
The Labors of Hercules Beal
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Narrated by:
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Fred Berman
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By:
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Gary D. Schmidt
About this listen
From award-winning author Gary D. Schmidt, a warm and witty novel in the tradition of The Wednesday Wars, in which a seventh grader has to figure out how to fulfill a seemingly impossible school assignment—and learns about friendship, community, and himself along the way.
Herc Beal knows who he's named after—a mythical hero—but he's no superhero. He's the smallest kid in his class. So when his homeroom teacher at his new middle school gives him the assignment of duplicating the mythical Hercules's amazing feats in real life, he's skeptical. After all, there are no Nemean Lions on Cape Cod—and not a single Hydra in sight.
Missing his parents terribly and wishing his older brother wasn't working all the time, Herc figures out how to take his first steps along the road that the great Hercules himself once walked. Soon, new friends, human and animal, are helping him. And though his mythical role model performed his twelve labors by himself, Herc begins to see that he may not have to go it alone.
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- By Mel on 01-05-17
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The Mona Lisa Vanishes
- A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity
- By: Nicholas Day
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the Director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone! No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?
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Fascinating true thriller!
- By Katrina on 11-26-23
By: Nicholas Day
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Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
- By: Gary D. Schmidt
- Narrated by: Sam Freed
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Not only is Turner Buckminster the son of the new minister in a small Maine town, he is shunned for playing baseball differently than the local boys. Then he befriends smart and lively Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from Malaga Island, a poor community founded by former slaves. Lizzie shows Turner a new world along the Maine coast from digging clams to rowing a boat next to a whale. When the powerful town elders, including Turner’s father, decide to drive the people off the island to set up a tourist business, Turner stands alone against them.
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Boring
- By Bob on 08-27-16
By: Gary D. Schmidt
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The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
- By: Dan Gemeinhart
- Narrated by: Khristine Hvam
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn't been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished - the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box - she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days...without him realizing it.
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Could have been better!
- By Amber Kennon on 12-11-19
By: Dan Gemeinhart
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It Found Us
- By: Lindsay Currie
- Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve-year-old Hazel Woods has always had an unusual knack for sleuthing. Some may call it snooping, but all she really wants is to solve mysteries around town. So, when she not-so-accidentally overhears her brother Den planning to sneak into the cemetery at night for an epic game of hide-and-seek, she decides to secretly tag along. This seems like the perfect opportunity to investigate the claims that the cemetery is haunted.
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Definitely a page turner! I will recommend to my older elementary kids
- By Benjamin Maldonado on 06-05-25
By: Lindsay Currie
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The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry
- By: Anna Rose Johnson
- Narrated by: Elise Randall Modica
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Martin family is big, hard-working, and close, and Lucy—who has always been a dreamer—struggles to fit in. Can she go one day without ruining the laundry or forgetting the sweeping? Will she ever be less afraid of the lake? Although life at the lighthouse isn’t what Lucy hoped for, it is beautiful—ships come and go, waves pound the rocks—and it has one major advantage: it’s near the site of a famous shipwreck, a shipwreck that went down with a treasure her father wanted more than anything.
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Lovely Literary Listen
- By Anonymous User on 05-04-24
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The Firefly Summer
- By: Morgan Matson
- Narrated by: Mia Jenness
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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For as long as Ryanna Stuart can remember, her summers have been spent with her father and his new wife. Just the three of them, structured, planned, and quiet. But this summer is different. This summer, she’s received a letter from her grandparents—grandparents neither she nor her dad have spoken to since her mom’s death—inviting her to stay with them at an old summer camp in the Poconos.
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Good!!
- By Jonathan Wise on 06-10-25
By: Morgan Matson
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The Probability of Everything
- By: Sarah Everett
- Narrated by: Jordan Cobb
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion, and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out. But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84.7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi’s life as she knows it will end.
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Best to read without any info
- By Chance on 07-08-23
By: Sarah Everett
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Once a Queen
- By: Sarah Arthur
- Narrated by: Shakira Shute, Sarah Arthur
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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When fourteen-year-old American Eva Joyce unexpectedly finds herself spending the summer at the mysterious manor house of the English grandmother she’s never met, she soon discovers that her family, the manor staff, and even the house itself are hiding secrets.
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Highly recommend!
- By Victoria Still on 08-22-24
By: Sarah Arthur
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What Came from the Stars
- By: Gary D. Schmidt
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The Valorim are about to fall to a dark lord when they send a necklace containing their planet across the cosmos, hurtling past a trillion stars...all the way into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Mourning his late mother, Tommy doesn't notice much about the chain he found, but soon he is drawing the twin suns and humming the music of a hanorah. As Tommy absorbs the art and language of the Valorim, their enemies target him.
By: Gary D. Schmidt
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What Happened to Rachel Riley?
- By: Claire Swinarski
- Narrated by: Ferdelle Capistrano, Alexandra Hunter, Karla Serrato, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna Hunt may be the new girl at East Middle School, but she can already tell there’s something off about her eighth-grade class. Rachel Riley, who just last year was one of the most popular girls in school, has become a social outcast. But no one, including Rachel Riley herself, will tell Anna why.
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It was a very interesting book that felt like it could happen in a regular school and addressed a real issue
- By Dan on 03-28-25
By: Claire Swinarski
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Something Like Home
- By: Andrea Beatriz Arango
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Laura Rodríguez Colón has a plan: no matter what the grown-ups say, she will live with her parents again. Can you blame her? It’s tough to make friends as the new kid at school. And while staying at her aunt’s house is okay, it just isn’t the same as being in her own space. So when Laura finds a puppy, it seems like fate. If she can train the puppy to become a therapy dog, then maybe she’ll be allowed to visit her parents. Maybe the dog will help them get better and things will finally go back to the way they should be.
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Hope, Acceptance, Love
- By Anonymous User on 11-16-24
I did not want this book to end! “The Labors of Hercules Beal” is my first book by the author, Gary Schmidt! I am a new huge fan!!!
Best of the Best!
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The labors and how bad Hercules had hardships.
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Loved the consistency of the narrative.
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Gary D Schmidt is a brilliant writer!
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Truly a wonderful story.
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Laughed and cried
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Clever, Easy Read
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Great Book
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This book is so eventful and full of surprises
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Schmidt does it again...
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