Showing results by publisher "Candlewick on Brilliance Audio" in All Categories

Billy Dean is a secret child. He has a beautiful young mother and a father who arrives at night carrying the scents of candles and incense and cigarettes. Birds fly to his window. Mice run out from his walls. His world is a carpet, a bed, pictures of the holy island, and a single locked door. His father fills his mind and his dreams with mysterious tales and memories and dreadful warnings. But then his father disappears, and Billy’s mother brings him out into the world at last. He learns the horrifying story of what was saved and what was destroyed on the day he was born, the day the bombers came to Blinkbonny.

Paige Sheridan had it all: looks, popularity, and an adoring boyfriend. But when a night of partying ended in an it-could-have-been-so-much-worse crash, everything changed. Now Paige’s friends treat her like an outsider, and even her boyfriend seems cold and distant. The only bright spot is her creative writing class, led by a charismatic new teacher. But when Paige’s old mistakes threaten to destroy even this, she must choose between living the privileged life of a princess or owning up to her mistakes.

Eighteen years ago, a dimensional break ripped open the sky, drawing humans into an ancient conflict. Otherworldly souls rained down and fused with those of people, dividing the population into the green-eyed, magical Gifted and the dark-eyed, nonmagical Ashkind. A devastating war followed, and the Gifted have managed a fragile peace ever since, largely through a brutal law enforcement organization known as the Department. Fifteen-year-old Rose's father, David, has a leading role in the Department.

When 11-year-old Annie first started lying to her social worker, she had been taught by an expert: Gran. "If you’re going to do something, make sure you do it with excellence," Gran would say. That was when Gran was feeling talkative, and not brooding for days in her room - as she did after telling Annie and her little brother, Rew, the one thing they know about their father: that he was killed in a fight with an angry man who was sent away.

Everybody likes Chris Goodman. Sure, he's a little odd. He wears those funny bell-bottoms and he really likes the word ennui and he shakes your hand when he meets you, but he's also the kind of guy who's always up for a good time, always happy to lend a hand. Everybody likes Chris Goodman, which makes it especially shocking when he's murdered.

London, 1842. Wild Boy, master detective and former freak-show performer, and Clarissa, circus acrobat and troublemaker, are the secret last hope of a city beset by horror. A poisoner stalks the streets, leaving victims mad with terror - and then dead. Can the Black Terror be traced to a demon called Malphas? With their partnership threatened by rules and regulations, can Wild Boy and Clarissa uncover a cure in time to save the queen and the city?

Some people die heroically, others accidentally. Some people die for a cause, while others die from making a single bad choice. When Daniel Anderson’s older brother is killed in Iraq, he wonders which category Eli’s death falls into. To deliberately put himself at such risk, to leave Danny - who always depended on him - Eli must have died heroically, to make the world a better place, right? In an attempt to puzzle out this crushing loss, Danny creates a Book of the Dead - an old binder that he fills with details about dead people.

When Grampa's friend drops off his chicken, Malicia, at the Bed and Biscuit for a well-earned vacation, Ernest the mini-pig is determined to put aside his dislike for chickens and be a good host. But Malicia is no ordinary chicken: she’s magic! And she seems determined to use her magic to make the animals miserable. Together with Gabby the mynah bird, Milly the cat, and Sir Walter the Scottish terrier, Ernest must figure out a way to get Grampa to see how awful Malicia really is - before she does something truly terrible!

Then: Ever since Mabby died while picking beans in their garden - with the pock-a-pock of a helicopter overhead - Valkyrie knows what her job is: hide in the underground den with her brother, Bo, while Da is working, because Those People will kill them like coyotes. One Year Ago: Those People have come. It has to be them; because when Valkyrie and Bo return from a lesson of alert and ready, everything is on fire and Da is gone. But they‘ve been trained by their Da for this....

Through meticulously researched and stirring accounts — some well known and some chronicled here in book form for the first time — Doreen Rappaport brings to light the defiance of tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. These resisters answered the genocidal madness and unspeakable depravity that was Hitler’s Holocaust with the greatest weapons of all — courage, ingenuity, the will to survive, and the resolve to save others or to die trying.

In 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, America’s rival in the Cold War claimed victory on a new frontier. The Space Race had begun, and the United States was losing. Closer to home, a decade of turbulence would soon have Americans reeling, with the year 1968 alone seeing the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as many violent clashes between police and protesters. Americans desperately needed something good to believe in.

Meet nine courageous young adults who have lived in the United States with a secret for much of their lives: they are not U.S. citizens. They came from Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and Korea. They came seeking education, fleeing violence, and escaping poverty. All have heartbreaking and hopeful stories about leaving their homelands and starting a new life in America. And all are weary of living in the shadows.

In his third book about deception during war, Paul B. Janeczko focuses his lens on World War II and the operations carried out by the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops, aka the Ghost Army. This remarkable unit included actors, camouflage experts, sound engineers, painters, and set designers who used their skills to secretly and systematically replace fighting units - fooling the Nazi army into believing what their eyes and ears told them, even though the sights and sounds of tanks and war machines and troops were entirely fabricated.

Ever since George Washington used them to help topple the British, spies and their networks have helped and hurt America at key moments in history. In this fascinating collection, Paul B. Janeczko probes such stories as that of Elizabeth Van Lew, an aristocrat whose hatred of slavery drove her to be one of the most successful spies in the Civil War; the "Choctaw code talkers," Native Americans who were instrumental in sending secret messages during World War I; and more.

In Cody's life, some people keep her on her toes - just like Mother Nature, who is warm one day and snowy the next. Or like Cody's brother, Wyatt, who has started wearing collared shirts because his girlfriend likes them. Meanwhile, Pearl has begun playing soccer and it's all she can talk about. Spencer is busy creating a mysterious museum underneath GG's house and he's never around to play. And Spencer's mom doesn't look any different.... Could she really have a baby growing inside her?

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Guilt and fear instead led the island's original eight settlers to burn "the witch" out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward 100-some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life.