Showing results by narrator "Kirby Heyborne" in All Categories

Rick Ward wants to go to war. And he's not sure why. Maybe he's running from his dad and his crazy temper. Maybe he's running from his girl, who seems to think he's more of a joke than a man. Or maybe he's just running - to find himself. After basic training, Rick enlists with the Charlie Rangers, a special unit that ambushes the enemy in secret jungle raids. It is the most dangerous front line duty, and Rick's six-man team will experience everything from horrifying enemy encounters to mourning the death of a comrade.

It's been two years since Sam broke up with the only other eligible gay guy in his high school, so to say he's been going through a romantic drought is the understatement of the decade. When Meg, his ex-Catholic-turned-Wiccan best friend, suggests performing a love spell, Sam is just desperate enough to try. He crafts a list of 10 traits he wants in a boyfriend and burns it in a cemetery at midnight on Friday the 13th.

Edwin Stith, a failed novelist and college writing instructor in upstate New York, is returning home for the weekend to Richmond, Virginia, to celebrate his mother's wedding - to a much younger man. Edwin has a peculiar relationship with the truth. He is a liar who is brutally honest. He may or may not be sleeping with his students, he may or may not be getting fired, and he may or may not have killed his ex-wife, a lover, and his brand-new stepsister.

Gus and Cassie have always been on the same team off the field, but in this third novel in New York Times best-selling author Mike Lupica's Home Team series, can they stay friends when they're on the same court?

From the critically acclaimed author of The Gospel of Winter and the coauthor of All American Boys comes a cool, contemplative spin on hot summer nights and the classic teen love story as two teens embark on a cross-country journey of the heart and soul.

Half a century has passed since Zebulon Finch was gunned down and then inexplicably resurrected to experience a second life. Picking up his tale where he left off, Zebulon heads to Nazi Germany on a top-secret mission. From there he escapes to the shiny new world of the suburbs - a tidy neighborhood hiding dark secrets. He will exchange the pains of this world for what he believes will be peace among the stars.

In the best-selling tradition of A Man Called Ove and the beloved film Love Actually, a quirky, socially awkward man goes on a quest to find his wife a last-minute Christmas gift and encounters several distractions - including bumping into his ex-girlfriend who was the one who got away.

Renew your imagination for what family life can be. Many of us feel overwhelmed about the prospect of raising children in our high-performance, rapid-pace culture. Reflecting on difficulties from our own families of origin can increase our doubt and insecurity about being a good parent. Positive examples of family life can seem few and far between. Mark and Lisa Scandrette understand these challenges, and in Belonging and Becoming they cast a compelling vision of what the family can be.

Dirty. Lazy. Good for nothing. Jay Thacker is used to being called names because his dad is half Navajo. But things are different after he and his mother move to a small town in Utah to stay with his grandparents during WWII. Jay makes friends and earns money working the fields for his well-respected grandfather - but he encounters a problem in Ken, a fellow worker who's from the nearby Japanese internment camp. Ken's a Jap. And Jay's dad, who's been fighting for the navy out in the Pacific, is missing in action.

Yuki Nakahara is an American. But it's the start of World War II, and America doesn't see it that way. Like many other Japanese Americans, Yuki and his family have been forced into an internment camp in the Utah desert. But Yuki isn't willing to sit back and accept this injustice - it's his country, too, and he's going to prove it by enlisting in the army to fight for the Allies.

Hero, a retired search-and-rescue dog, is not prepared for a stray puppy to come into his life. But when he and 12-year-old Ben find Scout injured and afraid, the new addition leads them down an unexpected and dangerous path. When Scout goes missing, it's up to Hero to use his search-and-rescue skills to find Scout and bring him home.

Mister Monkey - a screwball children's musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee - is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its prime. Margot, who plays the chimp's lawyer, knows the production is dreadful and bemoans the failure of her acting career. She's settled into the drudgery of playing a humiliating part - until the day she receives a mysterious letter from an anonymous admirer and later, in the middle of a performance, has a shocking encounter with Adam, the 12-year-old who plays the title role.

Grown-ups lie. That's one truth Beans knows for sure. He and his gang know how to spot a whopper a mile away, because they are the savviest bunch of barefoot conchs (that means "locals") in all of Key West. Not that Beans really minds. It's 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. With no jobs on the island and no money anywhere, who can really blame the grown-ups for telling a few tales? Besides, Beans isn't anyone's fool. In fact he has plans. Big plans. And the consequences might surprise even Beans himself.

Having been rescued, remade, and returned to Freedom, Theron faces a life without Nine. Though he's chosen to be a healer, he can't find the peace he so desperately needs. Everything in Freedom reminds him of Nine. But then he meets Catcher and begins to uncover the dark truths behind Freedom's batcher program - and the virus.

New York Times best-selling author Jeff Benedict has seen both good and bad in his career as a journalist. Some of the best are the extraordinary people he has met who have made deliberate choices to live happier lives despite the extreme hardship that each of them have faced. Although life will knock us down from time to time, this book is an important reminder that we all can make a choice to get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep pressing forward.

Abandoned in the jungle of the Nepalese Borderlands, two-year-old Nandu is found living under the protective watch of a pack of wild dogs. From his mysterious beginnings, fate delivers him to the king's elephant stable, where he is raised by unlikely parents - the wise head of the stable, Subba-sahib, and Devi Kali, a fierce and affectionate female elephant. When the king's government threatens to close the stable, Nandu, now 12, searches for a way to save his family and community. A risky plan could be the answer.

Beginning with the Old Testament and walking through the life of Jesus, Rusty unpacks seven core promises of God - and reveals what you need to do in order to unlock them. What is it God wants from you? When you do it, what can you trust He will then do in response? And how can you confidently move forward in life without wearing yourself out trying to guess God's will or somehow earning his unconditional love and boundless grace?

The US military is preparing to withdraw from Iraq, and newly minted lieutenant Jack Porter struggles to accept how it's happening - through alliances with warlords who have Arab and American blood on their hands. Day after day, Jack tries to assert his leadership in the sweltering, dreary atmosphere of Ashuriyah. But his world is disrupted by the arrival of veteran sergeant Daniel Chambers, whose aggressive style threatens to undermine the fragile peace that the troops have worked hard to establish.

Norma Hayes has always tried to make Christmas special for her family, but 1944 will make that more difficult with money being tight and wartime rationing making everything hard to come by. Aware of his mother's hardships and the worry from having her eldest son at war, Norma's second son, Dennis, is determined to buy his mother a special gift this Christmas: a lavender blue dress he hopes will bring her comfort.

A Poet of the Invisible World follows a boy named Nouri, born in 13th-century Persia with four ears instead of two. Orphaned as an infant, he's taken into a Sufi order, where he meets an assortment of dervishes and is placed upon a path toward spiritual awakening. As he stumbles from one painful experience to the next, he grows into manhood. Each trial he endures shatters another obstacle within - and leads Nouri on toward transcendence.