Showing results by narrator "A A Maynard" in All Categories

On a cold January day in 2017, nearly two months before due date, Nile hippopotamus Bibi gave her keepers at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden a big surprise: a tiny newborn hippo, no bigger than a football. The first premature hippo born and raised in captivity, baby Fiona was an underdog from the start: She couldn't nurse, she couldn't stay hydrated, and she wasn't thriving. But the staff at the zoo knew they could save her.

Lenny Marks is good at not remembering. She has spent the last twenty years not thinking about the day her mother left her when she was still a child. Her stepfather's parting words, however, remain annoyingly unforgettable: 'You did this.' Now thirty-seven, Lenny prefers contentment and order over the unreliability of happiness and the messiness of relationships. She fills her days teaching at the local primary school, and her nights playing Scrabble with her pretend housemate, watching reruns of Friends and rearranging her thirty-six copies of The Hobbit.

This is the sequel to the Wolf Hunters as Rod, Wabi and Mukoki return for more adventures. In their possession is the secret of a great fortune. Romance, adventure and discovery awaits them as they start on that most thrilling of all trails, the trail of gold. The big silent North, mysterious in its age-old desolation, was just ahead of them. They were about to bury themselves in its secrets, to wrest from it the yellow treasure it guarded. They tingled excitedly at thoughts of encounters in that unknown world inhabited only by the things in the wild.

Reuben and Amy Corbin, brother and sister, are left destitute in 1886 when Quantrill's Raiders burn their Missouri farm, kill their father, and ride off with all the livestock and supplies. Reuben swears that somehow, someday, he will find and kill the individual raider he saw gun-down his father. With no means of support, brother and sister decide to try for Oregon. They find work and earn enough money to join up with a wagon train. The wagon train becomes the platform for a continuous array of adventures, hardships and close, new-found relationships.

In Shattered to Shining, nine women and one male domestic violence survivor describe how they were shattered, as their home became a place where physical and sexual violence, emotional and psychological control dominated their lives. Through persistence and courage, they have risen above their situation and come out the other side shining with positivity, strength, commitment, and empathy for others.

They say that even the strongest man secretly wants to feel wanted. He even hopes to have some woman take care of him. Well, my cup was running over. Me? I’m Shell Scott, the human target for every gun in the State of California. And that’s no private eyewash...I was made to feel wanted all right...by the city, county and state police. And there was a woman with a nasty little .32 in her tiny hand, well she was just dying to take care of me, permanently. Everywhere I turned, somebody was trying to help me plan what to do with the rest of my life....

From the distant mountains, through the vast deserts to the Gulf of Mexico flows the Rio Grande River, giving life, promising adventure, shaping empires. And across its banks fought the Americans, the Mexican Army, the Shoshone, the Utes and the Arapaho Indians. Matthew Caine, an American agent working against the Mexican Army, also known as "El Gigante", attempts to make allies of the plains Indians. Lieutenant Melgares, of the Mexican Army is sworn to find the American spy and bring him to the Santa Fe gallows.

In the distant future, AD 6582, Professor Kato Maun transcribes an ancient writing on an archaeology find that sets off a search for an unknown lost civilization somewhere in the ancient past. With the help of a beautiful, mysterious intelligence agent known only as Lavina, Kato journeys back through time to the edge of the fire barrier, which is the beginning of their history. The lost civilization surely must lie beyond the fire barrier....

"'I'm trying to get back in shape,'" she said. Man, if her shape got any better she'd be banned for just walking down the street. I'm Shell Scott, private eye, and my job was to guard her day - yeah, and night. I didn't have a chance to discuss these points with her because I saw the man walking toward us. There was only one of him but he seemed to outnumber me. He was so big I was surprised his feet didn't leave holes behind him in the concrete. "Shell Scott," he rumbled. "Shake." I hardly dared....

Where do you go when you've gone too far? That's the question Neil Van Ness faces as his carefully constructed life unravels before his eyes. The first blow comes with the discovery of his wife's affair, betraying and devastating both a friendship and a marriage. The second comes from a news report on TV when Neil learns he's the target of a nationwide manhunt by the FBI for the murder of his parents 15 years ago - a crime he didn't commit.

Golden Hawk is in a race against time to stop a foul fur trader named Bannister, who captured a beautiful Quaker woman worth her weight in gold. Bannister is headed across the Rockies to San Francisco and the white slave market. Hawk and his Nez Perce ally, Tames Horses, must make it through the mountains in time to stop the sale...and the bloodthirsty braves that Bannister armed and egged on… and a death trap hair-triggered to kill…

Golden Hawk's beautiful sister Annabelle had been kidnapped by a Comanche band, and Hawk knew all too well what was being done to her. Even more maddening was his discovery that she was being passed from hand to hand as he pursued her abductors. The Comanches, the Blackfoot, and then a mammoth mountain man named Gar Trimm, all in turn took possession of her as Golden Hawk battled the cruelest odds of nature and man to free Annabelle and wreak a revenge that made death sweet...

It started when a gravely injured trapper named Pete Foxwell stumbled into Hawk's cabin. Before he died, he showed Hawk a bagful of gold coins, and told him about a hidden hoard of them. But he didn't say where. Hawk should have buried those coins with Pete's corpse, but instead he spent them on supplies and let slip the story of the treasure waiting to be found. Suddenly Hawk found himself the most wanted man in the West as a band of sea-going land pirates decided they would nail his hide and grab the gold....

Golden Hawk hires out to lead a band of tenderfeet through a maze of mountains and dead-end gullies ruled by the proud Blackfoot nation. To complicate matters, the great Blackfoot warrior chief Black Feather has vowed to take Golden Hawk's scalp. Further bloodying the waters is a raging tribal war in which Golden Hawk has to take sides and take lives, while a mountain man named Elias Hogwood proves a white man can be as savage as a redskin and twice as treacherous....

Eliza Miller grew up in Australia as the only daughter of a troubled young mother, but with the constant support of two watchful godmothers, Olivia and Maxie. Despite her tricky childhood, she always felt loved and secure. Until, just before her 18th birthday, a tragic event changed her life. Thirteen years on, Eliza is deliberately living as safely as possible, avoiding close relationships and devoting herself to her job. Out of the blue, an enticing invitation from her godmothers prompts a leap into the unknown.

Fishadella, the fishcake, is special. She lives in Fishville with her father, lazy brother Jared, and all the other fishcake families. Whether it’s discovering a new friend or finding a mother, everyday is an exciting adventure for Fishadella, the amazing, fearless fishcake.

Kati thought she was Tumatsin, but her real father was Moshuguang, a Searcher, one of those working to bring down the feudal empire on Shanji and establish a progressive society. Ruled by Mandughai, the emerald-eyed empress of a neighboring star, the Searchers are looking for the person who has inherited the power to be a super being. They believe Kati is that person, and with training from Mandughai, Kati's powers exceed her trainer's power.

Luna loved her royal life, she loved her big comfortable stable with its huge cozy straw bed. She loved eating juicy grass in the fields and rolling around in the mud.

The time: the 1840s. The place: California during the gold rush. As the white settlers begin penetrating the remote mountain canyons, they discover an ancient race, the Tenanken, who date back at least 60,000 years. Some members retain the genetic memories of their distant past, while others project mystical visions of comfort and joy. All flee the coming of the white man, and appear to be doomed to extinction. Only the genius Pegre finds a possible solution: integrate and intermarry with their distant white "cousins", the Hinchai, and form a new entity.

For much of their lives, Joy has been telling Cassie and Andie one big, fat lie: that they are from the future, and that when they turn 21 they will travel back to the year 2050. What started as a colourful tale to explain how the girls came to live with her has now become a decade's-long deception. Worse still, Joy has started to believe it herself. The big lie is certainly preferable to the truth she just can't face - about what happened to the girls' real mother, Britney; and how far Joy's gone to keep them 'safe'...