Showing results by narrator "John McDonough" in All Categories

Katherine Valentine’s two previous Dorsetville novels enchanted listeners with lovable characters and rich humor. The third installment delivers more of the day-to-day intrigue and comic happenstance only found in Valentine’s endearing community. All is not well in Dorsetville - the sheriff is ill, tragic news awaits Lori Peterson - but in a close-knit community like this, there is no shortage of neighborly care to get you through life’s twists and turns.

A baby is found by wood nymphs in the forest of Burzee. They raise him as their own and give him the name Neclaus. When he grows up, Neclaus has to leave the forest so he makes a home for himself in the laughing valley of Hohaha, where he lives amongst humans for the first time. He discovers there that many children are very poor and neglected so, to cheer them up, he whittles wooden toys as gifts. Eventually he makes presents for all the children and so the story of Santa Claus is born.

When baby Jack is born, Mary’s joy abounds—until a shocking diagnosis proclaims him a deaf mute. While Mary lovingly nurtures the boy, her husband longs to be rid of “the freak”. Abandoned, Mary struggles to survive. And then she discovers Jack’s amazing gift.

For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative.

No one in the town of Bonnyripple ever kept a grudge. No one, that is, except old Cornelius, the Grudge Keeper. Ruffled feathers, petty snits, minor tiffs and major huffs, insults, umbrage, squabbles, dust-ups, and imbroglios - the Grudge Keeper received them all, large and small, tucking each one carefully away in his ramshackle cottage. When a fierce wind blows through Bonnyripple, the residents are forced to rescue Cornelius and deal with their various disputes.

Fall is Mr. Putter and Tabby’s favorite time of year - a time to harvest juicy fruits and feast on baked goodies. But this year it’s not going to be so easy. Old age is making Mr. Putter’s legs, knees, and feet...cranky. Even his cat Tabby suffers from a cranky tail. But that won’t stop them! Mr. Putter comes up with a zingy way to pick the pears. And thanks to Mrs. Teaberry and her good dog Zeke, he and Tabby are showered with loads of yummy apple treats, but no pears - so no pear jelly.

Hoffmann, among the greatest and most popular of the German Romantics, is renowned for his humorous and sometimes horrifying tales of supernatural beings. This selection, while stressing the variety of his work, focuses on those stories in which the real and the supernatural are brought into contact and conflict. This new translation includes The Golden Pot, The Sandman, Princess Brambilla, Master Flea, and My Cousin's Corner Window.

For thousands of years, the notion of dragons has struck fear in the hearts of men and women all over the world. The ancient Egyptians believed there was a dragon of darkness that attacked the sun god each day, and in Norway people thought that a dragon gnawed at the roots of the tree that sustained all life on Earth. Around the globe, dragons have been depicted as everything from massive, winged, fire-breathing creatures to beasts sporting a camel’s head, deer’s horns, rabbit’s eyes, and eagle’s claws! Dragons might hoard treasure in caves, or they might be responsible for floods and the death of livestock.

By 6 a.m. at Cloverleaf Hospital, young patient Filbert MacFee is ready to go home. He doesn’t need any more bed rest. He doesn’t want any more shots or x-rays. And he just can’t stand any more medicine. How can Filbert fight off the nurses, technicians and doctors when all he has to help him is a box of animal crackers? And how can the little boy convince these grownups to let him go home? Roberta Karim has created a hilarious animal tale that captures the wishes of every child who has ever spent time in a hospital.

Have you ever wondered what makes popcorn pop? One second a kernel is sitting there, tiny and hard as a rock. Next thing you know, it bursts into a fluffy and delicious snack. If you’re curious about this or any of the other mysteries surrounding us every day, then What Makes Popcorn Pop? is the audiobook for you. For example, if salt isn’t hot, then how come we use it to melt ice in the winter? Where exactly does wind come from, and how come we can’t see it? Why is the sky blue?

The New York Times best-selling children’s author Karma Wilson has won many prizes such as the National Parenting Publications Children’s Resource Gold Award. Her story Bear Wants More is a Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club Featured Selection. It’s springtime and Bear is waking up from his winter nap. He hasn’t had any food in a long time. Bear is HUNGRY! John McDonough’s exuberant narration will be loved by all young listeners hungry for a good story.

Freddy is certainly an extraordinary pig by all accounts. Although he spends his time oversleeping and overeating just like a normal pig, he also finds the time to daydream, enterprise, and even write poetry! Always full of new ideas, he proposes that the animals of Bean Farm start a tour company.

Chocolate-loving penguin detective Mr. Pin is relaxing between cases when a client approaches him with a baffling problem - someone is smashing the stone gargoyles in his warehouse. In fact, all over Chicago, gargoyles are falling from the buildings. Hoping to stop the villain before someone gets hurt, Mr. Pin and his young friend Maggie scamper to the latest crime scene to collect clues. But when an empty chocolate box is found near a destroyed statue, and a penguin is seen scuttling away, police blame Mr. Pin.

Acclaimed author Karma Wilson tells a festive story about friendship and helping others when they are sad in this Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club Featured Selection. Bear is snuggled in his cave for the winter. He sleeps all day and all night. The cold wind can’t even wake him up. He just snores on. Then, one day, something unexpected happens, and he is woken up. John McDonough’s playful narration helps listeners become involved in these woodland creatures’ activities.

As detective Xavier Kilgarvan sorts through clues and rumors, facts and fantasy, he is united with his beloved Perdita in a perilous challenge - the case of The Bloodstained Bridal Gown. Twelve years after solving the mystery of The Devil’s Half Acre, Xavier has received an urgent plea for help. A young minister and a woman from his parish have been murdered. Their torn bodies are found in an oddly suggestive position: leaning tenderly upon each other on a sofa in the rectory. Yet something even stranger is discovered upstairs....

After more than a decade, the handsome amateur detective Xavier Kilgarvan has returned to Winterthurn just in time to see the fifth young woman’s body carried from Devil’s Half Acre. A brutal fiend has left her mutilated body in this desolate plot of land filled with hulking boulders, quicksand, and twisted trees. Can detective Kilgarvan discover the forces motivating the mysterious “Gentleman Suitor” who has lured five innocent women to their deaths?

Each year along the Eastern seacoast, the wild ponies of Assateague Island are driven across a narrow strip of ocean to Chincoteague. There the shaggy, untamed ponies are sold. When young Paul and Maureen Beebe rescue a drowning newborn foal, they take her home to nearby Pony Farm. Now the foal has grown into their free-spirited pony, Misty, and has been the subject of a popular children's book.

A terrible secret is making the Ferocious Beast sit next to the River of Dreams and cry. Maggie and Hamilton Hocks want to help. "Tell us your secret and then you’ll feel better," they urge their sad friend. "Sometimes I get scared," the Ferocious Beast finally admits. But what could frighten a big, ferocious beast? Is it something worse than sea monsters, ghosts, and spaceships from another galaxy? These are the things that scare Maggie and Hamilton, even though they’ve never seen them. But how can they get the Ferocious Beast to tell them his fears?

Mr. Pin, a rock hopper penguin from the South Pole, loves to solve mysteries in the windy city of Chicago. There’s only one thing Mr. Pin likes better—eating yummy chocolate. That’s why his detective office is in the back room of Smiling Sally’s Diner, where the chocolate syrup is stored. With the help of his young friend Maggie, and tasty candy snacks, he makes Chicago a safer place.

Family memoirs and previously unpublished material provide the backdrop for this poignant portrait of a man whose heroic idealism inspired a nation. Edward Renehan's graceful prose allows listeners a close-up look at an entire family of larger-than-life heroes. Theodore Roosevelt taught his sons that wealth and influence were inextricably bound up with a duty to defend democracy to the death. His own exemplary conduct in the Spanish-American War helped win the war for the United States.