. But in order to battle idiocy, we must first understand it. 

When Ruby was a child growing up in Miami, she saw a boy from her school struggling against the ocean waves while his parents were preoccupied. Instead of helping him, Ruby dove under the water and held his ankle down until he drowned. She waited to feel guilty for it, but she never did. And, as Ruby will argue in her senior thesis while studying psychology at Yale, guilt is sort of like eating ice cream while on a diet—if you're already feeling bad, why not eat the whole carton? And so, the bodies start to stack up. 

When Jaya's old professor dies under eerie circumstances shortly after discovering manuscripts that point to a treasure in Italy's Park of Monsters, Jaya and her brother pick up the trail. From San Francisco to the heart of Italy, Jaya is haunted by a ghost story inexorably linked to the masterpieces of a long-dead artist and the deeds of a modern-day murderer. Untrustworthy colleagues, disappearing boyfriends, and old enemies - who can Jaya trust when the ghost wails?

Being the parent of a smart child is great - until your son or daughter starts asking whether global warming is real, if you are going to die, and what will happen if they don't get into college. Kids who are advanced intellectually often let their imaginations run wild and experience fears beyond their years. So what can you do to help? In Why Smart Kids Worry, Allison Edwards guides you through the mental and emotional process of where your child's fears come from and why they are so hard to move past. Edwards focuses on how to parent a child who is both smart and anxious.

When Steph Catudal met her husband Rivs, she thought that the love, stability, and warmth she shared with her husband had finally dispelled her pent-up anger and grief over the loss of her father and her faith. But when Rivs became ill and was put into coma at the height of the pandemic, the painful memories of her childhood—watching her father die of cancer—came flooding back.

The Cambodian Curse: When an ancient and supposedly cursed Cambodian sculpture disappears from an impenetrable museum, and the carving's owner is killed by an invisible assailant while a witness is a few feet away, historian Jaya Jones and her old nemesis Henry North team up to solve the baffling crime. Additional stories include: "The Hindi Houdini", "The Haunted Room", "The Library Ghost of Tanglewood Inn", "The Curse of Cloud Castle", "Tempest in a Teapot", "A Dark and Stormy Light", "The Shadow of the River", plus the bonus novella Fool's Gold.