Showing results by narrator "Pete Cross" in All Categories

This Highlights Listen & Learn! Audio Study, intended for those in grade four, introduces listeners to the importance of caring for your community. Getting Down and Dirty focuses on some of the run-down problem places found in cities, and how communities have joined together to turn these places into beautiful shared spaces. In addition to discussing bettering our communities, this audio study takes a look at some key comprehension skills including identifying an author's purpose, determining cause-and-effect relationships, and building vocabulary.

This Highlights Listen & Learn! Audio Study, intended for those in grade five, features a story called The Video Game Hero and focuses on vocabulary, plot, and characterization. The story follows Jack, a very talented video-game player who also uses a wheelchair. Jack often feels lonely at school because he doesn't have many friends. When Jack wins a video-gaming competition, his classmates seem to take more of an interest in him. At the end of the story, Jack learns a very interesting lesson about the people around him.

Harry Gruber plays the role of Scrooge in his school’s production of A Christmas Carol, and he is extra nervous about tonight’s performance because his father is in the audience - not away for business, as usual. Will the story’s message of Christmas cheer and the redemptive power of love reach his father’s distracted Scrooge heart?

Copeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive. He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland’s life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates - the highly rated Insurgency Alert Desk that surveils and harasses his neighborhood in the name of anti-terrorism.

Jack London was one of the most notable authors of his time, and this collection showcases some of his most popular short stories. Filled with reflections on the human condition, our interactions with wilderness, and the chance of underlying magic that surrounds us all, these short stories offer a brief respite from the bustling world around us. This collection of short stories contains "A Thousand Deaths", "An Odyssey of the North", "A Relic of the Pliocene", "The Law of Life", "The Minions of Midas", "To Build a Fire", "Grit of Women", "That Spot", "Flush of Gold", and "Lost Face".

Learning is an adventure in Ms. Frogbottom’s class because she’s got a magic map - one that takes her students all over the world to do battle with mythical monsters no one believes are real. All Ms. Frogbottom has to do is take out the map, tap a country and - SHAZAAM! - off they go to a place somewhere far far away. When Ms. Frogbottom’s crew lands in Scotland, they come nose-to-nose with the legendary Loch Ness Monster!

Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department and thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be when her husband is sleeping right next to her? But when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there. Tessa is the 23-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived.

Curtis Quinn is a Chicago mob legend with a price on his head and a particular set of skills. Beth Jarvis is a plucky teenager unwrapping the secrets of her hometown, Harlow, where no one is allowed to leave and a mysterious ceremony awaits her on her 18th birthday. What Beth doesn't know is the truth about her sister, Kate, who escaped more than a decade ago and has evaded the town's sinister ruler, known only as the Mayor, and his High Servants, Scouts, and Disciples who rule the town, making her a local legend....

Summer on Nantucket island. Three high school friends drinking warm beer on a rooftop. Everything is cool, until a seemingly innocent game takes a sinister turn, and the course of their lives are changed forever. For a year, they keep it a secret - until the following summer when they meet a mysterious girl with her own dark past who may have the answers they’re looking for.

Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants - all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. In this critically acclaimed collection, Lydia Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture.

In a post-Trump world, a relatively unknown candidate, Ian Wrightman, is elected president to heal a nation frayed by years of extreme partisanship. When a series of coordinated terrorist attacks rock the United States, Wrightman begins to take more and more executive control in the name of protecting democracy. But DC reporter and war veteran Rollie Stone uncovers evidence that the attacks might be coming from somewhere much closer to home.

When Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton's corpse is discovered behind the easels of Manhattan's famed art school, whispers in the art community say he had it coming. As Benton's list of enemies lengthens to include League instructors, Vietnam War protesters, and members of Andy Warhol's entourage, one art student is ultimately pinned for the crime. The only problem? The suspect has vanished.

In a time when people believed flying was impossible, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier proved that the sky wasn’t the limit. When most thought horseback was the only way to race, Bertha and Karl Benz fired up their engines. From the invention of the bicycle and the passenger steam locomotive to the first liquid-fuel propelled rocket and industrial robot, inventors across the world have redefined travel. Informative and celebratory, this collective biography tells the story of the experiments, failures, and successes of visionaries who changed the way the world moves.

This book reveals exactly how radical, exciting, and life-changing the full picture of Buddhist ideas about concepts such as compassion, joy, detachment, and liberation can be. Its key aim, however, is to do this in a way that appeals to everyone, whether they are interested in Buddhism or not. Written in simple, straightforward language, What's Beyond Mindfulness? contains 50 essays covering every aspect of modern life, ranging from the mundane to the spiritual. Topics include how to be fulfilled at work, how to relate to money, what mindfulness really means, how to find the magic of the moment, and much, much more.

The worst thing that ever happened to Craig is also the best: Amy. Amy and Craig never should've gotten together - Craig is an awkward Dungeons & Dragons-playing geek, and Amy is the beautiful, fiercely intelligent student-body president of their high school. Yet somehow they did - until Amy dumped him. Then got back together with him. Then dumped him again. Then got back together with him again. Over and over and over. Unfolding over their senior year, Amy and Craig's relationship is a kaleidoscope of joy, pain, and laughter as an uncertain future looms on the horizon.

Written in seclusion following the intense negative public reaction to the publication of his novel Pierre, The Piazza Tales is Herman Melville's accessible and entertaining collection of short stories and novellas concerning love, labor, and loss. The collection includes his three most important achievements in the genre of short fiction: the short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the novellas Benito Cereno and The Encantadas.

At 2 a.m., the Pulse nightclub was winding down on its weekly Latino night. The building was dark, crowded, and loud. Patrons were making plans to leave when they were ambushed by a gunman, who began firing in every direction. Customers tried to escape, but the killer followed. For the next three hours, the gunman terrorized victims while playing a cat-and-mouse game with the police.

After rising to national fame as the general who defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson ran for president as a political outsider, championing the interest of common farmers and frontiersmen. Determined to take down the wealthy, well-educated East Coast elites, he pledged to destroy the national bank, which he believed was an engine of corruption serving the interest of bankers and industrialists. A staunch nationalist, he sought to secure and expand the nation's borders.

The America that Alexander Hamilton knew was largely agricultural and built on slave labor. He envisioned something else: a multi-racial, urbanized, capitalistic America with a strong central government. He believed that such an America would be a land of opportunity for the poor and the newcomers. But Hamilton's vision put him at odds with his archrivals who envisioned a pastoral America of small towns, where governments were local, states would control their own destiny, and the federal government would remain small and weak.

Today's media and political landscapes are littered with untrustworthy sources and the dangerous concept of fake news. This accessible guide helps you fight this deeply troubling trend and ensure that truth is not a permanent casualty. Written by Capitol Hill veteran and author Bruce Bartlett, The Truth Matters presents actionable tips and tricks for consuming news critically, judging sources, using fact-checking sites, avoiding confirmation bias, identifying trustworthy experts, and more.