Showing results by narrator "Charlie Thurston" in All Categories

An original novella from award-winning children's author and poet Gary Soto. Jason Rodriguez is a 12-year-old who never had muchluck - until he wins $3,700 in the lottery and becomes an Instant Winner! Jason can't believe he's won the lottery and decides he will use the money to get his crazy Uncle Mike out of jail. That's where the real adventure begins.

Justin Conkey was too young to fight in the Revolution of 1776, but now it is 1787 and he is 14. Justin is ready to fight, even if he has only his father’s old sword to protect him. But once on the battlefield, war is not what he expected. It is dangerous and frightening and nothing makes sense. Throughout a particularly bitter winter the young man is desperate to prove that he too can be a hero - not realizing that many times heroes turn out to be just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, who do what comes naturally to save others regardless of risk to themselves.

Char, Weddy, and Nuell are excited over their discovery on the strange planet Pleisto but also terrified, for the leader of their expedition, Professor Joher, has disappeared. Nuell and Weddy, Joher’s children, are concerned for his safety, while Char, his research assistant, feels not only worried but responsible for all of them. He realizes that these prehistoric people may have carried off the professor - and may even have killed him.

It is December 1681, and the words of Mr. Baggot, the tithingman, terrify young William. William is living a strange double life. By day he is a printer’s apprentice living in a white man’s house. By night, he is Weetasket of the Narraganset tribe who must risk Baggot’s wrath to search for his lost brother. Then comes the winter celebration of the Saturnalia - the ancient Roman holiday on which masters and slaves trade roles. Will William’s secrets be revealed? And what dark deeds of others will be brought to light on this fateful night?

The critically acclaimed author of American Nerd makes his fiction debut with this romantic tragicomedy about a teenage boy and girl who discover his dad is having an affair with her mom. At 15, Josh Paquette and Khadijah Silverglate-Dunn catch Josh’s father and Khadijah’s mother kissing in a natural foods store. They make a pact never to cheat on anyone, ever. They have no problem keeping the vow—until they meet again at 28, both struggling with career and identity, and both engaged to other people.

A young man whose childhood hobby of collecting sea shells and birds’ nests takes a sinister turn when he becomes obsessed with acquiring his brother’s girlfriend, in “The Hoarder”. An archeologist summoned to attend his beloved sister’s funeral is astonished to discover it is not she who has died, but someone much closer to him, in “Gardener of Heart.”

Fifteen-year-old Ben Buck and his family spent four years clearing the wilderness to build a new home in Pennsylvania. They fought the Indians and the British, and made sacrifices most people wouldn't have been strong enough to make. All so they could be independent and free. Now someone's trying to take everything away from them...their land, their home, even Ben's best friend, Joe. But the Bucks won't give up without a fight, and Ben knows his family will have to win a war to stay free. But what he doesn't know is that wars sometimes last a very long time. And even if you win in the end, you can lose almost everything along the way.

Fourteen-year-old Chris Winchester is torn between two worlds. By birth, he’s part of the indomitable Winchester clan, owners of the enormous electronics factory that employs nearly everyone in town. Yet Chris’ father gave up his stake in the business to work for the Peace Corp. When he died, Chris, his mother, and his twin sisters moved into a tiny gatehouse on the Winchester estate - poor relations living on family goodwill. While his cousin Ernest is groomed to take over the family fortune, Chris attends public school and makes friends with the kids in town.

To Sam Blount, meeting Julia is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Working at the local college and unsuccessful in his previous relationships, he'd been feeling troubled about his approaching fortieth birthday, "a great beast of a birthday," as he sees it, but being with Julia makes him feel young and hopeful. Julia Stilwell, a freshman trying to come to terms with a recent tragedy that has stripped her of her greatest talent, is flattered by Sam's attention. But their relationship is tested by a shy young man with a secret, Marcus Broley, who is also infatuated with Julia.

The Morels - Arthur, Penny, and Will - are a happy family of three living in New York City. So why would Arthur choose to publish a book that brutally rips his tightly knit family unit apart at the seams? Arthur’s old schoolmate Chris, who narrates the book, is fascinated with this very question as he becomes accidentally reacquainted with Arthur.

Life for indentured servants in pioneer Virginia is hard. It is doubly hard for Richard Ayre, a London orphan who had been scooped off the streets as a child and sent to the Jamestown Colony. But a chance encounter with an Indian boy his own age gives him a friend, the first real friend he has had in years - until his master’s plan to raid an Indian village for corn turns Richard’s world upside down.

Colt Clemmons is an agent in a specialized division within the Bureau of Investigation - one that hunts down not just mobsters, but also monsters. For reasons that are kept top secret, Colt is the only person who can resist a siren's voice. But he's never had a chance to test this ability. The last siren left in the world mysteriously disappeared years ago. Then one night, with a single word, she reveals herself. It seems too good to be true. And it is. Because nothing about this siren-her past, her powers, or her purpose - is what it seems....

Dills and his mom have returned to Hamilton, her hometown, hoping to leave the horrors of Windsor behind. But it's impossible to escape the echoes of tragedy, and trouble always follows trouble. When Dills hurts a new classmate, it comes out in court that he was in the Windsor High library when the shooter came in. But he won't talk about what he saw, what he still sees whenever he closes his eyes.

A moose walks into a rural Maine town called Oslo. Pierre Roy, a brilliant 12-year-old, loses his memory in an accident. Three families are changed for worse and better as they grapple with trauma, marriage, ambition, and their fraught relationship with the natural world. Oslo, Maine inspects the strengths and limitations of seven average yet extraordinary people as they reckon with their considerable collective failure around Pierre's accident.

Writing in the grand American tradition of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, Donovan Hohn is an "adventurous, inquisitive, and brightly illuminating writer" (New York Times). Since the publication of Moby-Duck a decade ago, Hohn has been widely hailed for his prize-winning essays on the borderlands between the natural and the human. The Inner Coast collects 10 of his best, many of them originally published in such magazines as the New York Times Magazine and Harper's.

Bloomland opens during finals week at a fictional southern university, when a student walks into the library with his roommate's semi-automatic rifle and opens fire. When he stops shooting, 12 people are dead. In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor.

An honest story about recovery and coping with both past and present, framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the wide-reaching scope of the #metoo movement, Nirvana is Here explores issues of identity, race, sex, and family with both poignancy and unexpected humor. Deftly told intertwining stories with rich, real characters are reminiscent of the sensuality and haunting nostalgia of Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name blended with the raw emotion of Kurt Cobain's lyrics.

From the author of Away with Words, a deeply hilarious and unexpectedly insightful deep-dive into a cultural and culinary phenomenon: cheese. “Who knew it was possible to enjoy reading about cheese as much as eating it? Remarkably entertaining, deeply insightful, and downright hilarious...

The past is about to catch up to Jack Logan and Taylor Parks in this gripping follow-up to The Network—praised by Steve Berry as “mandatory reading for any thriller aficionado.” It’s been almost two years since investigative reporter Jack Logan and television producer Taylor Parks...

Five years into fatherhood, Calvin Hennick is plagued by self-doubt and full of questions. How can he teach his son to be a man when his own father figures abandoned him? As a white man, what can he possibly teach his biracial son about how to live as a black man in America? And what does it even mean to be a man today, when society's expectations of men seem to change from moment to moment?