Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

An anthropologist and his daughter travel to Kermunkachunk, the capitol of Chalazia, to conduct research for an ethnography on the Chalazian Mafia Faction (a splinter group of the Chalazian Children's Theater). The book takes place over the course of a night at the Bar Pulpo, Kermunkachunk's #1 spoken-word karaoke bar, where conversations are actually being read from multiple karaoke screens arrayed around the barroom. Moreover, it's Thursday, "Father/Daughter Nite", when the bar is frequented by actual fathers and daughters as well as couples cosplaying fathers and daughters.

Seventeen-year-old Daphne Bowman, a bookish drama nerd in public school, might never have crossed paths with Oliver, the popular, outgoing mascot for his private school's football team, but one event has bound them inextricably. Daphne's older sister, Emily, and Oliver's older brother, Jason, who were high school sweethearts, committed suicide together seven years earlier.

Sometimes in life you have to walk away...Leaving Jamie Cole was the hardest thing Ellie Pearce ever had to do. Somehow, she moved on. She made a new life in a new city with a new man. So when a family tragedy calls Ellie back home, she believes all her old feelings for Jamie - the hunger, the heat, the heartbreak - are safely behind her. But the second she lays eyes on him, the intensity of their connection is as strong as ever.

There is a secret organization that cultivates teenage spies. The agents are called Love Interests because getting close to people destined for great power means getting valuable secrets. Caden is a Nice: the boy next door, sculpted to physical perfection. Dylan is a Bad: the brooding, dark-souled guy, and dangerously handsome. The girl they are competing for is important to the organization, and each boy will pursue her. Will she choose a Nice or the Bad?

Maxine and Jonah meet in the canned goods aisle just as California is going into lockdown. Max’s part-time job as a personal grocery shopper is about to transform into a hellish gauntlet. Jonah’s preexisting anxiety is about to become an epic daily struggle. As Max and Jonah get to know each other through FaceTime dates, socially distanced playground hangs, and the escalating heartbreaks of the pandemic, they’re pushed apart by what they don’t share and pulled closer by what they do.

When Matt Westin opens his eyes, he’s back on Earth—and seven years younger than when he went to sleep. For the last seven years, Matt and his sister, Jen, along with friends Carl and Blake, have been in the fantasy world of Cyraveil, revolutionaries fighting to overthrow a dictatorial empire. Now, they’ve suddenly returned to their quiet Oregon suburb, where they’re expected to go to high school and act like normal American teenagers. But after all this time, and with the memory of war so fresh in their minds, how can they pretend to be kids again?

It's 1969. Molly is a girl who's not sure she can feel anything anymore, because life sometimes hurts way too much. Her brother Barry ran away after having a fight with their father over the war in Vietnam. Now Barry's been drafted into that war - and Molly's mother tells her she has to travel across the country in an old schoolbus to find Barry and bring him home.

On a run through the woods outside her north Georgia hometown, defense attorney Ama Chaplin encounters a mysterious hiker and recognizes him, too late, as a sociopath she successfully defended when he was a teenager. In the intervening seventeen years, Ama changed her name and moved to Atlanta, anxious to put her past behind her. Michael Walton, her young client, grew into a ruthless and inventive murderer. And now that he’s caught her, he can put a twisted, years-in-the-making plot into motion.

Julian Ladd and Rye Adler cross paths as photography students in the exclusive Brodsky Workshop. When Rye needs a roommate, Julian moves in, and a quiet, compulsive envy takes root, assuring, at least in his own mind, that he will never achieve Rye’s certain success. Both men are fascinated with their beautiful and talented classmate, Magda, whose captivating images of her Polish neighborhood set her apart, and each will come to know her intimately - a woman neither can possess and only one can love.

A lonely 12-year-old boy spends his days “stuck” at the deserted Hollow Pines Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina, with no recollection of his name, how long he’s been there, and no idea how to leave. Things never change much for the lost souls at Hollow Pines and time is strange when you’re dead.

Twelve-year-old Aaron Broom is protecting his father's car from repossession when he witnesses a jewelry store robbery gone wrong. To Aaron's shock, his father, a struggling salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Aaron - precocious, plucky, not a little naïve - must seek out gangsters, diamond dealers, bootleggers, and street kids in order to prove his father's innocence.

At the turn of the 20th century, as he composes a treatise on melancholy, Jacov Reinhardt sets off from his small Croatian village in search of his hero and unwitting mentor, Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who is rumored to have disappeared into the South American jungle - "not lost, mind you, but retired." Jacov's narcissistic preoccupation with melancholy consumes him, and as he desperately recounts the myth of his journey to his trusted but ailing scribe, hope for an encounter with the lost philosopher who holds the key to Jacov's obsession seems increasingly unlikely.

Classic fables take on new meaning as five of today’s most original bestselling authors serve up some deliciously modern twists. New reflections on evil queens, charmless princes, and star-crossed lovers branch out in provocative and enchanting directions. Follow the path and see where it leads...

Anjir and Zal are childhood best friends turned adults in love. The only problem is they live in Iran, where being openly gay is criminalized, and the government’s apparent acceptance of trans people requires them to surgically transition and pass as cis straight people. When Zal vanishes after narrowly surviving a brutal attack, Anjir becomes hell-bent on carrying out their longstanding plan for the future: Anjir, who’s always identified with the mythical gender-changing Tiresias, will become a woman, and they’ll move to a new town for a fresh start as husband and wife.

The first thing Leif notices about Oola is the sharp curve of her delicate shoulders, tensed as if for flight. Even from that first encounter at a party in a flat outside of London, there's something charged, electric about the way Oola, a music school dropout, connects with the cossetted, listless drifter of a narrator we find in 25-year-old Leif. In love, infatuated, the two hit the road across Europe, house-sitting for Leif's parents' wealthy friends and finally settling for the summer in Big Sur. Left to their own devices, a project begins.

They think I'm a young, idealistic law student, that I'm passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system. They think I'm working hard to impress them. They think I'm here to save an innocent man on death row. They're wrong. I'm going to bury him.

Beware the man of the year. You may praise him, resent him, even want to be him: but beneath the elegant trappings that define him, danger looms.

Twelve-year-old Mikey Pruitt - president, founder, and CEO of Anything, Inc. - has always been an entrepreneur at heart. Inspired by his grandfather Pap Pruitt, who successfully ran all sorts of businesses from a car wash to a roadside peanut stand, Mikey is still looking for his million-dollar idea. It isn't until kid drag queen Coco Caliente, Mistress of Madness and Mayhem (aka eighth grader Julian Vasquez) walks into his office (aka his family's storage/laundry room) looking for an agent that Mikey thinks he's finally found his million-dollar idea!

Otto Digmore is a 26-year-old gay guy with dreams of being a successful actor, and he's finally getting some attention as a result of his supporting role on a struggling sitcom. But he's also a burn survivor with scars on half his face, and all indications are that he's just too different to ever find real Hollywood success.

Mario Woods is looking forward to one normal night before he graduates. He's spent most of high school riding solo. But when fate lands him a date for prom, he figures this might be his chance to be less of a loner.