caught between two worlds Audiobooks

With the constant connectivity of today’s world, it’s never been easier to meet people and make new friends—but it’s never been harder to form meaningful friendships. In Frientimacy, award-winning speaker Shasta Nelson shows how anyone can form stronger, more meaningful friendships, marked by a level of trust she calls “frientimacy.” Shasta explores the most common complaints and conflicts facing female friendships today, and lays out strategies for overcoming these pitfalls to create deeper, supportive relationships that last for the long-term. Shasta is the founder of girlfriendcircles.com, a community of women seeking stronger, more fulfilling friendships, and the author of Friendships Don’t Just Happen. In Frientimacy, she teaches readers to reject the impulse to pull away from friendships that aren’t instantly and constantly gratifying. With a warm, engaging, and inspiring voice, she shows how friendships built on dedication and commitment can lead to enriched relationships, stronger and more meaningful ties, and an overall increase in mental health. Frientimacy is more than just a call for deeper connection between friends; it’s a blueprint for turning simple friendships into true bonds—and for the meaningful and satisfying relationships that come with them.

Summer fiction at its page-turning best for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Holly Chamberlin, and Nancy Thayer! Colleen French, acclaimed author of The Summer I Found Myself , brings readers to Albany Beach, Delaware, where one woman must decide whether to seek out the daughter she gave up for adoption. Each year, the start of summer brings bustle and much-needed tourist dollars to the little town of Albany Beach, Delaware. For Natalie Sullivan, this season is proving more stressful than others. It’s make-or-break time for the Irish pub her husband, Conor, recently bought with his brothers. Their two children are thriving, but she’s experiencing pangs of loss at the end of her childbearing years. When sixteen-year-old McKenzie starts gushing about Bella, the new coworker at her summer job, Natalie suddenly finds her past and present in conflict. Bella, two years older than McKenzie, looks so similar that a customer remarks that they could be sisters. And when Natalie learns that Bella was adopted, she is propelled back into a heartbreaking decision. As a college student, Natalie became pregnant and put her baby up for adoption. Now, the more McKenzie talks about Bella, the more Natalie wonders: could Bella be her daughter? Conor insists it’s a mistake to pursue the matter. Natalie’s child belongs to another family now; that was the agreement in the closed adoption. Still, Natalie can’t resist spending time with Bella. As their bond deepens, McKenzie accuses her mother of caring more for a stranger than for her, and Natalie begins imagining what it would be like to have Bella as a second daughter. What will the impact be if Bella really is her biological child? And if she isn’t, can Natalie embrace the joy and potential in her own family, without always wondering about what could have been?

Riley Rhodes returns in the second delicious cozy set in a New England ice cream shop, Meri Allen's Mint Chocolate Murder! When Udderly Delightful Ice Cream shop manager Riley Rhodes is summoned to Penniman’s Moy Mull Castle, it’s the cherry on top of a successful summer season. The gothic pile built by an eccentric New England Gilded Age millionaire has been transformed into a premiere arts colony by Maud Monaco, a reclusive former supermodel. As part of Moy Mull’s Fall Arts Festival, Maud is throwing a fantasy ice cream social and hires Riley to whip up unique treats to celebrate the opening of an exhibit by Adam Blasco, a photographer as obnoxious as he is talented. As Penniman fills up with Maud’s art-world friends arriving for the festival, gossip swirls around Blasco, who has a dark history of obsession with his models. Riley’s curiosity and instincts for sleuthing – she was a CIA librarian – are piqued, and she wonders at the hold the cold-hearted photographer has over the mistress of Moy Mull. But when Adam is found dead behind the locked door of Moy Mull’s dungeon, Riley realizes there’s more than one suspect who’d wanted put the malicious photographer on ice.

In order to survive her childhood, Vanya Erickson was forced to become fluent in two languages: her Christian Scientist mother’s honeyed versions of the truth; and her rancher father’s hard-as-the-scrape-of-his-bootheels words, which stung like the back of his hand. Long version: From the outside, Vanya’s childhood of riding horses with her father in the solitude of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and attending flamboyant operas with her mother in the city looked idyllic. But life for Vanya was more about learning to gauge and survive her parents’ unpredictable actions - from being left to lie in her own blood-soaked diaper while her Christian Scientist mother prayed, refusing to get medical help, to watching her father writhe on his bed in the detox ward, his hands and feet tethered with leather straps. Vanya the only way she knew how: by immersing herself in the beauty and solitude of the wilderness around her.

She has her eye on the prize. He has his eyes on her. Former soldier, now rodeo cowboy, Huck Jones doesn’t believe in love or marriage. Still, a promise is a promise, and he’s prepared to honor his fallen team leader’s wish to walk his sister down the aisle in Marietta, Montana. When the groom bolts moments before the ceremony, Huck offers himself as her alternative groom. Barrel racer Willow McBride hates the cowboy code, and the soldier code is even more annoying. She’s pregnant, not helpless, so when her late brother’s sexy friend offers himself as a sacrificial husband, the answer is a resounding no. She wants love not duty. Plus, the 85th Copper Mountain Rodeo is looking to be her last as a competitor, and she intends to win. Huck may no longer be a soldier, but he still believes no man—or woman—should be left behind. He’ll need to woo the beautiful, stubbornly independent cowgirl and change her mind. Failure is never an option.

AN AMAZON BEST SELLING BOOK FOR KIDS! *2020-2021 One Book One School Book of the Year* **Purple Dragonfly Book Award First Place Winner** Should Sophie Stand Up to the School Bully or Become a Snitch? There's nothing worse than being a tattletale... That's what 10-year-old Sophie Washington thinks until she runs into Lanie Mitchell, a new girl at school. Lanie pushes Sophie and her friends around at their lockers, and even takes their lunch money in this entertaining chapter book for middle grade readers. If they tell, they are scared the other kids in their class will call them snitches and won't be their friends. And when you're in the fifth grade, nothing seems worse than that. Then a classmate gets seriously injured and Sophie needs to make a decision: fight back, or snitch? Here's what Goodreads reviewers say about Sophie Washington: The Snitch: "Great children's book that teaches children practical and valuable life lessons." "This would be a great book for the counselor, the library and the classroom ready for reading!" "I liked that, while a heavy subject matter, the book never felt preachy." "Good story about bullying and standing up for what's right." This is the second book in the Readers' Favorite five star rated Sophie Washington book series.

Breakthrough Innovation Tools for Successful Leadership Innovation needs innovation: Innovation is broken. Business leadership and management struggle to find ways to crack through their own corporate politics or bureaucratic silos, to move from defense to offense, to nurture real breakthrough, to drive visionary creativity in ways that add new value to everything they do. In Innovating Innovation , David Morey, one of America’s leading strategic consultants, will teach, coach, and guide you across eleven concrete and pragmatic steps that unlock and drive day-to-day innovation in your business and help you gain a long-term competitive advantage in your marketplace. Make change and innovation happen: Innovating Innovation synergizes what is best in classic innovation theories with an insurgent strategic model inspired by one of Morey’s first corporate clients, Apple founder Steve Jobs. It shows how to lead innovation that creates the products of visionary genius without the necessity for actual genius. It provides practical tools and guidance on building and leading the teams, working conditions, organizational structures, and cultures of market-made and market-making innovation. It illustrates a roadmap to the disruptive periphery, the organizational margins at which real innovation actually takes place. Innovation can be taught: Innovating Innovation is a framework to counter failure. It directs you, the reader, to the consumer, the very person who will actually tell you how to innovate the benefits to create a future you can own. This book invites you to “think different,” to become a change leader, to go the “wrong” way to get to the right places. And it shows you how to apply the pragmatic lessons of Agile software development to absolutely everything and to accelerate your leadership career and your company’s success by stepping up from mere evolution to punctuated equilibrium, evolution as breakthrough. Your business needs unique innovation: You and your business need innovation as never before and unlike anyone else’s. This is lesson number one. And in the space of eleven chapters, Innovating Innovation offers lesson number two: You don’t need to be a genius to deliver the performances, products, and services of innovation at genius levels in the most opportunity-rich and threat-intensive business environment in history. Your management and leadership skills will improve immensely, taking your business to a level of innovation success beyond what it has ever achieved before. Innovating Innovation is a step-by-step handbook for teaching, and at times even tricking, your organization, your culture, and your company into real-world change. After reading this new battlefield manual for innovation, you will: Learn the Disruptive Periphery Concept and how it can give you the tools to help your business Discover a practical marketing-centric focus applied to innovation Reap the benefits of lessons developed from thirty years of real-world global consulting and training experience

After two years of fruitless devotion, Madison is callously dismissed by her now ex-lover, with a pitiful plea for her to 'do him a favor.' On the very day of her divorce, she unexpectedly ties the knot with the world's richest man, Ethan Grant. Her dramatic shift from an ordinary woman to an affluent matriarch, from a homemaker to a top-tier aviator, leaves the world in shock. Her ex-lover, filled with regret, attempts to make amends, only to find himself financially crippled by the wealthy Mr. Grant. When reporters inquired, "How do you feel about marrying a 'second-hand woman'?" Ethan's response was the talk of the town. "Firstly," he stated, "my wife is the only woman captain in domestic civil aviation and the youngest and most outstanding woman captain globally. Secondly, it is me who is unworthy of her." At that moment, someone shouted, "President Grant, your wife just landed with a passenger plane to pick you up!" The tycoon, holding his daughter, immediately dashed towards the rendezvous, exclaiming, "Let's go find Mommy!"

Love is one of our strongest biological drives, but it can be frustratingly elusive and misunderstood. Music, literature, and movies are filled with common folklore about love and millions of TV viewers tune in to shows like The Bachelor and read the latest relationship tome with one simple hope: to uncover some nugget of mystic wisdom that will help them understand the exciting, addictive, insane experience called 'love'. Men Chase, Women Choose, is the first book to offer cutting-edge research that explains how the brain works when two people first meet, start to date, fall in love, and then move into long-term, real love. Maslar's unique approach brings together the latest and most relevant neurological, physiological, and biochemical research on the science of love while incorporating stories and examples of composite characters based on participants of her popular classes and seminars. She explains that 'love' is actually neural activity as well as the presence or absence of certain neurotransmitters that bathe the brain, and it follows a precisely timed path of four, easy-to-understand phases: the exciting norepinephrine-charged meeting phase; the addictive dopamine dating phase; the insane falling-in-love and losing your mind phase; and finally, the safe, warm and wonderful, true, long-term love phase. For the past decade Maslar has made it her mission to learn all she can about the science behind falling in love, including its evolutionary benefits. Her goal?and the purpose of this book?is to help men and women find and maintain love by understanding and applying the science behind it. The bottom line? We actually can have long-lasting, nourishing, exciting, passionate love with little or no risk!

It’s Christmastime in Merritt, Alabama and magic is afoot!Professor Bebe Wellesley comes from a long line of psychics, but has inherited just enough of the family gifts to make her peculiar, rather than of very much use. The handsome bookseller who is so proficient at obtaining the obscure texts she needs to teach her college parapsychology classes caught her eye a while back, but why bother? She’s learned the hard way that men don’t like women with a supernatural bent—no matter how paltry their power.In an age when independent bookstores are nearing extinction, it takes all of Byron Masters’s time and energy to keep Creekview Books relevant and successful. He knows he must be crazy to finally pursue smart, pretty Bebe Wellesley at his busiest time of year, but he’s tired of flirting and watching her walk out the door.From their first date, Bebe can hardly believe her luck. She and Byron clicked with a harmony that she never dreamed possible. If only she can keep her “little something extra” a secret, she might be looking at happily ever after.Life seems perfect until Christmas decorations mysteriously begin to appear in Byron’s apartment. Convinced the culprit is a member of his staff, Byron begins to alienate them one by one with his accusations. Bebe knows different, but would he ever believe that the vintage Santa ornament he bought came with a benevolent spirit attached, who just wants to spread some holiday cheer?As Creekview’s once pleasant and thriving atmosphere disintegrates, dropping customers along the way, Bebe is unable to sit by and watch everything Byron has worked for unravel. She prepares to drop the bizarre bomb, bracing for the worst, but hoping for the best.Will Byron be the man who can accept her as she is?Or is it going to take some Christmas magic to save them all?