Showing results by narrator "Jesse Bernstein" in All Categories

Secret agents are all Jack and his friends ever wanted to be. Spy adventures were the movies they watched, the books they read, and even the games they played. Playtime is over! Kelly, a political refugee and friend of Jack's sister, is targeted for revenge by the man her father sent to prison. Armed with nothing but heroic courage and skills born from their childhood dreams, Jack and his friends fight a battle against an enemy who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. If Jack is to survive, he and his friends must work as a team, and even then, winning comes at a terrible price.

So, life sucks just about as much as it possibly can. And when I see gargoyles heading straight for me, all I'm left wondering is who will kill me first - the winged monster-hunters, or the angry sea dragons? What I don't expect? The gargoyles don't know who or what I am. So maybe, just maybe, if I can hide my identity long enough, I'll survive. But it might take a little distraction to accomplish. The thing is, I don't think I mind distracting four hard-as-stone gargoyles who can't stop staring.

Sebastian, a lonely 17-year-old, is suffocating under his dominant father's control. In the 10 years since his mother passed away, his father has kept him "safe" by barely allowing him out of their apartment. Sebastian's secret late-night subway rides are rare acts of rebellion.

Classified Ads - Wanted: Personal assistant to Her Royal Highness. Duties: Whatever asked without hesitation, including but not limited to secretarial/administrative, household, defense, blood donation, driving, companionship, prey disposal, and love slavery. At last, Miranda is the life of the party: All she had to do was die. Elevated and adopted by none other than the reigning King of the Mantle of Dracul, Miranda goes from high-school theater wannabe to glamorous royal fiend overnight.

When his classmates learn about Fido, the guinea pig that acts like a dog, they all want a piece of Rufus, her owner. But Rufus hates the attention, the demands, the "celebrity." So he decides to make Fido learn how to be an actual guinea pig. But when she goes missing, he feels terrible. Was she lost, "dognapped," or did she run away, because he no longer liked her just the way she was? Offering the same offbeat humor and pacing of the first Guinea Dog, this novel will prove to be a listener's best friend.

When seventh grader Georges (the S is silent) moves into a Brooklyn apartment building, he meets Safer, a 12-year-old coffee-drinking loner and self-appointed spy. Georges becomes Safer's first spy recruit. His assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer becomes more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only friend? Liar & Spy is an inspired, often-funny story about destiny, goofy brilliance, and courage.

Following the success of his recent collections, The Cat’s Pajamas and One More for the Road, Ray Bradbury has once again pulled together a stellar group of stories sure to delight listeners of all ages. We’ll Always Have Paris is a treasure trove of Bradbury gems - eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative - all of which have never before been published. A brilliant addition to the master’s oeuvre, this wonderfully entertaining and imaginative collection is a joyous celebration of the lifelong work of a literary legend.

The Spaghetti is a floating palace of elegance and entertainment. There's only one problem: Miss LaPasta doesn't want Barnabas Brambles to come aboard, because she's heard he's the meanest man alive. Lucky for Barnabas Brambles, his boss is Sir Sidney, the nicest man alive.

Jake Carlson, a correspondent for the TV news show American Outrage, inhabits a world of sensational trials and crazed celebrities. One of the nation's top television journalists, he's used to dragging himself through the dirt to get to the truth. When his adopted son, Sam, asks him to use his muckraking talents to find his birth mother, Jake is stunned by the ugly secrets he unearths.

While Meggie and David Blue are from another planet, they're a lot like Earth kids, with similar hopes and dreams, and can't wait to grow up. But they also have grossly unique qualities, such as blue streaks in their hair that pop up randomly and language skills that sound like nothing on this planet. The story takes these alien kids, along with their mother and grandfather, by accident, to a far planet in which the society is not only oppressive but hostile to individual freedom. People are kept submissive through drugs and brainwashing.

A superb collection of 15 stories by an American master, E. L. Doctorow - the author of Ragtime, The March, The Book of Daniel, and Billy Bathgate. He has been called "a national treasure" by George Saunders. Doctorow's great topic, said Don DeLillo, is "the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history".

When Sir Sidney, a kindly old circus owner, becomes too tired to travel with his show, he places a Help Wanted ad in the newspaper. Enter Barnabas Brambles: "I have a degree in lion taming from the University of Piccadilly Circus." But does Leo the lion need taming? Will Elsa the elephant still get her gourmet peanuts? And what will Brambles say when he discovers Bert and Gert - two mice who travel with the circus on popcorn cleanup patrol?

Innocence is lost to unforgettable experience in these brilliant stories by E. L. Doctorow, as full of mystery and meaning as any of the longer works by this American master. In "The Writer in the Family", a young man learns the difference between lying and literature after he is induced into deceiving a relative through letters. In "Wili", an early-20th-century idyll is destroyed by infidelity. In "The Foreign Legation", a girl and an act of political anarchy collide with devastating results. These and other stories flow into the novella "Lives of the Poets".

Naomi and Ely are best friends. Naomi loves and is in love with Ely, and Ely loves Naomi, but prefers to be in love with boys. So they create their "No Kiss List" of people neither of them is allowed to kiss. And this works fine - until Bruce. Bruce is Naomi's boyfriend, so there's no reason to put him on the List. But Ely kissed Bruce even though he is boring. The result: a rift of universal proportions and the potential end of "Naomi and Ely: the institution." Can these best friends come back together again?

In three forcible disruptions, first in April 1885 and last in March-April 1886, the Knights of Labor assailed locomotive operations or stopped work on railroads which were controlled directly or influentially by Jay Gould. Though both Terence Powderly, the chief executive of the Knights, and Gould decried the strikes, they could not easily resolve their labored variance. This play is one of the Gouldium, a series of dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould. As in most of these plays there are seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral episodes.

Abram and Juliette know each other. They've lived down the street from each other their whole lives. But they don't really know each other - at least not until Juliette's mom and Abram's dad have a torrid affair that culminates in a deadly car crash. Later, when they see each other, it's uncomfortable, to say the least. They don't speak.

When Rufus, Murphy, Lurena, and their pets go camping, they meet Pedro, a shy boy who seems afraid of just about everything - especially the water. One thing leads to another and the kids go into a nearby town to buy him a pet to cheer him up - a guinea pig, naturally. Yet what they bring home may look like a guinea pig, but it can swim - like an otter.

Family fun takes center stage in three-time Newbery Honor winner Gary Paulsen’s hilarious novel for middle-school boys. Kevin Spencer is the glue that holds his family together. When his wacky relatives decide to have a double wedding in the backyard, Kevin takes charge. Planning two weddings is a great way to impress his girlfriend, Tina Zabinski, the Most Beautiful and Best-Smelling Girl in the World.

In the front room of the house with two front doors, Watson Conqruent's father sells souvenirs from the long-canceled TV show, The Adventures of Captain Conquer. In the back room, his father is building a "motivator" like the one that powered the Captain's huge stratoship, the Great Auk. And out front, a mysterious excavation grows larger every day, under the direction of the sinister Charlesville Planning Commissioners. Then one day, Watson comes home from school, only to find both house and father vanished.

When 12-year-old Nick runs away from his uncle's in the middle of a blizzard, he stumbles onto a very opinionated bookstore. He also meets its guardian, the self-proclaimed Evil Wizard Smallbone, who calls Nick his apprentice and won't let him leave but won't teach him magic, either. It's a good thing the bookstore takes Nick's magical education in hand, because Smallbone's nemesis - the Evil Wizard Fidelou - and his pack of shape-shifting bikers are howling at the borders.