Showing results by narrator "Will Collyer" in All Categories

Simon O'Keeffe's biggest claim to fame should be the time his dad accidentally gave a squirrel a holy sacrament. Or maybe the alpaca disaster that went viral on YouTube. But the story the whole world wants to tell about Simon is the one he'd do anything to forget: the story in which he's the only kid in his class who survived a school shooting. Two years after the infamous event, twelve-year-old Simon and his family move to the National Quiet Zone—the only place in America where the internet is banned.

Sixteen-year-old Nicholas Cox is the illegitimate son of a retired fencing champion who dreams of getting the proper training he could never afford. After earning a place on the elite Kings Row fencing team, Nicholas must prove himself to his rival, Seiji Katayma, and navigate the clashes, friendships, and relationships between his teammates on the road to state championships - where Nicholas might finally have the chance to spar with his golden-boy half-brother.

The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American space program. Nearly a half century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons—most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson and Paul Allen—are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower the cost of space travel and send humans even further than NASA has gone.

Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous life can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a bank robber. Alongside bounty hunter Shorty, an eloquent dwarf with a chip on his shoulder, and Eustace, the grave-digging son of an ex-slave, Jack sets off to rescue Lula. In turn-of-the-century Texas, that quest is likely to turn dangerous.

Fresh off the tragic events at Calamity's End, Alex sets off with a new group to reclaim what was lost. All he has to handle are a few tiny quests for the Goddess of Love. Sound easy? It won't be.

Lauren Richmond isn’t a fan of Christmas. Which is why she rarely makes the trip home to the Midwest for the holidays. After all, she has plenty to keep her busy—namely, her duties as a set decorator on a TV sitcom. But this December, Lauren‘s brother and his wife are expecting a baby, so her brother arranges a ride home for her with his good friend, Will. Unfortunately for Lauren, she’s been trying to forget college baseball coach and childhood crush Will Sinclair for more than 10 years. Now she’s stuck in a car with him from California to Illinois.

Change Is the Only Constant is an engaging and eloquent exploration of the intersection between calculus and daily life, complete with Orlin's sly humor and wonderfully bad drawings.

How do you stop an invasion force that just defeated the most powerful person on the planet? Chances are, you don’t. But the world’s greatest heroes and villains are going to team up and make their best attempt. After the Tuldarians—a race of dinosaur-like aliens—invade the Earth with overwhelming numbers of ships and soldiers, the world’s governments finally repeal the Anti-Vigilante Acts. Now, the masked crimefighters and criminals who haven’t been allowed to use their powers are being asked to fight to save humanity. And to think, I was just put in prison for just trying to be a good guy.

Meet Alexander Krup, your average high school graduate turned video game beta tester. Working for a strange company nobody has ever heard of, he earns his pay by the achievement. After a string of bad luck, including his girlfriend dumping him, he wakes up one seemingly average day and is suddenly faced with blue boxes of text that float in the air. While coming to grips with the fact that he might by hallucinating, a representative of his mysterious employer communicates through the menu boxes to offer a fresh life in another world.

School counselor Lucy Galindo has a secret. To her coworkers, friends, and even family, she’s shy, sweet, and constantly struggling to hold off disaster (read: manage her anxiety and depression). But online? She’s bold, confident, and always knows what to say—it’s how she’s become the wildly popular @TheMissGuidedCounselor. It’s also why she keeps her identity anonymous. Her followers would never trust the real Lucy with their problems.

When he accidentally opens a medieval chest that looks like it just fell off the set of Game Of Thrones, Brad Wright is thrust into the wildest adventure of his life. Welcome to Darkworld, a savage survival game where Brad and his sassy Chihuahua, Slash, think they’ve got it all figured out. Brad’s a strategy gamer, after all. Build a shelter, grow crops, forge weapons, and form alliances to escape this nightmare. Do that and they’ll find their way out of the game in one piece.

The End of the Golden Gate is a penetrating journey that illuminates both what makes San Francisco so magnetizing and how it has changed vastly over time. With essays chronicling the impact of the tech-industry invasion and the evolution, gentrification, and radical cost of living that has transformed San Francisco's most beloved neighborhoods, these prescient essayists capture the lasting imprint of the 1960s counterculture movement, as well as the fight to preserve the art, music, and other creative movements that make this forever the city of love.

No one sees baseball like Joe Maddon. He sees it through his trademark glasses and irrepressible wit. Raised in the “shot and beer” town of Hazleton, PA, and forged by 15 years in the minors, Maddon over 19 seasons in Tampa Bay, Chicago, and Anaheim has become one of the most successful, most colorful, and most quoted managers in Major League Baseball. He is a workplace culture expert, having engineered two of the most stunning turnarounds in the past quarter century.

Everyone knows "what's wrong with millennials". Glenn Beck says we've been ruined by "participation trophies". Simon Sinek says we have low self-esteem. An Australian millionaire says millennials could all afford homes if we'd just give up avocado toast. Thanks, millionaire. This millennial is here to prove them all wrong.

Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days.

Crimefighting is illegal, punishable by life in prison at the bottom of the ocean. It sucks. But that won't stop me from doing what I was born to do: uphold justice and stop good people from being hurt. Even if everyone I once called a friend is against me, I'm not bowing down to the Counter Vigilante Taskforce.

A small southern town was evacuated after a freak power-plant accident. As the first anniversary of the mishap approaches, some residents are allowed to return past the national guard roadblocks. Mount Hope natives Maggie and Jordan quickly discover that their hometown is not as it was before. Downed cellular networks fail to resume service. Animals savagely attack humans. And the damaged power plant, where Jordan’s father is an engineer, is under military lockdown.

Pizza is simple: dough, sauce, cheese, toppings. But inside these ordinary ingredients lies a world of extraordinary possibility. Dan Richer has devoted his life to discovering the holy grail of pizza: the secret to making a truly transcendent pies. The pizza at his restaurant, Razza, has been named the best in New York by The New York Times — despite the fact it’s in New Jersey. Richer’s pizza is among the best one can eat in America, if not the world.

From Katherine St. John, author of The Lion's Den, comes another sublimely escapist thriller: When Hollywood heartthrob Cole Power hires his ex-wife, Stella Rivers, to act in his son's film, he sparks a firestorm on an isolated island that will unearth long-buried secrets - and unravel years of lies.

We've all asked ourselves the question. It's impossible to look up at the stars and NOT think about it: Are we alone in the universe? Books, movies, and television shows proliferate that attempt to answer this question and explore it. In Out There, Space.com senior writer Dr. Michael Wall treats that question as merely the beginning, touching off a wild ride of exploration into the final frontier. He considers, for instance, the myriad of questions that would arise once we do discover life beyond Earth (an eventuality which, top NASA officials told Wall, is only drawing closer).