Showing results by narrator "Greg D. Barnett" in All Categories

The Guiding Spirits had been silent for centuries, but as a corrupt King rises to power and seizes control of magic itself, they can be quiet no more. What they need is a champion of change. But instead of choosing a fierce warrior, or a leader, or even someone with significant political influence, they pick a nobody kid from a backwater town with more brains than brawn in a world where might makes right.

Alice needs a vacation to escape her family, unemployment, and a global pandemic. When the world shuts down due to a new virus, Zenith Pharm, a major drug manufacturer, reveals a breakthrough in vaccine development and offers individuals an all-expenses-paid trip to a remote resort with an on-site testing facility. Between the constant parties and pool-side recreations, Alice and the other guests experience haunting nightmares, and people begin to disappear. Something dark lurks behind this exclusive resort, and Alice learns that Zenith Pharm has more malicious plans for its guests.

This collection includes The Shy Little Kitten, Tootle, Home for a Bunny, The Three Bears, The Little Red Hen, and The Sailor Dog.

In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.

Benjamin is about to lose a whole lot more than good toilet paper. If he doesn't make tons of money fast by selling candy bars and winning contests—like the Royal-T Bathroom Tissue slogan contest—his family will get kicked out of their apartment. Even with his flair for clever slogans, will Benjamin be able to win a cash prize large enough to keep a promise he made to his dad before he died? Or will he lose everything that matters to him?

The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom. Taking listeners from the seventeenth century to today, Sophia Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one's convictions. Similarly, she traces the history of choice in romantic life, politics, and the ideals of human rights. Throughout, she pays particular attention to the lives of women, who have frequently been the drivers of this change.

The Cell: Inside the Microscopic World that Determines Our Health, Our Consciousness, and Our Future is a fascinating story of the incredible complexity and dynamism inside the cell and of the fantastic advancements in our understanding of this microscopic world.

If you like to write—whether it's a pastime, a passion, or a profession—you've probably found yourself reading something brilliant and thinking, "I could never do this! I might as well give up." But if there's one thing every great author has in common, it's this: they've all written some hot garbage. Revisionaries takes you on an engrossing tour through the discarded drafts, false starts, and abandoned projects of influential writers. In the process, it dismantles some of our most deeply held—and most suffocating—ideas about what it takes to produce great creative work.

Death, homelessness, and fear of his future loomed early in his childhood. But through the power of growing his perspective and mindset, Griffin transformed his perception of his situation and turned it into something worthwhile. In Boundless, he shares his astonishing childhood story and major themes he learned along the way to defy the odds set against him. His story is a testament that no matter the obstacles, no matter the difficulties that lie ahead, and no matter the lack of resources, anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

Dresden is cursed. His chest houses a hive of bees that he can't stop from stinging people with psychosis-inducing venom. His face is a shifting montage of all the people who have died because of those stings. And he has been this way for centuries—since he was eighteen and magic flowed through his homeland, corrupting its people. He follows harbingers of death, so at least his curse only affects those about to die anyway. But when he arrives in a Midwest town marked for death, he encounters Essie, a seventeen-year-old girl who suffers from debilitating delusions and hallucinations.

Known as Bloody Vik Brandee, Viktor Brandewyne had a reputation as a bloodthirsty pirate. The world would soon learn just how bloodthirsty he had become. Thanks to the vengeful curse of a powerful witch, he had become a vampire. However, since he was cursed rather than bitten, he was not vulnerable to daylight or holy items. As curses went, he didn’t think it was all that bad, until Mother Celie, his foster mother and a witch in her own right, informed him that the curse would eventually destroy him.

Did you know that one well-placed giraffe kick is strong enough to kill a lion? How about that an adult giraffe can eat a hundred pounds of leaves in a day? Or that some giraffes hum to each other at night? Perfect for all animal lovers—and giraffe fans in particular—this book is filled with all the facts you need to know to become a giraffe expert! Where are giraffes found? What's it like to be a giraffe? Why are giraffes endangered, and who has been working hard to save them?

By late 1939, three months after declaring war on Germany, and seven before the Battle of Britain, Britain's Air Ministry realized it was going to need more fighter aircraft than Britain alone could produce. In 1938, the Air Ministry had licensed the Canadian Car and Foundry Company to build the Hawker Hurricane, powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin 29 engine built by the Detroit automaker Packard Motor Company, under license and redesigned by them for mass production. But the Ministry knew that even with this added capacity, it was not going to be nearly enough.

It has been two years since his mom’s death, and Jamison, his dad, and his younger sister seem to be coping, but they’ve been dealing with their loss separately and in different ways. When Jamison has to be reminded of his mother’s birthday, on the day of her birthday, he worries that his memory of her is slipping away, and he is forced to reckon with the passing of time. To help make sense of it, he picks up his camera - the Nikon his mother gave him a few years back.

Tanner loves baseball, but he’s not a big fan of being bossed around by those in charge: his parents, his baseball coach, God - who, if he exists, surely doesn’t have time to spend on a small-town middle schooler. But Tanner finds his world rocked when he is sucked into a bowl of leftover spaghetti and shot into a land of talking pasta who carry swords and spears - all of whom believe in a mysterious higher power they call “Chef”. Their world is under attack by a giant spaghetti dragon, and they seem to think Tanner is the one sent to save them.

The alien but oddly familiar realm of Maradoum welcomes you home with a magical medley of stand-alone short stories. From the ancient mysteries of Gorodzmeya - the lizard city in the desert - to the deities who protect the people of Quing Tzu, from the hidden treasures of Shimyahein to the sacking of the Spardican coast, this sword and sorcery anthology will keep you at the edge of your seat with stories of comeuppance and revenge, of mighty warriors and creatures of evil, of the lost finding family, of omens and urchins, and of portals to realms beyond what is known.

Brownie has returned to the Snoddy Estate. His mother is seven months pregnant, ordered to bed rest, and in desperate need of Brownie-free time. So off Brownie goes to visit the Texas Snoddys! It’s the middle of November, he’s 10 years old, and they’ve taken away his homemade Taser. How much trouble could there possibly be? Two men have decided to kidnap Brownie for the rumored Civil War gold the Snoddys reputedly have. And that was their mistake, because no one with a brain in their head kidnaps Brownie Snoddy. No one.

Nick Carraway―paper soldier and novelist―has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He's good at watching, and he's even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he's forgotten the events of that summer in 1922. On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone's been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn't done with him.

If you’re a WWII aviation enthusiast and long for a sweet love story with two gay men, this one’s for you. And if those aren’t your preferred choices, then bravely dip your toes in the pond of "what if" and enjoy a great little gem on which to expand your horizons.

Someone is trying to kill Charles Hawthorne, one of the richest men in Maine. And they're using magic to do it. He suspects the members of his own family and hires me to check them out. I soon discover that Charles Hawthorne has a dark secret lurking in his past, a secret that may have come back to haunt him. With an ancient wizard bugging me to chase down the Midnight Cabal and two Shadow Watch agents who want to question me about my father, things are going to get crazy.