Showing results by narrator "Andre Santana" in All Categories

Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet. We see a young man’s passionate allyship turn to a furious and debilitating nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that his feminism isn’t getting him laid; a young woman’s unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of both her sense of self and her group chat; and witness a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship lead to a life-upending mistake.

In Invisible Strings, poet, professor, and dedicated Swiftie Kristie Frederick Daugherty has brought together 113 contemporary poets, each contributing an original poem that responds to a specific Taylor Swift song.

Will loves playing center midfield on his middle school soccer team. This year, though, Will hasn't felt like himself; his stomach has been bothering him, and he has no energy at all. When his new doctor diagnoses him with Crohn's disease, Will hopes that means he’ll start feeling better soon and he can get back to playing with his team before the season ends. But Will's new medicines come with all kinds of side effects. Forced to sit out afternoon practice, Will finds himself hanging out with a kid at school, Griffin.

Everyone expects Coop to be musical like his beloved parents, but he’s not. That’s one of the few things he finds awkward about being adopted—well, that and the fact that he sometimes wonders why his birth mother didn’t love him enough to keep him. This summer, he’s stuck at home with a broken arm after falling out of a tree trying to get a closer peek at a mockingbird nest. Later, when the eggs in the nest have hatched and the fledglings fly away, he and his friend Zandi notice that one of them stays behind. Taking a closer look, they realize the bird only has one wing.

A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as strange happenings escalate in a Mexican restaurant. A pair of narcissistic friends wreak havoc on an activist community. An aloof young man finds himself living through his lover’s memories. And a day of LARPing takes a cosmic turn.

What do the struggles of the past teach us about the urgent challenges in our own time? Resist chronicles the inspiring story of young Black activists who have fought tirelessly at the helm for justice over the last century, from the 1920s to the Trayvon generation—how they reshaped America, left an indelible mark on history, and pave the way for the crucial work that must be done today.

When a high school freshman commits suicide, everyone at Liberty School of Excellence is shocked—especially Eve Hunter, who is not only the English teacher at Liberty, but also a friend of the victim’s family. Although devastated, Eve is prepared to offer her love and support. But when the grieving mother discloses her theory that her son was secretly bullied to death at school, Eve is conflicted. Not at a prestigious school like Liberty, Eve is certain. Regardless, she agrees to do some underground (and possibly illegal) investigating—even if that means risking her career.

Middle school is a dungeon… At least, that’s how Jess sees it. Luckily, she and her best friend Olivia know how to escape into the sprawling worlds of their own imaginations. The two friends have always loved making up stories, first with little kid games of make-believe, and more recently with the fantasy roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. When they play, Olivia runs the game as Dungeon Master and Jess is the solo party member, playing a take-no-prisoners, lone-wolf fighter of her own design named Sir Corius.

Listen to one of the most treasured collections of children’s poetry, starring Winnie-the-Pooh! Perfect for bedtime, playtime, or anytime, the thirty-five joyful rhymes included here will spark the imaginations of listeners young and old.

From the creator of the beloved @PoetryIsNotaLuxury Instagram account, a gorgeously wrought poetry anthology that is a gift and a guide for listeners through every season of life. Inspired by writer and philosopher Audre Lorde’s famous claim: “Poetry is not a luxury,” this anthology proves the vitality of poetry as a crucial source of inspiration, comfort, and delight.

When dead-end dishwasher Kostya discovers the ability to summon spirits through the food he cooks, he embarks on a journey to open a New York City restaurant that serves closure – something he’s craved for as long as he can remember. There are just three problems: 1. Kostya has some ghosts of his own. 2. His advancing menu of spirit cuisine is threatening the stability of the Afterlife itself. 3. He’s falling in love with Maura, a party psychic with her own secret connection to the Afterlife – who also happens to be the one person who knows he must be stopped.

August and Valentine, seventeen-year-old best friends, run a business called Summer Love, Inc. They hire themselves out to unhappy parents whose kids are in bad relationships, adopting fake identities and going undercover to break up these relationships by any means necessary. Valentine, the brains of the operation, believes that they’re making the world a better place by steering people away from a relationship precipice so they can someday find true love. But for August, every case is personal.

Baseball means everything to Gregory. Not just because it feels like he's flying when he hits a homerun, but also since it reminds him of summers spent playing with his cousin in the Dominican Republic. But when his accident benches him for the season, he's doomed to sitting around his parents' bodega all day long.

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they've sworn to protect and serve. While some cases capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner's Silence reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circumstances of in-custody deaths. Through rigorous research—including critical records analysis, public health studies, and interviews with victims' families—this book unmasks the systemic failures within forensic medicine.

Hubris Maximus provides a gripping, detailed portrait of the billionaire's rapid ascent and his spectacular public implosion. Musk's audacity and erratic behaviour drove his success from the start; he spurned regulators and whistleblowers and replaced those who dared question him with loyalists. As the scale of his wagers have grown in recent years, he alternately seems to be in either complete command or on the verge of a meltdown.

Moon’s depression is overwhelming. Therapy doesn’t help, and Moon is afraid that their mom hates them because they’re sad. Moon’s only escape is traveling to the spirit realms every night, where they hope they’ll never return to the world of the living again. The spirit realm is where they have their one and only friend, Wolf, and where they’re excited to experience an infinite number of adventures. But when the realm is threatened, it’s up to Moon to save the spirit world.

In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was nineteen. His killer, Julius Williams, was seventeen. It was the second time the teens had encountered one another. The first, five years before, also ended in tragedy, when Julius watched as his brother was stabbed to death by an acquaintance of Sito’s. The two murders merited a few local news stories, and then the rest of the world moved on. But for Laurence Ralph, Sito’s murder forced him to revisit the subject in a profoundly different way.

Cameron Carson, member of the Geeks and Nerds United (GANU) club, has been secretly hooking up with student council president, cheerleader, theater enthusiast, and all-around queen bee Karla Ortega since the summer. The one problem—what was meant to be a summer fling between coffee shop coworkers has now evolved into a clandestine senior-year entanglement, where Karla isn’t intending on blending their friend groups anytime soon, or at all.

Panic consumes the countryside as the body count rises. Whispers of an unnatural beast spread through the kingdom. When the Queen calls for her heroes, those who answer will have to make do. The best tracker in the known world. A son who follows in his father's footsteps. An investigator with nothing to lose. A Captain with everything to prove. But even once the mystery of the beast is unraveled a far more sinister plot is revealed.

Olivia loves being the Dungeon Master of her after-school club, creating a world with magic and epic battles with adventure around every corner. She’s always felt at home in her game, but now—with new members and new plotlines—her world has gotten more complicated than ever. It doesn’t help when Olivia’s older sister, Lu, comes home from college and brushes off all Olivia’s hard work, telling her to get real. A seed of doubt is planted, and suddenly the colorful world of her game starts to fade around her. Will Olivia be able to keep everything from changing, or will the party fall apart?