Showing results by narrator "Ron Butler" in All Categories

When Ruby King’s mother is found murdered in their home in Chicago’s South Side, the police dismiss it as another act of violence in a Black neighborhood. But for Ruby, it means she’ll be living alone with her violent father. The only person who understands the gravity of her situation is Ruby’s best friend, Layla. Their closeness is tested when Layla’s father, the pastor of their church, demands that Layla stay away. But what are his true motives? And what is the price for turning a blind eye?

Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant. He's ready for his life to finally begin, until one night, when he passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected - in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael. And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain that his new liver came with a side effect - the ability to time travel. And they've tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected new gift.

When a case of mistaken identity finds the beautiful and intriguing Natalie Ford in Donovan Steele’s home, the sparks are instantaneous. But his new housekeeper is determined not to become the legendary playboy's latest conquest. Trading the Ivy League for a simpler life down South, Natalie is helping out with her ailing aunt's housecleaning service.

The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many ways: they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the quality of schools our kids go to, our sense of security and belonging, and even how long we live. Yet too many of us live in neighborhoods plagued by rising crime, school violence, family disintegration, addiction, alienation, and despair. In Fragile Neighborhoods, fragile states expert Seth D. Kaplan offers a bold new vision for addressing social decline in America, one zip code at a time.

Drawing on personal and professional experience, psychotherapist Andrew Susskind examines issues such as shame, grief, narcissism, and codependency to demonstrate how people use out-of-control sexual behavior to cope with brokenheartedness. He offers strategies to cultivate sustainable sexual sobriety, sharing his own healing narrative, as well as those of others who’ve chosen to bear their truths. No one is ever too hurt or isolated to achieve reliable relationships and emotional intimacy. This is a guidebook for every person seeking long-term healing from sex addiction.

Poor Duncan just wants to color. But when he opens his box of crayons, he finds only letters, all saying the same thing: His crayons have had enough! They quit! Beige Crayon is tired of playing second fiddle to Brown Crayon. Black wants to be used for more than just outlining. Blue needs a break from coloring all those bodies of water. And Orange and Yellow are no longer speaking — each believes he is the true color of the sun.

Ra the Mighty is Pharaoh's Cat, Lord of the Powerful Paw. He is not Ra the Royal Babysitter. How's a cat supposed to fit in all his snacks and naps when his charges keep getting into mischief? Ra's new job only gets harder on a voyage up the Nile, leading to a fearsome palace where crocodiles swarm the waters. Then Pharaoh's son disappears. Has he run away? Has he been eaten by crocodiles? Has he been kidnapped, or worse? Ra and his fellow Great Detectives, Khepri and Miu, set out to discover the truth, but the palace is home to many secrets.

Kingston James Parks' day starts off badly enough when he arrives at work to find the FBI has raided his place of employment. It gets worse when the Green Zombie Soldiers (really) start shooting at him, and becomes downright surreal when getting shot at triggers his breakthrough, and he teleports to safety. He's become a superhuman, a "jumper."

The city streets are no longer safe. They are filled instead with the living dead, rotting predators driven only by a need to kill and eat. Some of the living still struggle to survive, but with each passing day, their odds grow worse. Some survivors have fled, frantically searching for a place to escape, even briefly, the slaughter around them.

Jaxon had just one job—to return three baby dragons to the realm of magic. But when he got there, only two dragons were left in the bag. His best friend's sister, Kavita, is a dragon thief! Kavita only wanted what was best for the baby dragon. But now every time she feeds it, the dragon grows and grows! How can she possibly keep it secret? Even worse, stealing it has upset the balance between the worlds. The gates to the other realm have shut tight! Jaxon needs all the help he can get to find Kavita, outsmart a trickster named Blue, and return the baby dragon to its true home.

The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering America.

Eighth-grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to be just as good”. His grandmother has reminded him his entire life. But what if he works 10 times as hard and still isn’t afforded the same opportunities that his privileged classmates at the Riverdale Academy Day School take for granted? To make matters worse, Drew begins to feel as if his good friend Liam might be one of those privileged kids.

It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man.

Johnny Decker, #12. Star quarterback for the Boston Tomcats. Two-time Super Bowl MVP...a decade ago. Nickname: "Decker the Panty Wrecker". When we lose our beloved team owner, his estranged daughter inherits the Tomcats. I don’t know which is worse—the fact that she’s a finance nerd from New York who knows less than nothing about football...or that I mistook her for a secretary when we first met. She’s stubborn, uptight, infuriating, looks way too good in a skirt, and she’s wrong about absolutely everything—from pizza to how to run my team.

The biggest mistake of Jaye Colfax’s life was letting Velvet Spencer leave. For three years, they were together exclusively and it was great—at least for Jaye. But Velvet wanted more. Jaye wouldn’t commit to anything because he just didn’t believe in love or marriage. Tired of waiting, Velvet left him without so much as a goodbye. Only then did Jaye realize he’d been too proud to admit he loved her. But it was too late—his stubbornness had cost him the love of his life.

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.

Can you fall in love while operators are standing by? Kevin’s a widower doctor with a precocious 12-year-old. He’s just met Mary, his daughter’s substitute teacher, who is experiencing her first Christmas without her beloved mother. As the holiday season ramps up, the twosome is unaware they’re also both in hot pursuit of a limited edition poinsettia angel being sold on their favorite television shopping channel.

Long before Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled through time in a flying DeLorean, director Robert Zemeckis and his friend and writing partner Bob Gale worked tirelessly to break into the industry with a hit. For the first time ever, the story of how these two young filmmakers struck lightning is being told by those who witnessed it. We Don't Need Roads includes original interviews with Zemeckis, Gale, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Huey Lewis, and over 50 others who contributed to one of the most popular and profitable film trilogies of all time.

It’s been three years since the Virgil County High School Massacre. Three years since my best friend, Sarah, was killed in a bathroom stall during the mass shooting. Everyone knows Sarah’s story - that she died proclaiming her faith. But it’s not true. I know because I was with her when she died. I didn’t say anything then, and people got hurt because of it. Now Sarah’s parents are publishing a book about her, so this might be my last chance to set the record straight. Except Sarah’s martyrdom is important to a lot of people, people who don’t take kindly to what I’m trying to do.

Triumph. Tragedy. The empyreal. The infernal. Even the mundane, filtered through the fantastical. Superheroes are, appropriately enough, a sort of super-genre, encompassing all other story types. This YA anthology features thirteen short stories that creatively turn superhero tropes on their head, while still paying homage to the genre that has found fans for more than eight decades. And there will be no mistake—superheroes don’t have to just be generic handsome white dudes.