Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Literature & Fiction

Eleven-year-old Rachel Yoder encounters trouble at every turn with her Amish friends and family when she spreads unintentional rumors as a result of her eavesdropping. From a little misunderstanding about Cousin Mary moving back to town. . .to a much bigger and out-of-control rumor about her brother Jacob's health, things go from bad to worse for Rachel. Will she ever learn that assumptions often have hurtful consequences?

Written by British-born author Frances Hodgson Burnett and first published in 1905, A Little Princess tells the story of young Sara Crewe, privileged daughter of a wealthy diamond merchant. All the other girls at Miss Minchin's school treat Sara as if she truly were a princess. But when Captain Crewe's fortune is sadly lost, Sara's luck changes. Suddenly she is treated no better than a scullery maid.

Charlie Joe Jackson may be the most reluctant reader ever born. And so far, he’s managed to get through life without ever reading an entire book from cover to cover. But now that he’s in middle school, avoiding reading isn’t as easy as it used to be. And when his friend Timmy McGibney decides that he’s tired of covering for him, Charlie Joe finds himself resorting to desperate measures to keep his perfect record intact. This is the hilarious story of an avid non-reader and the extreme lengths to which he’ll go to get out of reading a book.

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind.

Fifteen-year-old Rae Maddox’s mom, Gina, is a big fan of fresh starts. Gina thinks of them as an adventure, but for Rae, each move is just one more friend lost, one more chance to feel like an outsider. After arriving in Wisconsin, Gina promises to stay put until Rae graduates. Cautiously optimistic, she wades into the social whirl at Whitman High School, making a few friends and even earning a chance at love. But when the vice principal pairs her with fellow newbie Allison Daly, Rae’s tentative happiness is jeopardized.

Disaster has struck, and the Titanic is going down. What started as a thrilling voyage has turned into a fight for survival. For Paddy, Sophie, Juliana, and Alfie, every second counts in the race against death. All of their hiding and all of their seeking has come down to this: Can they save the people they love? Can they even save themselves? One cold, horrifying night will decide all of their fates.

When Aidan Cross yeeted his very secret journal into the house on Yeet Street, he also intended to yeet his feelings for his best friend, Kai, as far away as possible. To Aidan’s horror, his friends plan a sleepover at the haunted house the very next night. Terrance, Zephyr, and Kai are dead set on exploring local legend Farah Yeet’s creepy mansion. Aidan just wants to survive the night and retrieve his mortifying love story before his friends find it.

Now thirteen, Mika has left behind her Stockholm orphanage for a treacherous journey with Detective Hoff to finally meet her mother, Annie Moonwind, a maid at the imposing Roseboon estate. Upon their arrival, and to their surprise, Valdemar is mistaken for the local constable, and Mika his errand girl, summoned to arrest Annie for mysterious crimes. But are dark forces at work at Roseboon? After all, doors are kept bolted. Windows are nailed shut. And screams pierce the dark. Maybe something wicked has been unleashed. Everything points to a creature that only comes at night.

Batu is just an ordinary kid in present-day Almaty, worried about bullies, school, and his mom’s new baby…until the day he meets Aspara, the Golden Warrior. Aspara steps straight out of Batu’s notebook cover—and out of Kazakhstan’s past. Aspara has been waiting hundreds of years to be summoned to the human world and to finally get his chance to search for the Golden Cup, a magical talisman sent down from the heavens. When the Golden Cup was lost, Aspara watched as many of his friends and family were killed or disappeared.

Henry Fleming is a young private in the Union army during the American Civil War - a farm boy untested by battle. Faced with charging rebels, he flees. With his ideals shattered and his heart burdened by shame, Henry seeks an opportunity to redeem himself, even hoping for a wound - a "red badge of courage" - to prove his bravery.

When Black Beauty is just a foal, his mother tells him to be gentle and good, hard-working and obedient to his humans always. Beauty's first job, as carriage horse to Squire Gordon, rewards his good behavior. But when the Gordons fall on hard times, Beauty is sold to an estate whose mistress insists on the bearing rein, a device that forces a horse's head into an uncomfortable but chic position. After scarring his knees in a fall, Beauty is sold once again, to a hard life in a livery stable.

Kyle's great-grandfather once possessed a silver lance that, according to legend, gave its owner invincible power. The lance is now missing, and Kyle is always looking for it, but so are his worst enemies: the robber Rasputin and the evil magician Balduin. Luckily, Kyle has the help of his friends, including Lady Constance (who is as brave as a dragon), Dragobert (who really is a dragon), Elf Aurin (whose harp playing, unfortunately, puts Kyle to sleep), and Prince Nepomuk (who protects his friends and his wardrobe).

Jimmy is sure that his dog Abby is special. After all, it was Abby who (with the help of Jimmy & friends) helped nab the criminal Barnaby Bratford and shut down Barnaby's babysitting service, a front for robbing the nice folks of Quietville. Jimmy's parents, on the other hand, are starting to feel like Abby is one destructive little dog (she chewed up Mom's entire shoe collection!) and they insist on enrolling Abby in obedience training.

His self-involved older sister and workaholic Mom think he needs to stop obsessing already! But when his Dad finally allows Jimmy to get a puppy before school starts, everything changes and Jimmy has something new to focus on: his amazing dog, Abby, who seems to have some very unusual habits. She sleeps all day but is wired at night, and she runs from the garlic kelp biscuit made by Jimmy's strange new babysitter Mrs. Cragg. There's just something different about Abby. Could she possibly be...a vampire?

Pete Milano has always been the class clown and proud of it. What's the point of having friends if you can't make them laugh, right? Even if doing so has the unfortunate side effect of constantly getting him into trouble. But, for once, Pete's tricks have led him to just the right place at just the right time. Now he's about to become famous, because he's been asked to audition for the hottest new movie with the hottest girl costar. But balancing real life with movie life is way harder than it sounds.

The story of Negro League baseball is the story of gifted athletes and determined owners; of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship; of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. It is a perfect mirror for the social and political history of black America in the first half of the 20th century. But most of all, the story of the Negro Leagues is about hundreds of unsung heroes who overcame segregation to do the one thing they loved more than anything else in the world: play ball.

Oy lives in America now, but she loves to go to the back room of Pak's auto shop on Saturdays to learn traditional Thai dances. She loves it almost as much as being a member of the Quail Club - five friends who gather after school to hatch and care for baby quail. When the teacher announces a talent show, Oy knows how proud her family and Pak would be to see her step onstage in her beautiful gold-threaded dress from Thailand. But bossy Liliandra vows to kick her out of the Quail Club....

In Thailand, Oy was called by her own name, but in her first school in America, the teacher renames her Olivia. Everything else is different too. The other girls leave her out of their games, and a boy named Frankie teases her. Then Liliandra, a popular girl in the class, sees a photo of Oy in her Thai dancing dress and offers to let Oy into her club if she brings the dress to school. Oy knows that would be a betrayal of her family’s traditions, but she wants so much to belong. At home, fingering the pink silk of her dress, Oy makes a decision.

Tugs Esther Button was born to a luckless family. Buttons don’t presume to be singers or dancers. They aren’t athletes or artists, good listeners or model citizens. Until tomboy Tugs befriends the popular Aggie Millhouse, wins a brand-new Brownie camera in the Independence Day raffle, and stumbles into a mystery only she can solve, she looks at her hapless family and sees her own reflection looking back. But it’s a summer of change, and it just may be that in the end, being a Button is precisely what one clumsy, funny, spirited, and observant young heroine decides to make of it.

As the middle sister in a family with three girls, Stevie Reel doesn’t know much about boys, and that’s always been just fine with her. But lately, things have been changing: kids at school are starting to pair up, and Owen, the new boy in her Earth Science class, seems to have his sights set on her. The trouble is, Stevie doesn’t want a boyfriend - she’s not even sure that she’s ready to have a boy friend. And her sisters, who know exactly where they stand on the issue of boys, are no help: Alex is too busy trying to orchestrate her first kiss, and Joey can't understand why anyone would prefer a boy over a frog....