Showing results by narrator "Andrew Eiden" in All Categories

It was just your typical, run-of-the-mill scout field trip - that is, until Kit spotted an object from space plummeting to Earth.

Since Thomas Jefferson first recorded those self-evident truths in the Declaration of Independence, America has been a nation that has unfolded as much on the page and the podium as on battlefields or in statehouses. Here Stephen Prothero reveals which texts continue to generate controversy and drive debate. He then puts these voices into conversation, tracing how prominent leaders and thinkers of one generation have commented upon the core texts of another, and invites listeners to join in.

Winter Donovan loves two things: her sister and her sister's ex-boyfriend. She's spent her whole life doing the right thing except that one time, that night when Finn O'Malley looked hollowed out by his father's death. Then she did something very wrong that felt terribly right. Finn can't stop thinking about Winter and that night, and he'll do anything to make her a permanent part of his life, even if it means separating Winter from the only family she has.

Highly awkward teenager Stanley Owens meets his match in beautiful, brainy Vera Baxter when they tie for first place in the annual national spelling bee - and the two form a bond that will change both of their lives. Though their mothers have big plans for them - Stanley will become a senator, Vera a mathematics professor - neither wants to follow these predetermined paths. So Stanley hatches a scheme to marry Vera in a sham wedding for the cash gifts, hoping they will enable him to pursue his one true love: crossword puzzle construction.

Wintric Ellis joins the army as soon as he graduates from high school, saying goodbye to his girlfriend and to the backwoods California town whose borders have always been the limits of his horizon. Deployed for two years in Afghanistan in a directionless war, he struggles to find his bearings. Two career soldiers, Dax and Torres, take Wintric under their wings. The aftershocks echo long after each returns home to a transfigured world, where his own children may fear to touch him and his nightmares still hold sway.

Mia Galliano is an aspiring filmmaker. Ethan Vance has just played his last game as a collegiate soccer star. They're sharp, hungry for success, and they share a secret. Last night, Ethan and Mia met at a bar, and, well, one thing led to another, which led to them waking up the next morning together. Things turned awkward in a hurry when they found themselves sharing a post-hookup taxi to the same place: Boomerang headquarters.

The allure of literary letters and rare first editions captures the imaginations of three professors of English literature and leads to tragedy in the wake of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995.

An exciting tale of self-discovery, this is the story about an exclamation mark. It's about fitting in and standing out, and with the help of others, finding your way. We all have an inner exclamation mark - the qustion is how to find it!

Princess Ko's been bluffing about the mysterious absence of her father, desperately trying to keep the government running on her own. But if she can't get him back in a matter of weeks, the consequence may be a devastating war. So under the guise of a publicity stunt she gathers a group of teens - each with a special ability - from across the kingdom to crack the unsolvable case of the missing royals of Cello.

A collection of five time-spanning, interconnected novellas that weave a subtle science-fictional web that stretches from the present into the future as our world collides with a mysterious alternate universe. Each of these stories presents a teen trying to find his or her way in unusual circumstances. Five teens, five futures. Dylan develops a sixth sense that allows him to glimpse another world. Ten years from now, Brixney must get more hits on her social media feed or risk being stuck in a debtors' colony.

Family means safety. Family means protection. Until it doesn't. Eleven-year-old Kate Whitby, the youngest member of her odd family, leads an invisible life. They live in their historic small-town hotel, where she is an expert at keeping everyone's secrets: Her sister's a thief, her great-grandmother isn't as crazy as people think, her mother lives in the past, and her beloved grandfather might have killed his best friend.

It is April 2003. American forces have taken Baghdad and are now charged with winning hearts and minds. But this vital tipping point is barely recognized for what it is, as a series of miscalculations and blunders fuels an already-simmering insurgency intent on making Iraq the next graveyard of empires. In dazzling and propulsive prose, Brian Van Reet explores the lives on both sides of the battle lines.

At 15 Amanda Grace was abducted on her way home from school. Seven hundred and thirty-eight days later, she escaped. Her 20/20 interview is what everyone remembers - Amanda describing the room where she was kept, the torn poster of TV heartthrob Chase Henry on the wall. It reminded her of home and gave her the strength to keep fighting. Now, years later, Amanda is struggling to live normally. Her friends have gone on to college while she battles PTSD. She's not getting any better, and she fears that if something doesn't change soon she never will.

Eleven masters of suspense - Kelly Barnhill, Michael Buckley, Adam Gidwitz, Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown, Claire Legrand, Nikki Loftin, Daniel José Older, Dav Pilkey, R. L. Stine, and Rita Williams-Garcia - have come together to bring you a bone-chilling collection of original ghost stories, perfect for sharing around the campfire, listening under the covers with a flashlight, and scaring your friends' pants off.

Joyce loves Luca. Luca loves Joyce. Frank loves his family and will do anything to protect it, even if it means taking away his brother's reason for existing. Falling takes only one step, one movement of the chess piece, and in Joyce's fall she took more than just one heart with her. Go back to the beginning, where the drama of the Elect all starts. Go back to the first part of the story, where true love tried to conquer all. Where true love failed.

"I live in a coastal town in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the war this was IV Corps, which saw many savage fights. Although the battles might have long been forgotten, some places cannot forget." Thus begins the harrowing yet poignant story of a North Vietnamese communist defector who spends 10 years in a far-flung reform prison after the war, and now, in 1987, a free man again, finds work as caretaker at a roadside inn in the U Minh region. One day new guests arrive at the inn: an elderly American woman and her daughter, an 18-year-old adopted Vietnamese girl....

Laura: a teenage girl struggling to fit into her small, sleepy town in upstate New York, slowly drifting away from reality, into the secret life she inhabits online. Paul: a twentysomething wannabe rock star, back home from NYC, broke and jobless, living with his mother. April: a math teacher with two kids, running her church's vacation Bible school, discontent with another summer planning crafts and regurgitating verses. Ben: a boy stuck at VBS, still adjusting to the presence of his foster brother, DeShawn, a quiet, brooding kid from Brooklyn. Over summer, their paths will collide.

Meet Jack Jordan. He’s a smooth-talking con artist with a penchant for the fast life. He’s snuck into Lufkin, Texas, in the dead of night with little more than a beat-up Honda, a hollowed-out King James Bible full of cocaine, and enough emotional baggage to sink a steamship. He’s charming, dedicated, and extremely paranoid.

River Bend, Michigan, is the kind of small town most can't imagine leaving, but three women couldn't wait to escape. When each must return - Linda Williams, never sure what she wants; her mother, Paula, always too sure; and Beth DeWitt, one of River Bend's only black daughters, now a mother of two who'd planned to raise her own children anywhere else - their paths collide under Beth's father's roof. As one town struggles to contain all of their love affairs and secrets, a local scandal forces Beth to confront her own devastating past.

A surreal, high-wire act of narrative nonfiction that redefines the genre, Avoid the Day is part detective story, part memoir, and part meditation on the meaning of life - all told with a dark pulse of existential horror. What emerges is an unforgettable study of mortality and the artist’s journey.