Showing results by narrator "Jeff Woodman" in All Categories

In this colonial adventure tale, set on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border in 1768, Everett Shinn is enlisted in a search for two runaway indentured servants. Eager for adventure and to become a hero by capturing the runaways himself, 12-year-old Peter York, Shinn’s adopted son, volunteers to join the search. Peter assumes that the runaways are swarthy ruffians. When he discovers, however, that they are mistreated children seeking freedom in Pennsylvania, Peter’s purpose turns from capturing them to helping them escape. Will Shinn, a devout Quaker of few words, foil Peter’s plans, or will the young man receive help from an unexpected source?

With the help of an unusual set of cronies, bank robber John Dortmunder puts a set of wheels under a trailer that just happens to be the temporary site of the Capitalists' & Immigrants' Trust and hauls it away. But when the safe won't open and the cops get close, Dortmunder realizes he's got to find a place to ditch the "bank".

This story of two Norwegian-American farm boys who discover the remarkable magic of storytelling is vintage Gary Paulsen - earthy, gritty, and ultimately poignant. Be aware that Paulsen vividly describes the reality of farm life, including slaughtering pigs and shoveling manure, as the story unfolds.

The Greeks are considered the first people in the ancient Western world to record their own history, and remnants of their cultural, philosophical, political, and architectural advances remain to this day. Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Socrates, Aristotle and Plato set the ground rules for modern literature, theater and philosophy. The Parthenon still stands as an example of structural ingenuity. And many countries still practice democracy. From everyday life to political upheaval their influence is still present today.

The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community.

This uplifting chronicle of a boy’s recovery from blindness is a moving reflection of the ways that friendship can permanently join the lives of two very different people. Master storyteller Theodore Taylor traces the lives of two friends - an American boy and a old West Indian - after they are rescued from a deserted island.

It would take a miracle to keep Dortmunder out of jail. Though he cased the electronics store perfectly, the cops surprised him, turning up in the alley just as he was walking out the back door, a television in each hand. Already a two-time loser, without divine intervention he faces a long stretch inside. Then God sends J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, a celebrity lawyer who gets Dortmunder off with hardly any effort at all. Stonewiler was sent by Arnold Chauncey, an art lover with a cash-flow problem. He asks the thief to break into his house and make off with a valuable painting in exchange for a quarter of the insurance money.

Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped and renamed "Aniday" by changelings, ageless beings who inhabit the woods near his home. The changelings also leave behind one of their own, who flawlessly impersonates Henry except for one noteworthy detail: the new Henry is a prodigiously talented pianist.

"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price ( The New York Times) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years. Set in provincial France in the 1960s, it is the intensely carnal story - part shocking reality, part feverish dream - of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen - and pages that burn with a rare intensity.

Shadow on the Mountain recounts the adventures of a 14-year-old Norwegian boy named Espen during World War II. After Nazi Germany invades and occupies Norway, Espen and his friends are swept up in the Norwegian resistance movement. Espen gets his start by delivering illegal newspapers, then graduates to the role of courier, and finally becomes a spy, dodging the Gestapo along the way. During five years under the Nazi regime, he gains - and loses - friends, falls in love, and makes one small mistake that threatens to catch up with him as he sets out to escape on skis over the mountains to Sweden.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg loved his job, his wife, and his two young sons. But he also loved to drink. Drunkard is an unflinchingly honest account of one man's descent into alcoholism and his ambivalent struggle to embrace sobriety. Sentenced to an outpatient rehab program, Steinberg discovers that twenty-eight days of therapy cannot reverse the toll taken by decades of hard drinking.

A prominent citizen suffers a heart attack on opening day of a brand new boardwalk roller coaster in the seedy seaside resort town Sea Haven, New Jersey. Initially ruled a tragic accident, it isnt long before there are suspicious hints of foul play, especially after another dead body is discovered: a stunning young beach beauty. Fortunately for mystery lovers, the straight-arrow cop John Ceepak and his wise-cracking young partner Danny Boyle are on the case.

In this sequel to the breakout hit Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, Jessica Packwood finds being a newly married teenage vampire princess isn’t all that easy. She might be living in a Romanian castle with her husband Lucius Vladescu, but she’s also surrounded by undead subjects who aren’t ready to welcome her as queen. Then Lucius is accused of murdering a vampire Elder, leaving Jessica more alone than ever.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by the magazine.

What if a reality TV show like Jersey Shore set up production in the fictional seaside resort Sea Haven? What if hitting the gym, tanning, and doing a little laundry aren't the only things the contestants get into? By-the-book officer John Ceepak and his wisecracking young partner, Danny Boyle, have to babysit the buff and boozy kids partying it up in a Jersey shore rental house for TV’s summertime hit Fun House while simultaneously trying to stop the rowdy kids from breaking the law up and down the beach. But even Ceepak and Danny can’t stop one young cast member from being murdered—and others from being threatened with the same fate.

Hell Hole is the fourth book in the mystery series featuring hardened former military PD and current Sea Haven, New Jersey, police officer John Ceepak and his partner, wise-cracking Danny Boyle.

In Hell Hole, Ceepak is confronted with his most personal case yet when he must investigate the alleged suicide of a military corporal who recently returned from Iraq. It turns out that this "locked stall" rest-stop suicide is anything but an open-and-shut case.

Yuck. A cheese and ham sandwich for lunch is way too boring. As young Zak stares at his plate, he grumbles. If only he had his own restaurant, he could eat anything he wanted. But wishes can come true in astonishing ways.

Young Danny Boyle, the part-time summer cop "down the shore" in Sea Haven, New Jersey, gets taken on a wild ride when he and his longtime beach buddies become the unwitting targets of a madman's twisted scheme for revenge. Fortunately, John Ceepak, the cop with a soldier's unshakable code of honor, stays at Danny's side to help him negotiate the quick twists and turns that threaten to destroy his life, his friends, and everything about the world he loves.

Iain Lawrence is the best-selling author of such heralded books for young readers as Lord of the Nutcracker Men, which broached the complicated subject of human experience in war. His novels have been chosen as Best Book of the Year by

Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal on more than one occasion. Lawrence again contemplates war in this novel, set in 1943, England. Sixteen-year-old Kak escaped his abusive family in Canada to join the Canadian Air Force. Now a crewman aboard a night-flying bomber bound for Germany, Kak learns of the terror and violence of war firsthand.

Ever since his father, a policeman, was killed on duty, Roman Sanchez hasn't been getting along with his friends. And today is another boring day in school. Just as the class is taking a test, two men wearing ski masks sneak into the room. "We're going on a little field trip," one man announces, waving a gun. The kidnappers hustle Roman and his classmates onto a waiting school bus and head out of town. But when the engine stalls, the men hijack a passing truck. Leaving most of the students behind on the bus, they force Roman and three other boys into the back of the truck.