Showing results by narrator "Kevin Collins" in All Categories

After losing his brother and being murdered by his enemies, Rideon thought there was nothing left that could hurt him. But he soon discovers life only gets more dangerous after death. Restored by magic, he must trek through a hostile wilderness while stalked by a deranged wild man. His only possessions, a cursed bow and a powerful amulet, prove as treacherous as they are necessary. Driven by the need to find his young brother before their enemies reach the boy first, Rideon must enter dangerous territory and risk the wrath of the ruthless thieves' guild.

The moment Spencer meets Hope the summer before seventh grade, it's...something at first sight. He knows she's special, possibly even magical. The pair become fast friends, climbing trees and planning world travels. After years of being outshone by his older brother and teased because of his Tourette syndrome, Spencer finally feels like he belongs. But as Hope and Spencer get older and life gets messier, the clear label of "friend" gets messier, too.

Overcome with the loss of his boyfriend, Sydney, Gavin Winters has set fire to every reminder in their home. A neighbour has captured the blaze on video, turning this little-known TV actor into a household name. Gavin flees LA for New Jersey, where he hopes that 10-year-old Joan, the daughter of a close friend, can reconnect him with the memories of Sydney he is now in danger of losing forever. Joan was born with a rare ability to recall every single day of her life in perfect detail, and in return for sharing her memories of Sydney, Gavin will help her write a song.

Between mourning the recent loss of his wife and trying to raise his young son alone, librarian John Grant is barely surviving. And then he receives an anonymous letter promising a terrible revenge - retribution for a childhood sin John had thought long forgotten.

When Jackson McKay and his daughter are kidnapped, their captors demand his research files on a devastating chemical weapon - or they'll kill his little girl. Jackson searches desperately for a way to save his daughter and also protect his country from the terrorists. No risk is too great. His daring escape sets in motion a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Since the founding of the United States, the Barbary pirates of North Africa threatened with impunity American lives, commerce, and honor on the high seas. But in 1815, Commodore Stephen Decatur led a charge to victory. The Second Barbary War, as it became known, helped define American foreign policy and consolidate its naval power. In Decatur's Wake: The Fateful Rivalry Behind the Lightning Defeat of Barbary Terror, Daniel Wattenberg shows us how.

The friendship between the Coleman and Shepherd families is as old and comfortable as the neighboring houses they occupy each summer on Cape Cod. Samuel and Sarah Coleman love those warm months by the water; the evenings spent on their porch, enjoying gin and tonics, good conversation and homemade clam chowder. Here they’ve watched their sons, Isaac and Asa, grow into fine young men, and watched, too, as Nate Shepherd, aching with grief at the loss of his first wife, finally found love again with the much younger Noelle.

San Francisco Bay Area archaeologist Davis Lowry has everything - success, a fascinating profession - but he is troubled by a bout of sleepwalking. For a change of scenery, he travels to York, England, where a bog man has been unearthed. A series of macabre accidents plague the site, and Davis finds himself enmeshed in a modern-day horror with roots in the bloody past.

A New York cop goes after an escaped prisoner with murder on his mind. For a hit-and-run with a stolen car, Lenny Cervera bought himself five to 10 in Sing Sing. When his sentence comes down, this two-bit thug vows revenge on everyone who helped put him there. He swears to kill the judge, the district attorney, and the cop who cuffed him: Lieutenant Clancy, the toughest detective in the NYPD.

In his first nine years as a teacher, Brendan Halpin goes from wide-eyed idealist to cynical, heartbroken idealist. Unique among teaching memoirs, Losing My Faculties is not the story of a heroic teacher who transforms the lives of his hardbitten students; rather, it's the inspirational and often unpretty truth about people who choose to get up ridiculously early day after day and year after year to go stand in front of teenagers.

In five years, little green men are going to invade Earth - and the only man who knows is Professor Emil Vlasov. Is Vlasov crazy? Or is something actually watching the Earth... waiting...

Fortress is America's guarantor of freedom, an orbiting arsenal of laser weapons and nuclear missiles. It was considered impregnable - until now. Former CIA officer Tom Kelley is sent to learn the secrets surrounding a dead alien found in Turkey and discovers a maze of lies and treachery that could transform America's shield into an engine of global terror.

After a stint living and working in Korea, Nebraska native Bart Schaneman sets out on a quest to live deliberately and with strength and purpose before returning to the States and figuring out what to do with his life and his writing. The only constant, his copy of The Idiot, Bart meets many eclectic characters along the way, themselves young travelers like him, and together they share adventures and experiences against the breathtaking backdrops of China, Mongolia and Russia.

As a student named Rick Starr experiences elementary school, middle school, and high school, he learns more about gender roles, psychological isolation, bullying, and apathy than about reading, writing, and arithmetic. After suffering through bad teachers, navigating the social ladder, confronting bullies, and completing countless standardized tests, he has a revelation about public school in America: It's comprised of sex, lies, and scantrons.

Dodging secret police on the daily, and haggling prices for dried fruit and vintage leathers in heroin-laced bazaars, My Kazakhy is filled with all the gems you wouldn't expect to find from a queer Latino boy serving in the Peace Corps in a third world, Muslim country.

In this powerful personal narrative, Gregory Dybec recounts his short yet eventful trip to South Africa during the 2010 FIFA World Cup where he encountered a series of unforgettable situations, from a memorable collection of new friends, to life-threatening car rides, to an image of violence impossible to shake. This gripping nonfiction narrative examines a country, its people, and the complexities of life under the festive backdrop of one of the world's largest sporting events.

Earth is a dead cinder beyond the dense clouds. On a terraformed Venus, the land is ruled by savage plants and the even more savage beasts that prey on them, while monsters out of nightmare swim though the globe-girdling seas. Mankind huddles in domed underwater Keeps, living a purposeless static existence - dedicated to pleasure but destined for oblivion later if not sooner. Only the Free Companions, the mercenaries who fight proxy wars for the Keeps, live on the surface of Venus.

It's Prohibition. It's Philadelphia. And Jersey Leo doesn't fit in. Jersey is an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he tends bar at a speakeasy the locals call the Ink Well. There, he's considered a hero for having saved the life of a young boy. But when his old grade school buddy, Aaron Garvey, calls from death row and asks for one last favor, all hell breaks loose. Jersey finds himself running from a band of crooked cop and hiding an escaped convict in the Ink Well....

Set in vaudeville in the early 20th century, Jonah Man is a gripping and ultimately heartbreaking novel that reveals the often tragic lives of performers struggling to make it to the big time. Told from the perspectives of multiple characters, including a one-handed juggler who moonlights as a drug trafficker, a talented young boy who longs to escape the shadow of his abusive father, and a police inspector whose bumbling attempts to solve a murder result in a series of calamitous missteps, Jonah Man explores the dark side of life behind the curtain.

A movie star on a meteoric rise, young James Dean was already being hailed as one of America's finest actors when he died in a high-speed car accident in 1955. In one terrible instant a luminous future glowing with extraordinary promise was snuffed out forever. But what if it wasn't? With The Rebel, acclaimed award-winning author Jack Dann pulls James Dean from the twisted wreckage and offers him a second chance to make an indelible mark on his art, his culture, and his time in an era of profound change and devastating social upheaval.