Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

For most of Tony Gilbert's life, he has thought of his uncle as "Weird Uncle Charlie". That is, until Uncle Charlie moves in with Tony and his family. Uncle Charlie is still odd, of course - talking about spirits and other supernatural stuff - but he and Tony become fast friends, and Tony ends up having a lot of fun with Uncle Charlie. When Uncle Charlie dies suddenly, Tony is devastated. Then he starts seeing Uncle Charlie everywhere!

Ten years ago, God gave Braden a sign, a promise that his family wouldn't fall apart the way he feared. But Braden got it wrong: His older brother, Trey, has been estranged from the family for almost as long, and his father, the only parent Braden has ever known, has been accused of murder. The arrest of Braden's father, a well-known Christian radio host, has sparked national media attention. His fate lies in his son's hands; Braden is the key witness in his father's upcoming trial.

Jeremiah is the world’s biggest baseball fan. He really loves baseball and he knows just about everything there is to know about his favorite sport. So when he’s told he can’t play baseball following an operation on his heart, Jeremiah decides he’ll do the next best thing and become a coach. Hillcrest, where Jeremiah and his father Walt have just moved, is a town known for its championship baseball team. But Jeremiah finds the town caught up in a scandal and about ready to give up on baseball.

What would you do if every spark of electricity suddenly vanished, as if somebody had flipped a switch on the entire planet? Cars won't start, the heat shuts off, there's no water in your faucet, and your radio, TV, and flashlight go dark. Everyone in Charlie's small town is baffled. But as time passes, lawlessness erupts and takes an ugly turn. When the market and pharmacy are torched by an anti-Semitic arsonist, Charlie realizes his mother will die without her medicine.

When the world first formed, the night was black and filled with dark creatures. The Elders knew their people couldn't survive under such a threat. So they gave their hearts to the sky in the form of stars to keep evil away. Now, 11-year-old Kyro is a Star Shepherd like his father. He's spent his life tucked away in the small town of Drenn. There, the family watches the night sky for falling stars - and rushes to rescue them when they do.

Seventeen-year-old Edgar Poe counts down the days until he can escape his foster family - the wealthy Allans of Richmond, Virginia. He hungers for his upcoming life as a student at the prestigious new university, almost as much as he longs to marry his beloved Elmira Royster. However, on the brink of his departure, all his plans go awry when a macabre Muse named Lenore appears to him. Muses are frightful creatures that lead Artists down a path of ruin and disgrace, and no respectable person could possibly understand or accept them.

Published in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, 1969, Indecent Advances investigates how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them and displayed little compassion for the violence they endured. Polchin shows, with masterful insight, how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by activists to help shape the burgeoning gay rights movement in the years leading up to Stonewall.

“Hatred combined with lies and secrets can break the world.” Grandpa Zach used to say that before he died, but Stuey never really knew what he meant. It was kind of like how he used to talk about quantum physics or how he used to say ghosts haunted their overgrown golf course. But then one day, after Stuey and his best friend, Elly Rose, spend countless afternoons in the deadfall in the middle of the woods, something totally unbelievable happens.

Rumor Mora fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill and failure. Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters and for his strange abilities to vanish. But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them. Nyx Llorca keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she's in love with her best friend. Braeden Tennant wants two things: to get out from his mother's shadow and to unlearn his colony's darkest secret. To save everyone they love, they'll both have to commit treason.

Malcolm Dowd is almost positive he recognizes the freshman who shows up for a session at his office in Baxter College’s Center for Behavioral Health - he just can’t place her. When suddenly she stands, takes off her wig, and reveals herself as Noah, the young man Malcolm had been treating months earlier, it marks the start of a relationship that will change them both. After losing his wife at a young age, Malcolm dedicated himself to giving his two daughters the stable, predictable childhood he never had. But now, nothing is predictable.

Nico, Opal, Tyler, Emma, and Logan survived their worst fears come to life and saved their tiny Pacific Northwest town of Timbers from a monstrous figment invasion. Now they just want to keep their heads down, enjoy Halloween and explore the secrets of their mysterious houseboat clubhouse. And also figure out their new Torchbearer responsibilities as keepers of the Darkdeep, an ancient whirlpool hidden in Still Cove that can make both dreams and nightmares into reality.

Every year, the town of Happy Hills holds its haunted house contest. In a spooky old manor, teams of kids come up with new ways to frighten people. The scariest team wins. But this year, all the teams are going to lose. Because this year the house itself has awakened...and it won’t be happy until it’s devoured all the people inside. What started out as a game has turned into something much more deadly. Is there any way out?

Jeanne Ann is smart, stubborn, living in an orange van, and determined to find a permanent address before the start of seventh grade. Cal is awkward, sensitive, living in a humongous house across the street, and determined to save her. Jeanne Ann is roughly as enthusiastic about his help as she is about living in a van. As the two form a tentative friendship that grows deeper over alternating chapters, they're buoyed by a cast of complex, oddball characters who let them down, lift them up, and leave you cheering.

When Danny Constantino asks his old-friend-turned-Hollywood-movie-star, Natalie Flores Griffin, to his local school dance and homecoming parade, she surprises him...by saying yes! Unfortunately, now everyone in Cuper Cove has something to say about Danny's love life - especially since Natalie is the hometown hero. Throw in herds of TV reporters and NFG groupies, his mom using Natalie's arrival for free publicity, and a pep rally gone horribly, horribly awry, and Danny's left absolutely clueless in this new world of crushes and becoming (kind of) famous.

It’s been a rough year for Alex Collins. In the past twelve months, he’s lost his best friend, become the target of the two biggest bullies at school, and been sentenced to community service. But on June 25, 2013, he gets a call for help from Cassie Ramirez, the prettiest girl in school. At last, he feels like his luck might be changing. Cassie is at the Texas State Capitol to protest Wendy Davis’s historic filibuster of the abortion bill HB2, and she’s rallying everyone she knows to join her.

When classmates Baxter, Abigail, Turner and Emerson are forced to go to the middle of nowhere for a school project, they think things can’t get much worse. Why on earth do they need to learn how to survive in the wilderness by an eccentric instructor? But what starts off as a weekend of team building turns dangerous when their instructor goes missing and they are left with nothing but the pages of a survival handbook to complete a series of challenges.

Stevie Rosenstein has never made a true friend. Never fallen in love. Moved from city to city by her father’s unrelenting job, it’s too hard to care for someone. Trust in anything. The pain of leaving always hurts too much. But she’ll soon learn to trust, to love. Twice. Drew and Shane have been best friends through everything. The painful death of Shane's dad. The bitter separation of Drew's parents.

Reed Beckett's little sister, Beatrice, has never been awakened by the smell of breakfast or a school-day alarm clock. Instead, she wakes to hospital beeps and poking doctors. And now, their mother has gone. With no job prospects on the horizon, Reed begins making and selling fake IDs so he and Bea can survive. But the problems keep piling up, from an angry landlord demanding rent to looming medical bills.

The Infinite Future is a mind-bending novel that melds two addictive tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and find his fabled masterpiece. In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself - the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus.

The moment a mysterious boy moves in next door to Sydney and Allyson Tate, both of their lives begin to change in ways that neither of them can ignore. When Allyson meets Graham Copeland, she instantly feels like he's a kindred spirit - shy and awkward like her, someone who has trouble making friends. It's almost impossible to resist having a crush on him.