Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

In Calico Springs, Willie’s life has been defined by two powerful forces: God and the river. The “miracle boy” died for five minutes as a young child, and ever since, Willie is certain he survived for a reason, but that purpose didn’t become clear until he found the Game. The Game is called Manifest Atlas, and the concept is simple: enter an intention and the Game provides a target—a blinking blue dot on the map. Willie’s second time playing Manifest Atlas, his intention takes him to an ominous target: three empty graves. Willie is sure the Game is telling him he’s going to die.

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?

The waters rose, submerging New York City. But the residents adapted, and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Though changed forever. Every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. Through the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building, Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides. And how we, too, will change.

Alice’s adventures continue in this dramatized version of the timeless classic. Join Alice as she steps through a mirror into a strange new world where she encounters very peculiar characters, including a giant egg named Humpty Dumpty, the two odd brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Tiger Lily, and the White Knight. Featuring stellar performances by a full cast of talented voice actors with music and sound effects. Expect the unexpected in this incredible journey into fantasy.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. Thomas is marked as an outcast the moment he steps off the ship from England. As a Quaker, he’s outnumbered and distrusted by Salem’s Puritans. And as an orphan without any useful skills, he has nowhere to live and no way to earn his keep. In a stroke of luck—perhaps good, perhaps not—he’s taken in by the aged widow Prudence Blevins, who’s rumored to be a witch.

Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.

A poignant, deeply funny coming-of-age story about first love, first loss, and the power of history to give life meaning. History buff Ray knows everything about the peculiar legends and lore of his rural Connecticut hometown. Burgerville's past is riddled with green cow sightings and human groundhogs, but the most interesting thing about the present is the new girl - we'll call her Jane Doe. Inscrutable, cool, and above all mysterious, Jane seems as determined to hide her past as Ray is to uncover it.

Aspen Quick has never really worried about how he's affecting people when he steals from them. But this summer he'll discover just how strong the Quick family magic is - and how far they'll go to keep their secrets safe. With a smart, arrogant protagonist, a sinister family tradition, and an ending you won't see coming, this is a fast-paced, twisty story about power, addiction, and deciding what kind of person you want to be in a family that has the ability to control everything you are.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. This anthology includes brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.

Twelve-year-old Aaron Broom is protecting his father's car from repossession when he witnesses a jewelry store robbery gone wrong. To Aaron's shock, his father, a struggling salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Aaron - precocious, plucky, not a little naïve - must seek out gangsters, diamond dealers, bootleggers, and street kids in order to prove his father's innocence.

On the outskirts of a town too tired for its own happenings, the boys were found dead inside a tent. Three years later, their fathers have disappeared too. Ruth Fenn's son was the boy they blamed. For three years, Ruth has accepted her lot as pariah, focusing on her ailing mother and the children left in her care by the struggling single parents of North Falls, Vermont. But now the additional loss of her husband is too much to bear. As she edges closer to the truth, she begins to uncover some secrets that are better left buried.

All his life, people have told Jamie Cole that he was born bad. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But that doesn't matter now. Because after a lifetime of demons, Jamie has finally found an angel. Ellie Pearce learned the hard way that boys can't be trusted. But the night she meets Jamie, something shifts. He's different: brooding, a bit dark, determined to change. The connection they share is intense, compelling. Ellie tries to resist, but with each breathtaking kiss, she can't help falling deeper.

When Lane Fielding fled her isolated Florida hometown after high school for the anonymity of New York City, she swore she'd never return. But 20 years later, newly divorced and with two daughters in tow, she finds herself tending bar at the local dive and living with her parents on the historic Fielding Plantation. Here, the past haunts her and the sinister crimes of her father make her as unwelcome in town as she was the day she left. Ostracized by the people she was taught to trust, Lane's unsteady truce with the town is rattled when her older daughter suddenly vanishes.

A garbage disposal that feeds on flesh . . . A beloved stuffed rabbit that cooks up your parents . . . Roses that require human blood to bloom . . . From blood-chilling horror to supernatural scares, this collection of short stories from debut author Andrew Duplessie offers something to stoke anyone’s fear factor.

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, in the 1930s, Benjy Puterman and Tommy Anspach have always done everything together. It never mattered that Benjy was Jewish and Tommy was of German heritage. But as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party come to power in Germany and war brews in Europe, everything changes. Tommy is sent to Camp Nordland, a Nazi youth camp for German Americans, where he quickly learns that Jews are the enemy.

This is Noah Oakman → 16, Bowie believer, concise historian, disillusioned swimmer, son, brother, friend. Then Noah → gets hypnotized. Now Noah → sees changes - inexplicable scars, odd behaviors, rewritten histories - in all those around him. All except his Strange Fascinations....

When the world first formed, the night was black and filled with dark creatures. The Elders knew their people couldn't survive under such a threat. So they gave their hearts to the sky in the form of stars to keep evil away. Now, 11-year-old Kyro is a Star Shepherd like his father. He's spent his life tucked away in the small town of Drenn. There, the family watches the night sky for falling stars - and rushes to rescue them when they do.

St. James is an exclusive New England boarding school known for grooming generations of leaders. Ben Weeks is a true insider - his ancestors helped found St. James, his older brother taught him all the slang, and he's just won a national championship in squash. But after 14 long years of waiting, Ben arrives at school only to find that the reality of St. James doesn't quite match up with his imaginings. At the same time, his new roommate, Ahmed Al-Khaled, the son of a fabulously wealthy Emirati sheik, can't navigate the unspoken rules of New England blue bloods.

In the remote village of Heedeon, Bellwound Throvar and Arnon Helvug are visited by immortals from both shadow and light. A weapon known as the Mezar is found, believed to house the Luciferian Epistle written before he, the Dove, suffered judgement by the Regents—gods of ultimate power and parents to Hanell the Creator. The two boys set out on a journey with a member of the Nephilim, hoping to find answers to their mysterious past. But secrets and lies do not ask for the right time to strike.

It’s 1904 on an island just west of Norway, and Asta Hedstrom doesn’t want to marry her odious betrothed, Nils. But her mother believes she should be grateful for the possibility of any domestic future given her single-sided deafness, unconventional appearance, and even stranger notions.