Showing results by narrator "Johnathan McClain" in All Categories

Captain Tom Thrush is patrolling the Octagon Rift when his ship is attacked by a black destroyer that seems to predict his every move. Outgunned and outmaneuvered, he flees in a crippled ship to the only sanctuary he can reach—a den of thieves and spies called Lotus Station. His ship will be broken up for scrap. Half the crew are casualties. The rest are scattering, leaving Tom stuck on Lotus. As the black destroyer hunts down local freighters, Tom becomes obsessed with tracking it down and taking revenge.

Rachel Klein never meant to kiss her creative writing professor, but with his long eyelashes, silky hair and the sad, beautiful life he laid bare on Twitter, she does, and the kiss is very nice. Zahid Azzam never planned to become a houseguest in his student’s sprawling Connecticut home, but with the sparkling swimming pool, the endless supply of strawberries and Rachel’s beautiful mother, he does, and the home is very nice. 

When a training mission goes wrong, Sublieutenant Tom Thrush finds his brand-new career hanging by a thread. Desperate to redeem himself, he makes a rash wager - he’ll lead a squad in a mock attack, boarding and capturing the visiting gunboat Diana in record time. He hasn’t got a chance, and to make matters worse, there’s a visiting admiral watching the attack from her yacht. Tom, desperate, sneaks aboard the Diana through a gun port - and stumbles into the middle of something much worse than a training exercise.

On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day - chosen completely at random - was Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, and much more....

This story begins after King Uhla'ar kidnapped Aly and dragged her back through a rift in time. A giant, merciless behemoth guards the opening, and so Jack McKinley and his friends realize that rescuing Aly will be harder than they thought. Their only hope is to rush to the last of the Ancient Wonders and find the rest of the lost Loculi.

The fourth book in the thrilling Seven Wonders series. "A high-octane mix of modern adventure and ancient secrets.... I can't wait to see what's next" (Rick Riordan). Three Battles. Thirteen-year-old Jack McKinley has fought impossible odds to save himself, his friends, and the world. Having already defeated the Colossus of Rhodes, hunted through ancient Babylon, and outfoxed legions of undead, the Select have recovered three of the lost Loculi hidden in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

He is the last to wake. The label on his sleeper pad identifies him as an admiral of the Evagardian Empire - a surprise as much to him as to the three recent recruits now under his command. He wears no uniform, and he is ignorant of military protocol, but the ship's records confirm he is their superior officer. Whether he is an Evagardian admiral or a spy will be of little consequence if the crew members all end up dead.

Bjorn’s Berserkers was a respected and flourishing mercenary company. Founded by Bjorn Tovesson I, it was now commanded by his son, Bjorn Tovesson II. Commander Tovesson wanted nothing more than to eventually pass on the Berserkers to his son, Bjorn Tovesson III. But young Bjorn had a different destiny in mind. He didn’t want a future of fighting aliens and risking death on some distant planet. One fateful afternoon in the Alaska wilderness changed everything, though, when a bear attack left Bjorn maimed. 

Elaine's was a world-famous New York restaurant that became home to writers and celebrities. Owner Elaine Kaufman was known to be "New York feisty", controversial, often rude, always blunt, with the flare of Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker. Elaine was highly respected and frequently feared, and Elaine's the restaurant received the public's love and praise time and time again. Woody Allen held a regular table there, and Elaine's was even featured in Allen's Manhattan and Billy Joel's song "Big Shot".

week ago, 13-year-old Jack McKinley was a normal kid leading a normal life - totally unaware that he was about to die. He's cursed with a genetic abnormality that's giving him amazing powers too quickly for his body to handle. Jack's only hope: Find the seven lost Loculi that were hidden in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by the last prince of Atlantis. Only they contain the magic to save him - and the world.

Entire cities disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but dust and rubble. When an alien race came to make Earth theirs, they brought with them a weapon we had no way to fight, a universe-altering force known as thelemity. It seemed nothing could stop it - until we discovered we could wield the power, too. Five hundred years later, the Earth is locked in a grinding war of attrition. The talented few capable of bending thelemity to their will are trained in elite military academies, destined for the front lines.

National Book Award winner Jude Watson joins the race for survival! The harrowing tale of survival and suspicion takes its most dramatic turn yet when Molly, Yoshi, and the rest discover that there are more than just monsters in the rift. There are other kids, too....

Why are some cats cuddly and others standoffish? Why are some dogs adventuresome, others homebodies? As any pet owner can attest, we feel that the animals we've formed bonds with are unique, as particular (and peculiar) as any human friend or loved one. Recent years have brought an increased understanding of animal intelligence and emotion. But is there a scientific basis for animal personality and individuality, or is this notion purely sentimental?

Who was Alice Marble? In her public life, she was the biggest tennis star of the pre-war era, a household name like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis. She was famous for overcoming serious illness to win the biggest tournaments, including Wimbledon. She was also a fashion designer and trendsetter, a contributor to a pioneering new comic called Wonder Woman - and friend to the biggest names in Hollywood and society, like Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, and members of families named Bloomingdale, Loew, and du Pont.

When thirteen-year-old Max Tilt happens upon his great-great-great-grandfather Jules Verne’s unfinished, unpublished manuscript, The Lost Treasures, he doesn’t realize that he’s found the answers to all his problems. And Max has a lot of problems—his mother is sick, his father is out of work, and his home is about to be foreclosed on. But when Max and his cousin Alex discover that Verne’s last work reveals everything he wrote was fact, not fiction, they realize that the book holds the key to something incredibly valuable. A treasure that can save his house—and maybe his entire family.

A tense true-crime story about an all-American soldier boy turned bank robber. Alex Blum was a clean-cut all-American kid with one unshakeable goal in life: to serve his country in the military. He was accepted into the elite Rangers regiment, but on the first day of his leave before deployment to Iraq, Alex got into his car with two fellow soldiers and two strangers, drove to a local bank in Tacoma and committed armed robbery. The Blum family was devastated and mystified. How could he have done such a thing?

Ellie Larrabee’s life is perfect. She’s thriving at work, living in a fabulous apartment, and engaged to the man of her dreams. To all appearances, Ellie and Rob Beauman are a golden couple—blessed with good looks, success, and romantic chemistry that’s off the charts.

Seventeen-year-old honors student Coretta White's Tumblr, Little White Lies - her witty thoughts on pretty much...everything - has gone viral. She's got hundreds of thousands of followers; she's even been offered a TV deal. But Coretta has a secret. She hasn't been writing all her own posts. Stressed from the demands of the sudden attention, she hired an expert ghostwriter, 41-year-old Karl Ristoff, to keep the Tumblr going.

Josh and Tony aren’t any great shakes on the basketball court - but with the fate of the planet on the line, they’re going to have to step up.

An artist takes us through his day, from his own particular perspective. A short story from Guys Read: Other Worlds, edited by Jon Scieszka.