Showing results by narrator "Dani Martineck" in All Categories

Welcome to Affinity, the hottest battle royale video game around! Since winning the first-ever Affinity tournament, The Weird Ones are supposed to be on top of the world. Josh, Hannah, Larkin, and Wheatley have formed their own professional team and launched a popular streaming channel, and they’re set to take eSports by storm. But the kids have an awful secret: Wheatley is missing.

Welcome to Affinity, the hottest battle royale video game around! The Weird Ones—Josh, Hannah, Larkin, and Wheatley—have become four of the biggest stars in gaming. But a surprising twist to their first professional Affinity tournament leaves Wheatley in huge trouble . . . with Hurricane Games, the company that made the game they all love.

The six teenagers who make up the Lit Lair have it made. A beachfront mansion, millions of followers, stunning good looks, and sponsorship deals worth more money than they ever dreamed. They live together, making videos about their perfect lives. Except it’s not so perfect after one of them turns up dead in the infinity pool. When the group TikTok account starts posting cryptic messages, the police stop looking outside the house for suspects — and start looking straight at them. Everyone in the Lit Lair had reasons why their lives would have been easier without Sydney Reynolds.

Nobody could get Frederick Law Olmsted to sit still. He was filled with energy, adventure, and dreams of changing the world. As a boy, he found refuge in the peace and calm of nature, and later as an adult, he dreamed of designing and creating access to parks for a growing and changing America. When New York City held a contest for the best park design for what would become Central Park, Olmsted won and became the father of landscape architecture. He went on to design parks across America, including Yosemite National Park and even the grounds for the United States Capitol.

It’s springtime in Oklahoma, and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. Nerves at the abandoned summer camp where he and his fellow oddballs are crashing have been on edge since the arrival of a teenager named Coral, unceremoniously dropped off from her family’s minivan one afternoon. Adding to her aura of mystery, Coral doesn’t say a word. Ever.

Welcome to Affinity, the hottest battle royale video game in the world! Gamers can be anything they want to be in Affinity’s high-tech, magical universe—and test their skills in fierce PvP combat. So when Hurricane Games announces an epic tournament with killer prizes, four kids form a team that feels unstoppable . . . but also maybe doomed from the start?

From William C. Morris and Edgar Award finalist Leah Thomas comes an ethereal, thought-provoking YA tale about a teen who can see ghosts...and helps them avenge their deaths. Dani’s best friend, Sarah, is a ghost. But maybe that’s normal when you’ve spent your childhood running from an abusive parent. Dani and Sarah might be more than friends, though Dani dares not say so. Dani is afraid that if he tells Sarah he’s trans, she won’t bother haunting him anymore. Sarah’s got good reason to distrust boys, having been strangled by one.

Libby comes from a long line of bullies. She wants to be different, but sometimes that doesn’t work out. To bolster herself, she makes a card with the message You are amazing. That card sets off a chain reaction that ends up making a difference in the lives of some kids who could also use a boost - be it from dealing with bullies, unaccepting families, or the hole that grief leaves.

It all starts with a note folded into the shape of an origami octopus: "Hi, Me. Yes, you. You're me, and I'm you." If you believe this and the other origami notes that follow - which middle-schooler Meade Macon absolutely, positively does not - the concept of parallel dimensions is true, and there is a convention full of alternate versions of Meade waiting for his RSVP. It's got to be a joke.

The first Brume is a waking nightmare, overrun by literal monsters and cutthroat survivors. For Quinn, who is openly genderqueer, the silver lining is their friendship with Lia. The second Brume is a prison with no bars. Forced to “sort out” their sexuality with other teens at Camp Redemption, Quinn must also figure out why presenting as female has never felt right. The third Brume is a war zone. For Quinn, who presents as male, leading the Resistance against an authoritarian government is difficult, since even the Resistance might not accept them if they knew Quinn’s truth.

Saving the multiverse starts with another origami note: Make it here, pronto. This time Meade Macon, a.k.a. Average Me, knows that parallel dimensions are real. He's met dozens of his counterparts from other Earths. What he doesn't know is that they're all about to get zapped out of existence. On Earth Zero, a rip in the multiverse is spreading to other realities and causing chaos wherever it appears. And the different versions of Meade - the Mes - are caught in the middle!

Helston and its champions have been torn apart by war. Finally reunited after being scattered across the realm fighting personal battles, Callie, Elowen, Edwyn and Willow must prepare to step into the roles they've been training for: Champion, Witch, Knight and King. Even if it feels like their best will never be enough to conquer the infection of hate that has spread across Wyndebrel, even when their numbers seem so small compared to the might of their enemies, they must hold true to their mission: to create a better and safer realm for everyone.

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”

In a world of mass consumption and busy schedules, taking the time to understand our own trash habits can be daunting. In Trash Talk, the ever-curious and talented Iris Gottlieb pulls back the curtain on the intricacies of the global trash production system and its contribution to climate change. From the history of the mafia’s rule of the New York sanitation system to orbital debris (space trash) to the myth of recycling, Gottlieb will help listeners see trash in a whole new way.