Showing results by narrator "Dani Martineck" in All Categories

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.

Logan Gray is Hollywood's bad boy—a talented but troubled actor who the public loves to hate. Mattie Cole is an up‑and‑coming golden boy, adored by all but plagued by insecurities. When Logan and Mattie are cast as leads in a new romantic film, Logan claims that Matt has “zero talent,” sending the film’s publicity into a nosedive. To create positive buzz, the two are persuaded into a fake‑dating scheme—but as the two actors get to know their new characters, real feelings start to develop.

Based on his popular Instagram comics, Nathan W. Pyle presents a delightful, heartfelt, and clever book that young and old beings alike will enjoy exploring together. When the nearest star rises, Lifegiver has an exciting quest planned for Offspring! Follow along as they observe a strange creature that sneaks, hides, and vibrates around their house. Hilarity ensues as the blue beings try to mimic this talented creature.

When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger-than-life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol has a secret: He suffers from an illness called vampirism, and hides from the sun by living in his basement office. On their way to falling in love, the two traverse grief, delve into the internet fandom they once unknowingly shared, and navigate the realities of transphobia and the stigmas of carrying the "vampire disease".

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings.

Halfway through sixth grade, Noah’s best friend and the only other trans boy in his school, Lewis, passed away in a car accident. Lewis was adventurous and curious, always bringing a new paranormal story to share with Noah. Together they daydreamed about cryptids and shared discovering their genders and names. After his death, lonely and yearning for someone who could understand him like Lewis once did, Noah starts writing letters to Mothman.

The six teenagers who make up the Lit Lair have it made. A beachfront mansion, millions of followers, stunning good looks, and sponsorship deals worth more money than they ever dreamed. They live together, making videos about their perfect lives. Except it’s not so perfect after one of them turns up dead in the infinity pool. When the group TikTok account starts posting cryptic messages, the police stop looking outside the house for suspects — and start looking straight at them. Everyone in the Lit Lair had reasons why their lives would have been easier without Sydney Reynolds.

An eight-year-old trauma victim is enlisted as an underground courier, rushing frozen organs through the alleys of Eastern Europe. A young janitor transforms discarded objects into a fantastical, sprawling miniature city until a shocking discovery forces him to rethink his creation. A brazen child tells off a pack of schoolyard tormentors with the spirited invention of an 11th commandment. A wounded man drives eastward, through tears and grief, toward an unexpected transcendence.

Thanks to Callie and their friends, Helston seems to be changing for the better: Boys are allowed to explore their magic, and girls are permitted to train as warriors. Callie is an official Helston page, Willow in on track to become king, and Elowen and Edwyn are finally safe and free of their father. Everything is…perfect. Except it isn’t. Not in Helston, where every step forward is accompanied by a storm of opposition. Even Queen Ewella and Sir Nick are struggling against the wave of fear and anti-magical sentiment growing daily, while the encroaching threat from across the bridge looms.

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”

When Byron Kidd’s twelve-year-old daughter vanishes, the only clue is a note claiming that she’s taken off to explore the Hidden World, a magical land from a series of novels. She is not the only child to seek out this imaginary realm in recent years, and Byron—a cynical and hard-nosed reporter—is determined to discover the whereabouts of dozens of missing kids. Byron secures a high-profile interview with Annabelle Tobin, the eccentric author of the books, and heads off to her palatial home in the Hollywood Hills. But the truth Byron discovers is more fantastic than he ever could have dreamed.

Welcome to Affinity, the hottest battle royale video game in the world! Gamers can be anything they want to be in Affinity’s high-tech, magical universe—and test their skills in fierce PvP combat. So when Hurricane Games announces an epic tournament with killer prizes, four kids form a team that feels unstoppable . . . but also maybe doomed from the start?

From William C. Morris and Edgar Award finalist Leah Thomas comes an ethereal, thought-provoking YA tale about a teen who can see ghosts...and helps them avenge their deaths. Dani’s best friend, Sarah, is a ghost. But maybe that’s normal when you’ve spent your childhood running from an abusive parent. Dani and Sarah might be more than friends, though Dani dares not say so. Dani is afraid that if he tells Sarah he’s trans, she won’t bother haunting him anymore. Sarah’s got good reason to distrust boys, having been strangled by one.

Nobody could get Frederick Law Olmsted to sit still. He was filled with energy, adventure, and dreams of changing the world. As a boy, he found refuge in the peace and calm of nature, and later as an adult, he dreamed of designing and creating access to parks for a growing and changing America. When New York City held a contest for the best park design for what would become Central Park, Olmsted won and became the father of landscape architecture. He went on to design parks across America, including Yosemite National Park and even the grounds for the United States Capitol.

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

Saving the multiverse starts with another origami note: Make it here, pronto. This time Meade Macon, a.k.a. Average Me, knows that parallel dimensions are real. He's met dozens of his counterparts from other Earths. What he doesn't know is that they're all about to get zapped out of existence. On Earth Zero, a rip in the multiverse is spreading to other realities and causing chaos wherever it appears. And the different versions of Meade - the Mes - are caught in the middle!

It all starts with a note folded into the shape of an origami octopus: "Hi, Me. Yes, you. You're me, and I'm you." If you believe this and the other origami notes that follow - which middle-schooler Meade Macon absolutely, positively does not - the concept of parallel dimensions is true, and there is a convention full of alternate versions of Meade waiting for his RSVP. It's got to be a joke.

The first Brume is a waking nightmare, overrun by literal monsters and cutthroat survivors. For Quinn, who is openly genderqueer, the silver lining is their friendship with Lia. The second Brume is a prison with no bars. Forced to “sort out” their sexuality with other teens at Camp Redemption, Quinn must also figure out why presenting as female has never felt right. The third Brume is a war zone. For Quinn, who presents as male, leading the Resistance against an authoritarian government is difficult, since even the Resistance might not accept them if they knew Quinn’s truth.

Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the other denizens of Mount Olympus feel almost as present and larger than life today as they did when they were worshipped as gods. Humanity has been telling and retelling stories about the characters from Greek and Roman myth for centuries—heck, the Romans liked the Hellenic originals so much, they remade them faster than Marvel remakes Spider-Man movies. And from Virgil's Aeneid to Xena: Warrior Princess to Percy Jackson to The Song of Achilles, the obsession has never waned.

In a world of mass consumption and busy schedules, taking the time to understand our own trash habits can be daunting. In Trash Talk, the ever-curious and talented Iris Gottlieb pulls back the curtain on the intricacies of the global trash production system and its contribution to climate change. From the history of the mafia’s rule of the New York sanitation system to orbital debris (space trash) to the myth of recycling, Gottlieb will help listeners see trash in a whole new way.