Showing results by narrator "Hallie Ricardo" in All Categories

Watch out, you diabolical masterminds! There's a new detective on Pancake Court: Bean! She laughs at danger! She solves even the most mysterious mysteries! What? There aren't any mysteries? Then Bean and her assistant, Ivy, will make some!

The adventures of Ivy and Bean continue in the latest installment from series creators Annie Barrows and Sophie Blackall. In Ivy and Bean Take Care of the Babysitter, the two girls hatch a plan to prove that Bean's big sister is the world's worst babysitter. Of course plans go awry, but fun ensues!

Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram, Isadora. Nineteen years later, the triplets work at their Gram’s crumbling golf course in Longshadow, Texas, where the ever-watchful eyes of the town observe them serving up glasses of ice-cold lemonade to golfers, swimming in the murky waters of the neighboring bayou, or slipping t-shirts off their sunburnt shoulders in hopes of attracting the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand.

Everyone knows that Addie Fullbright can’t keep a secret. Yet, twelve years ago, as her best friend lay dying, she entrusted Addie with the biggest secret of all. One so shattering that Addie felt she had to leave her hometown of Starlight, Alabama, to keep from revealing a devastating truth to someone she cares for deeply. Now she’s living a lonely life, keeping everyone at a distance. But when her beloved aunt gets a shocking diagnosis and asks her to come back to Starlight to help run the family bakery, Addie knows it’s finally time to go home again.

World record fever grips the second grade, and soon Ivy and Bean are trying to set their own record by becoming the youngest people to have ever discovered a dinosaur. But how hard is it to find one?

Now that Ivy and Bean are friends, they do gymnastics club together, sit together in Ms. Aruba-Tate's second grade, and tell each other their darkest secrets. And when Ivy discovers a ghost in the school bathroom, it will take both girls' courage and imagination to make it go away. Another entertaining installment in this series about two mischievous, funny, clever girls.

The moment they saw each other, Bean and Ivy knew they wouldn't be friends. But when Bean plays a joke on her sister, Nancy, and has to quickly hide and Ivy comes to the rescue, it proves that sometimes the best of friends are people never meant to like each other. Vibrant characters and lots of humor make this a charming and addictive introduction to the Ivy and Bean book series. From beloved children's book author Annie Barrows, the Ivy & Bean collection has been delighting preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and kids of all ages for nearly two decades.

Bean's older sister is going to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp, where she will do Crafts and Music and First Aid and other secret things that Bean will never know about because girls have to be 11 to go to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp. Wait a second! Bean and Ivy can make their own camp, their own better camp: Camp Flaming Arrow, where counselors Ivy and Bean will give a whole new meaning to Crafts, Music, First Aid, and hands-on learning!

The adventures of Ivy and Bean continue! In Ivy and Bean Bound to Be Bad, the two girls decide to be so good and kind and pure of thought that wild animals will befriend them. When this doesn't work, they decide that perhaps a little badness can be good.

As the daughter of a successful Major League pitcher, Charlie Hastings has baseball in her blood. Unfortunately, being the only girl on her high school baseball team, Charlie has always been just one of the guys. When her best friend, and secret love of her life, asks another girl to the prom, Charlie is devastated. She’s tired of being overlooked by boys because she’s not like other girls. Suffering a massive identity crisis, she decides to hang up her cleats. But with only two weeks until the state championships, the Roosevelt High Ravens can’t afford to lose their star catcher.

Gia and Abby have been friends since childhood, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. Now thirty, heiress Gia is back in Greece with her shiny new husband, entertaining glamorous guests with champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun, while bookish Abby is working fourteen-hour-days as an attorney. When Gia invites Abby on an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden to celebrate her birthday, Abby’s thrilled to reconnect.

Blue Bishop has a knack for finding lost things. While growing up in charming small-town Buttonwood, Alabama, she’s happened across lost wallets, jewelry, pets, her wandering neighbor, and sometimes, trouble. No one is more surprised than Blue, however, when she comes across an abandoned newborn baby in the woods, just south of a very special buttonwood tree. Sarah Grace Landreneau Fulton is at a crossroads. She has always tried so hard to do the right thing, but her own mother would disown her if she ever learned half of Sarah Grace’s secrets.

In a land torn between magic and alchemy, Sepha is an exceptional alchemist, able to bend the rules in ways no one else can. But when a slip of the tongue lands her in prison with a mountain of straw, even she has to admit that she can't transmute straw into gold. With the threat of a death sentence hanging over her, she's forced to make a deal with a conniving magician. Sepha escapes with her life - but at a cost: she has one year to alchemically create a body for the magician, or else her firstborn child will be his.

Finally! After months of begging their parents for ballet lessons, Ivy and Bean finally get what they want...well, not exactly. Much to their surprise, it turns out ballet lessons do not cover karate chops and roundhouse kicks. The girls have no interest in learning how to dance gracefully, but they promised their parents they would finish the entire ballet course! When it comes time for Ivy and Bean to participate in the ocean-themed class recital, the girls must figure out a way to get out of it without breaking their promises.

Ivy and Bean need some money. Ten dollars, to be exact. Never mind what for. Okay, it's for low-fat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-one serving size. Don't ask why. But how are Ivy and Bean going to make ten dollars?

Emme Wynn has wanted nothing more her whole life than to feel like part of a family. Having grown up on the run with her con artist mother, she’s been shuffled from town to town, drawn into bad situations, and has learned some unsavory habits that she’s tried hard to overcome. When her estranged grandmother tracks her down out of the blue and extends a job offer—helping to run her booth at an open-air marketplace in small-town Sweetgrass, Alabama—Emme is hopeful that she’ll finally be able to plant the roots she’s always dreamed of.

Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about Southern cooking and family, but despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. What is she supposed to do? Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night her sister almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted - so why is she so unhappy?

Juliet Nightingale is lucky to be alive. Months after a freak accident involving lightning, she’s fully recovered but is left feeling that something is missing from her life. Something big. Impulsively, she decides to take a solo summer road trip, hoping that the journey will lead her down a path that will help her discover exactly what it is that she’s searching for.

Pastor Rick tells us women are created to serve, to be pure, to submit, to be a delight to their husbands. Who are we to deny the very nature our Creator has built within us? When Del Walker fled her small hometown and its cult-like church six years ago, she vowed never to go back. Lars, the love of her life, was about to marry local golden girl Eve, author of a popular blog about the church's ‘Noble Wife' teachings. But now Lars is dead, and Del is convinced it couldn't have been an accident. When she returns for the funeral, she discovers the church has taken over the town.

When Ava Harrison receives a letter containing an unusual job listing one month after the sudden death of her ex-boyfriend, she thinks she’s being haunted. The listing—a job as a live-in caretaker for a peculiar old man and his cranky cat in Driftwood, Alabama—is the perfect chance to start a new life. A normal life. Ava has always been too fearful to even travel, so no one’s more surprised than she is when she throws caution to the wind and drives to the distant beachside town.