Showing results by narrator "Ramon de Ocampo" in All Categories

At their renowned writing school, every student is simultaneously terrified of and attracted to the charismatic poet and professor Miranda Sturgis, whose high standards for art are both intimidating and inspiring. As two students, Roman and Bernard, strive to win her admiration, the lines between mentorship, friendship, and love are blurred. Roman’s first book wins a prestigious prize. Meanwhile, Bernard labors for years over a single poem. Secrets of the past begin to surface, and friendships are broken....

New York Times Notable Book author Charles Yu wrote the best-selling novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. In his stunning, often humorous, collection Sorry Please Thank You, Yu draws on pop culture and science to make incisive observations about society - and offer touching insight into the human condition. In two of Yu’s remarkable stories, he focuses on a big-box-store night-shift employee with girl trouble and a company that outsources grief for profit.

Dagoberto Gilb has won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Sonny Bravo is a young Mexican American struggling to become a man while living with his mom and step-father in a small urban community known as the Flowers. There the assorted residents teach Sonny life lessons, even as racial tensions simmer in the city around them.

Daunted by the hand he has been dealt, 12-year-old Horatio Tuckerman is having a tough time. Two years ago, his dad died of lung cancer. Embittered and anguished, Horatio's life has been a whirlwind of change since losing his best friend. A one-time city kid, Horatio now lives in a small Wisconsin town. His grandfather O.P. (the Old Professor) has moved in and taken over his bedroom. Even worse, his mother Evie, a dentist, is dating a guy nicknamed "Pink Gums Paul."

Middle school is off to a rocky start for Marvin Watson. Doomed to misfit status, his only friends are a girl with major orthodontics, the smelliest boy in school, and the trio of sarcastic man-size moths that live in his attic. No one said middle school would be easy! Also, no one said that Marvin's town would be threatened by mutant bugs, including a very hungry Shakespeare-quoting spider. But life in the suburbs is full of surprises.

Henry Leach wants nothing more than for magic to be real and for his little sister, Brianna, to leave him alone. Both wishes come true, but not in the way he expects. As it turns out, Henry's family has a history with magic - a history that dates back to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Now his father has been caught up in an evil wizard's scheme, and the last Wandmaker, Coralis, needs Henry's help to save the world. It would be a dream come true for Henry - except that in his first act of magic, he accidentally turns his sister into a hedgehog. Oops!

Avery Dennis is a high school senior and one of the most popular girls in her class. But a majorly public breakup with the guy she's been dating causes some disastrous waves. It is right before prom and Avery no longer has the perfect date. She runs the prom committee; how could she not show up with somebody? Post-breakup, Avery gets to thinking about all of the guys that she has ever dated. How come none of those relationships ever worked out? Could it be her fault? Avery decides to investigate.

Ranging in age from six to 40, 38 sons and daughters of lesbians offer brief essays that could be valuable to like offspring, as well as to relatives and friends trying to understand the problems such children face. Homophobia, visited upon the children as well as their mothers, is the most commonly cited concern; some younger contributors feel isolated from their peers, and a couple of boys endure rejection from radical lesbian acquaintances.

A literary jigsaw puzzle of a debut novel set in Colombia during the peak of its decades-long conflict, and in New York City. While her parents are away, a teenager finds herself home alone, with the household staff mysteriously gone, no phone connection, and news of an insurgency on the radio - and then she hears a knock at the door.

Oregon teenager and tennis champ Jeff McKenzie can’t wait for summer vacation. But when he decides to take his Bronco for a joyride on the Hamptons’ farm land, he gets into real hot water. As punishment Jeff is ordered to work on the farm for the first few weeks of summer. Getting up early and working with Mexican immigrants just doesn’t appeal to him. The only thing he looks forward to is seeing the Hamptons’ eldest daughter Alexa, who he is quickly falling for. Gradually he comes to appreciate the hardworking people....

The adventure continues in book two! When Alex's mother uses the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to bring him back from the brink of death, she inadvertently summons a slew of other spirits from the underworld. In book two Alex and his best friend, Ren, head to London, where people are going missing, treasures are disappearing, and a blood rain is pouring from the skies. Can they stop a powerful Death Walker from destroying the city?

After the king of Damask dies, Bad Prince Charlie is put on the throne to divert attention from his uncles' plan-to procure Weapons of Magical Destruction.

Westly is a caterpillar who is destined to be a monarch butterfly, but when he emerges from his cocoon, he is not what he expected. He's a spider! Westly flees his home among the butterflies and is eventually adopted by the "dirt eaters".

Higgs Boson Bing has seven days left before his perfect high school career is completed. Then it's on to Harvard to fulfill the fantasy portrait of success that he and his parents have cultivated for the past four years.

The ad promised you'd be able to see into the spirit world. But they couldn't work for real... could they? A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Set at the height of the Roman Empire, in the last half of the first century AD - about the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, when Christianity was still an unimportant Jewish sect - these stories chronicle the cases of one of the few actual crimesolvers that we know of in ancient Rome. The stories are fictional, but the character of Quintilian is based on a real Roman barrister whose writings on rhetoric and on the education of the young are still read today.

Karen Tei Yamashita has been honored with the American Book Award and Janet Heidinger Kafka Award. A stunning portrait of Asian Americans in 1960s and ’70s San Francisco, I Hotel is a remarkable collection of 10 related novellas. Touching on such topics as Japanese internment camps and the Marcos dictatorship, the book presents readers with characters of rich design.

Jamey Barlowe has been crippled since childhood, the result of being born on the Moon. He lives his life in a wheelchair, only truly free when he is in the water. But then Jamey’s father sends him, along with five other kids, back to the Moon to escape a political coup d’etat that has occurred overnight in the United States. Moreover, one of the other five refugees is more than she appears. Their destination is the mining colony, Apollo. Jamey will have to learn a whole new way to live, one that entails walking for the first time in his life.

Alex Harmon prefers running over sitting still reading. But when his aunt offers to pay him to point out the boring parts in her children's book, he figures it's an easy way to make 10 bucks. The problem is that her book is about a grumpy frog and a prize-winning zucchini. It doesn't have only a few boring pages...the whole thing is a lost cause.

Fraternal twin brothers Darryl and Kanga are just like any other teenagers trying to make it through high school. They have to deal with peer pressure, awkwardness, and family drama. But there’s one closely guarded secret that sets them apart: They are robots. So long as they keep their heads down, their robophobic neighbors won’t discover the truth about them, and they just might make it through to graduation. But when Kanga becomes the star of the basketball team, there’s more at stake than typical sibling rivalry.