Showing results by narrator "Dan Bittner" in All Categories

Gorgeous Vivi is the star of the Aquacade synchronized swimming spectacular, and plucky Max is a journalist for the fair's daily paper. Both are striving to make their way in a world where men try to control their actions and where secrets are closely kept. But when Vivi and Max become friends and their personal and professional prospects are put in jeopardy, they team up to help each other succeed and to realize their dreams during the most meaningful summer of their lives.

When Saba Khan’s apartment burns in a mysterious fire, possibly a hate crime, her Chicago high school rallies around her. Her family moves rent-free into a luxury apartment, Saba’s Facebook page explodes, and she starts (secretly) dating a popular boy. Then a quirky piece of art donated to a school fund-raising effort for the Khans is revealed to be an unknown work by a famous artist, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Saba’s life turns upside down again.

Neurological research definitively and repeatedly concludes that there is a bottleneck in our cognitive function - when we do more than one thing at a time, we become less efficient and more error-prone. Our systems get overloaded and we crash. In fact, we are actually wired to monotask - to give dedicated focus to one task at a time.

Welcome to New Vegas, a city once covered in bling, now blanketed in ice. Like much of the destroyed planet, the place knows only one temperature: freezing. But some things never change. The diamond in the ice desert is still a 24-hour hedonistic playground, and nothing keeps the crowds away from the casino floors, never mind the rumors about sinister sorcery in its shadows. At the heart of this city is Natasha Kestal, a young blackjack dealer looking for a way out. Like many, she's heard of a mythical land simply called "the Blue".

Aurelia Isendare is a princess of a small kingdom in the North, raised in privilege but shielded from politics as her brother prepares to step up to the throne. Halfway around the world, Athan Dakar, the youngest son of a ruthless general, is a fighter pilot longing for a life away from the front lines. When Athan’s mother is shot and killed, his father is convinced it’s the work of his old rival, the queen of Etania - Aurelia’s mother. Determined to avenge his wife’s murder, he devises a plot to overthrow the queen, a plot that sends Athan undercover to Etania.

Splat the Cat's friends Spike and Plank are coming over to play games. Splat is excited to play with them...until everything starts to go wrong! First he trips and falls in Mouse, Mouse, Cat - and then he can't find a good hiding spot in hide-and-seek. Readers will delight as Splat finds a way to have fun in the end. The Name of the Game is a perfect story for kids just learning to read, with bright, vivid illustrations and an easy-to-follow text full of Splat's signature humor!

On Friday, May 1st, 2015 a bomb detonates in the infamous Positano Luxury Resort and Casino, a mammoth hotel (and exact replica of the Amalfi coast) on the Las Vegas Strip. Six months prior, a crop of strivers converge on the desert city, attempting to make a home amidst the dizzying lights. By chance and by design, they find themselves caught up in backroom schemes for personal and political power, and are thrown into the deep end of an even bigger fight for the soul of the paradoxical town.

Seven teenagers who suffer from debilitating insomnia agree to take part in an experimental new procedure to cure it because they think it can't get any worse. But they couldn't be more wrong. When the lab equipment malfunctions, the patients are plunged into a terrifying dream world where their worst nightmares have come to life - and they have no memory of how they got there.

Every summer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Nick Baumgartner went to work pouring concrete, taking on the harsh physical conditions of the construction trade to support his professional snowboarding dreams come winter. To limit travel time while he trained for the Olympics an hour and a half away from home, he lived out of a crusty, old construction van, parked anywhere he could find a spot. And in 2022, after seventeen years of failure—all the crashes, injuries, and personal setbacks—he won Olympic gold at forty years old, becoming the oldest Olympic snowboard medalist in history.

Living in harsh poverty, Jack Dahl is holding his breath. He and his younger brother have nothing - except each other. And now Jack faces a stark choice: Lose his brother to foster care, or find the drug money that sent his father to prison. He chooses the money. Ava Bardem lives in isolation, a life of silence. For 17 years, her father, a merciless man, has controlled her fate. He has taught her to love no one. Now Victor Bardem is stalking the same money as Jack.

Splat the Cat can’t wait for it to snow. All he wants to do is make a snowcat and throw snowballs! When he can’t wait any longer, Splat decides to take matters into his own paws.

Splat is thrilled when he finds out that Seymour's brother is coming to visit. Splat even stays up all night planning ways to impress his new friend. Although Splat's big surprise takes a calamitous turn, everyone ends up having even more fun than they expected!

Ethan Pitowski is afraid of everything. Luckily, his best friends don’t mind, and when their entire class gets invited to watch a long-buried horror movie at the most popular boy in school’s house, Ethan’s friends encourage him to join in the fun. But when the “scariest movie ever made” reveals itself to be not just a movie about a monster, but a movie that is a monster, only a terrified Ethan escapes its clutches. Now he must find a way to stop the monster and save his friends (and also, um, get their heads back).

Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers and creative dreamers of our time. The many honors he received, which included an Emmy and Academy Award nomination for adaptations of his work, culminated in the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a 2004 National Medal of Arts, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. For many years NASA and the Disney Studio felt the impact of Ray Bradbury’s creativity, and his fiction has found its way into hundreds of anthologies, textbooks, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program.

The stories in Paul Alan Ruben's Terms of Engagement explore father and son as intimate enemies, each yearning to be understood, acknowledged, and validated by the other. Raw and gripping as delivered by a cast of incredible narrators, these nine stories take place in collision territory - where father and son engage in trying to repair their alienation.

This book collects the first two companion novellas from the Shatter Me trilogy, Fracture Me and Destroy Me, for a thrilling insight into the minds of Juliette's two great loves – Adam and Warner. The mind-blowing events between Shatter Me and Unravel Me are told here from Warner's point of view. Even though Juliette shot him in order to escape, Warner can't stop thinking about her – and he'll do anything to get her back. But when the supreme commander of The Reestablishment arrives, he has very different plans for Juliette. Plans Warner cannot allow.

Splat loves watching his favorite superhero, Super Cat, on the family TV, but when the set breaks, Splat has no way to watch his cherished cartoon. Splat asks himself, "What would Super Cat do?" and decides to save the day by winning a brand-new TV. The only problem is that winning the TV requires Splat to enter a cake-baking contest . . . which turns out to be a little trickier and stickier than expected.

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies - humans with extraordinary abilities - who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone...except the villains they once overthrew. Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice - and in Nova. But Nova's allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.

When Dean Arnault’s mother decided to run for president, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone, least of all her son. But still, that doesn’t mean Dean wants to be part of the public spectacle that is the race for the White House - at least not until he meets Dre. The only problem is that Dre Rosario's on the opposition; he’s the son of the Democratic nominee. But as Dean and Dre’s meetups on the campaign trail become less left to chance, their friendship quickly becomes a romantic connection unlike any either of the boys have ever known.

All 11-year old Alex wants is to launch his iPod into space. With a series of audio recordings, he will show other lifeforms out in the cosmos what life on Earth, his Earth, is really like. But for a boy with a long-dead dad, a troubled mum, and a mostly-not-around brother, Alex struggles with the big questions. Where do I come from? Who's out there? And, above all, how can I be brave?