Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

High school junior Blaine Bowers has it all—the perfect boyfriend, a pretty sweet gig as a muralist for local Windy City businesses, a loving family, and awesome, talented friends. And he is absolutely, 100% positive that aforementioned perfect boyfriend—senior student council president and Mr. Popular of Wicker West High School, Joey—is going to invite Blaine to spend spring break with his family in beautiful, sunny Cabo San Lucas. Except Joey breaks up with him instead. In public. On their one-year anniversary.

Everyone's favorite knight-in-training is back...to back! Max's twin is public enemy number one, and it's up to the Midknights to find her before time runs out! But dangers loom, including bloodthirsty trolls, murderous pirates, and even a ruthless king--or two.

Georgia Beck owns the bookshop in downtown Coral Canyon, and she knows the Young family well. After all, one of her best friends is the librarian, and Abby just married Otis's brother, Tex. When her ex-boyfriend keeps coming round the shop, trying to get her back, she needs a convincing reason for him to leave her alone. That reason is a new boyfriend, and the only person in the shop at the time is Otis Young. He's always keen to help a woman in distress, but he wasn't expecting a fake kiss to spark something very real inside his wounded heart.

What would have happened if the Animorphs had never existed? If Jake and the others had taken the long way home from the mall that night, instead of cutting through the abandoned construction site? If they'd never met Elfangor. Never rescued Ax. Never heard of the Yeerks.... Jake's finally weakened. After one particularly grisly battle, the Drode hits him when he's down and offers the Animorphs' leader an escape from the terrifying pressure. He'll take Jake back to the mall and reverse the decision that started the Animorphs. It's an offer Jake's too tired to refuse.

With Celadon fighting on the political front against the ruthless High Queen Riadne—now armed with the cataclysmic power of her Crown, the Sins, and Ruin—Vehan and Aurelian are scrambling in secret to build an army to rival the Riadne’s infernal forces. Meanwhile, Nausicaä will do whatever it takes to save her girlfriend from obliteration, despite knowing the odds of survival are nearly nonexistent. When the line between hero and villain becomes blurred, and bonds are put to the ultimate test, it has never been more imperative—or more difficult—to stand united.

In the sleepy coastal town of New Castle, New Hampshire, seventeen-year-old Billy Hasler's life is about to take a terrifying turn. When his best friend David Spivey inherits a mysterious house on a nearby island, it seems like the perfect place to spend their final summer before heading off to college. No parents. No police. No responsibilities. As they dig into the island's dark past, they awaken an ancient evil that has influenced generations. What begins as an innocent summer adventure quickly descends into a nightmare.

It has been nine months since Gordy and his friends, Max and Adilene, stopped Esmeralda from destroying B.R.E.W. and the Vessel. Gordy is starting the eighth grade, where he meets another Dram, Sasha Brexil, whose mother is the new President of B.R.E.W. Gordy has also been practicing new brewing techniques and has even taken some of his potions to school - something expressly forbidden - but when he starts zoning out during practice, he knows something is wrong.

Yeerk ships are pouring in from all ends of the galaxy—this is it. What will be the climactic, awful battle the Animorphs have been waiting for. Rachel has always been prepared for all out war, perhaps a little too ready. The President of the United States is a Controller, so the Animorphs have to rally their own military force. They succeed. Five thousand troops will fight against the seemingly endless onslaught of Yeerks. And this time, there will be no compromise. No half way. It's all out war for the Animorphs. It's Rachel's moment.

After a mostly successful stint at Hills Village Middle School, Rafe is excited to visit the incredible city of London with his class. Sightseeing around a foreign country sounds like a blast - until Rafe finds out his roommate will be none other than Miller the Killer, bully extraordinaire! Then Rafe is forced to work on a class project side by side with his crush, Jeanne Galletta, and her too-perfect boyfriend, which might be even more torturous than rooming with Miller.

For nine years, Drew Baker has been running from her brutal husband and the dark deeds of the night she left him. Focused on protecting her ten-year-old son, Drew reluctantly settles into a small town, eager to find proof of her husband’s true nature so she can stop looking over her shoulder. But Drew is also on the run from her own terrible crimes - ones that mean prison and separation from her son should the police catch up to her before her husband does. If only she could remember that night and what really transpired.

On a foggy night in Amsterdam, a man falls from a rooftop to the wet pavement below. It's Archibald McQuinn, the notorious cat burglar, and he's dying. As sirens wail in the distance, Archie manages to get out two last words to his young son, March: "Find jewels." But March learns that his father is not talking about hidden loot. He's talking about Jules, the twin sister March never knew he had. No sooner than the two find each other, they're picked up by the police and sent to the world's worst orphanage. It's not hard time, but it feels like it.

Dak Hamee is a unique Hork-Bajir. His people call him a seer. He learns more quickly and completely than the rest of his docile race. Hork-Bajir like him are born once a generation. Aldrea is a young Andalite. Daughter of the notorious Prince Seerow. It is only after she and her family are sent to the Hork-Bajirhome world that she begins to fight the Yeerks—and, with Dak's help, ultimately discovers their hideous plan. Esplin 9466 is the Yeerk that will become the feared Visser Three. He has set out to defeat the Hork-Bajir, and begin the building of the Yeerk Empire.

Holly Ash is good actor. Just one downside: Most of the people she’s acting with have no idea they’re a part of her fiction. One that has been carefully constructed by the secretive company that Holly works for, known as D.O.P.L. Every assignment is a new role, a new name, a completely new self. Her newest role is “Margot” and her newest target: a boy her age named Will Aldrich.

If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, he had one hero and inspiration for so much of what followed: his longtime friend and brother-in-law William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into one, an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook, William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate.

Living in a small town where magic is frowned upon, Sam needs his friends James and Delia - and their time together in their school's magic club - to see him through to graduation. But as soon as senior year starts, little cracks in their group begin to show. Sam may or may not be in love with James. Delia is growing more frustrated with their amateur magic club. And James reveals that he got mixed up with some sketchy magickers over the summer, putting a target on all their backs.

When sixth grader Silas Wade does a school presentation on former Major Leaguer Glenn Burke, it’s more than just a report about the irrepressible inventor of the high five. Burke was a gay baseball player in the 1970s―and for Silas, the presentation is his own first baby step toward revealing a truth about himself he’s tired of hiding. Soon he tells his best friend, Zoey, but the longer he keeps his secret from his baseball teammates, the more he suspects they know something’s up―especially when he stages one big cover-up with terrible consequences.

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak - to live. All the doctors can do is give her drugs and hope they keep her alive. So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of the medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

Local weather reporter Suzanne Maretto craves nothing more than to transcend life at her suburban cable television news station and follow in the footsteps of her idol: Barbara Walters. When she concludes that her unglamorous husband is getting in the way of her dream of stardom, the solution seems obvious: Get rid of him. She seduces a 15-year-old admirer, Jimmy, and persuades him to do her dirty work. Mission accomplished, Suzanne takes to the airwaves in her new role as grieving widow, in search of a TV deal. If that means selling Jimmy down the river, she’s ready.

Alice Comstock has always been a dutiful wife and an attentive mother, a perfectionist presiding over a flawless home. She’s reliably been her family’s center, the caretaker and problem-solver, until an illness requires her children to assume responsibility for their mother. For Adam, Alice’s youngest, a return home to California sparks a memory of his younger self. Alternating between the present and flashbacks to Adam’s college years, "There Are Flowers in Ohio" explores how the paths not taken shape all of our lives.

Writing from an impressive range of perspectives—men and women, children and adults, immigrants and tourists—Puchner deftly exposes the dark, tender undersides of his characters with arresting beauty and precision. Here are people fumbling for identity in a dehumanizing world, captured in moments that are hilarious, shocking, and transcendent, sometimes all at once. Unfailingly true, surprisingly moving, and impossible to forget, these stories make up an extraordinary and strikingly original collection.