Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Literature & Fiction

Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson's life turns upside down the day her mother's boyfriend holds up a convenience store and her mother is wrongly jailed for assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, find their way to her estranged Aunt Eleanor's home. Aunt Eleanor is an ornery nun who lives in the midst of a peach orchard on Paradise Ranch. With a little patience, she and Ruby begin to get along. But Eleanor has secrets of her own - secrets that might mean more hard times for Ruby.

Severkin is an elf who slinks through the shadows of Wellhall's spiraling stone towers, plundering ancient ruins and slaying mystical monstrosities with ease. He's also a character in a video game - a character that 12-year-old Nick Reeves plays when he needs a break from the real world. And lately Nick has really needed a break. His mother had an "incident" at school last year, and her health has taken a turn for the worse. Nick is convinced his mother's illness has been misdiagnosed, but no one believes him. His only escape is the online world of Wellhall.

In Mexico, fitting in might be easier than Jed imagined, with holidays such as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Here, a rising eighth-grade zombie boy and his zombie dog won't draw that much attention. But then Tread unwittingly sets off Mexico's Chupacabra Defense Network, and Jed accidentally collides with a bus. So much for blending in. The unusual pair catch the eye of a professional wrestler, who challenges Jed to a fight!

In 1890s South Dakota, Amy and Joshua escape from their mean aunt Vootch. They plan to find their grandparents in New York and manage to team up with a traveling magician, Mortimer Wintergreen, who is also New York bound. Mortimer owns a truly magic hat with a temperamental, mischievous mind of its own. Adventures abound as their way is blocked by outlaws, runaway hot-air balloons, geese, and the persistent Aunt Vootch - but the hat is always ready for action.

Gulliver Queen, nephew of the famous detective, Ellery Queen, doesn't want to be a detective. But when Gully and his new friend, Fisty Jones, investigate the strange underwater noises in the Hudson River, they suddenly find themselves deep in a mystery that Gully can't resist tackling. The menacing tattooed man, the weird one-eyed figure in the abandoned building, the strange but merry Magnus Merlin, magician extraordinaire - all add up to an exciting tale of danger and suspense on and under New York's waterfront.

Starting with Lucy Terry of the early 18th century and finishing with poet laureate Rita Dove, this inspiring anthology edited by Catherine Clinton captures the enormous talent and passion of black poets. Powerful and diverse, I, Too, Sing America is a forum for voices baring their souls, speaking their minds, tracing their roots, and proclaiming their dreams.

Jennie McGrady plans to spend the last weeks of summer relaxing and hanging out with her boyfriend in her grandmother's coastal hometown. But she barely arrives before learning that the mayor's teenage daughter has been murdered. Jennie is reluctant to get involved in the emotional case - until the suspect turns out to be someone she knows.

After a tumultuous first semester in seventh grade, Jed Rivers returns triumphant - or so he thinks. After embracing his undeadness to put his archenemy Robbie in his place, the 13-year-old zombie thought he'd have a much easier time surviving the second semester relatively intact. That was before he came across the antizombie propaganda published by the mysterious NZN Network, a group trying to push Hollywood stereotypes as the truth.

Jennie McGrady is quickly gaining a reputation as an amateur sleuth, and it isn't going unnoticed by the local media. But the glamour of publicity is getting old, and Jennie would love to disappear into the crowd - especially when a plea from Courtney Evans leaves her out in the cold. Courtney is the typical wild sixteen-year-old: weird hair, strange friends, and an attitude to boot. But underneath the hype Jennie finds a compassionate, hurting friend who is running scared.

Jennie McGrady loves to read mysteries, drive her mom's Mustang, and think about Ryan Johnson. Her summer seems perfect - until her grandmother Helen disappears with a million dollars in stolen diamonds. Helen McGrady's job as a freelance writer for travel magazines takes her all over the world, but it's her secret connections with the FBI that interest Jennie. Ryan Johnson is the good-looking boy next door - unfortunately it's next door to Gram, 150 miles away. When Jennie enlists Ryan's help in finding her, a dangerous search looms ahead.

Meet the Salty Splashes - a cast of cartoons characters loaded with spunk and personality. They have a knack for finding comical adventure all around their cool, beachy world - a fictional version of the magical coast of central California, America's Riviera. Hear their lyrical, rhyming stories come to lifewith surf music, animated dialogue, and funny cartoon sound effects. It's the most fun you can have in one hour without getting into trouble!

Jed's not your typical middle school geek. He is, to use the politically correct term, cardiovascularly challenged. And while his parents have attempted to shield him from the implications of being different for as long as they could (Jed was eight and at a friend's sister's birthday party when he blew his lips off onto the cake in front of everyone, finally prompting the "big talk" from his parents and an emergency superglue repair by his dad), seventh grade at Pine Hollow Middle School as a target of Robbie the supreme school bully and his pack of moronic toadies is rapidly becoming unbearable.

From 1889 to 1910, Scottish author and journalist Andrew Lang collected more than four hundred fairy tales from sources throughout the world. Organized into twelve volumes, he distinguished each by the color of the book cover. The books were immensely popular and helped change the public notion that fairy tales were unsuitable for young readers.

Though known for his classic novels of adventure and coming of age, Mark Twain is equally esteemed for his short stories, which abound with the colorful characters and often comic antics readers have come to expect from his longer works. Included here is "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," a wild yarn involving a case of mistaken identity, a gambler who'd bet on anything, and an unusual frog named Daniel Webster.

O. Henry was a prolific American short-story writer - a masterof surprise endings - who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New YorkCity. In "The Gift of the Magi," one of his best-known works, a young coupleat Christmas time who, despite having little money, buy secret gifts for eachother. A moral lesson on the importance of love and sacrifice, "The Gift of theMagi" has been adapted to film more than a dozen times throughout the world.

From 1889 to 1910, Scottish author and journalist Andrew Lang collected more than four hundred fairy tales from sources throughoutthe world. Organized into twelve volumes, he distinguished each by the color of the book cover. Included in this audiobook is "How to Tell a True Princess" from The Yellow Fairy Book. Originally written by Hans Christian Anderson under the title "The Princess and the Pea," this is the story of a prince and his quest to find a true princess.

After seven years, the Giant has nothing left to say to his friend the Cornish ogre, and so he returns home to his castle - only to find that in his absence, the children have been playing in his beautiful garden. At once the selfish Giant builds a high wall to keep the children out of the garden.Winter turns into spring all over the country - but not in the selfish Giant'sgarden.

Slam is a bright and acerbic depiction of the slacker culture of Texas and a testament to a lost and found generation. Dave stepped out of Bastrop Federal Prison after a six-month stretch for tax evasion and into the home of one Margueritte Johnson, a.k.a. the Old Lady. The Old Lady passed on, leaving her house and her fortune to her twenty-three cats. But the cats need a caretaker - or so he thinks.

Paul Fleischman's Poems for Two Voices make for irresistable listening. Whether funny, sad, boisterous or serene, each poem is a virtuoso performance - skillfully illuminating a unique personality from the natural world.

When her spendthrift father goes into debt after buying a sheep and the inner workings of a clock, 15-year-old Annie Steele is sent to work in the town's new wool mill to help support her family. Her job is full of risk - especially after she and her friend Robert discover that the mill's cruel overseer is stealing bags of wool and decide to do something about it. Annie longs for the chance to continue her schooling and become a teacher. Will she ever be able to leave the mill?