Showing results by narrator "Ramon de Ocampo" in All Categories

Annabella Donatello likes to do everything. She likes to draw, fly kites, play soccer, cook, and eat what she cooks. She even likes to do math! But there are two things she loves most of all: softball and performing. So she's thrilled when she gets cast in the school play, on top of being the star pitcher of her softball team. Unfortunately, her softball coach is less thrilled about Annabella's busy schedule. And with the championships coming up, the pressure is on to make softball her number one priority, even when an important practice conflicts with opening night of the show.

Sure enough, the competitors are intimidating, and the monsters terrifying - though neither more so than blossoming friendships with two determined swordswomen. Spurred by pure-hearted altruism alone, Pavel joins their quest to find the Storm’s Breath: an artifact that bestows magic powers - and real-world riches - upon the first player to find it. And with a ruthless mage on their heels, he’ll find plenty of opportunities for bravery.

Middle school is off to a rocky start for Marvin Watson. Doomed to misfit status, his only friends are a girl with major orthodontics, the smelliest boy in school, and the trio of sarcastic man-size moths that live in his attic. No one said middle school would be easy! Also, no one said that Marvin's town would be threatened by mutant bugs, including a very hungry Shakespeare-quoting spider. But life in the suburbs is full of surprises.

Unlike her friends Emrys and Serena, Hazel is struggling to adjust to magic and to their new roles as the secret protectors of New Rotterdam. She’s already worried about her mom, who works endless shifts at the hospital to make ends meet, and now she also has to defend their entire town from supernatural forces. If only Hazel could figure out how to use her relic, the Magnus Crown, which has the power to transform matter, including turning lead into gold … gold that would certainly help ease her family’s financial issues.

Copper Inskeep holds Windydown Vale’s deepest and darkest secret: He is the ghoul who haunts the Vale, donning a gruesome costume not only to scare travelers away from the dangers of the surrounding swamps, but also to keep them from discovering Windydown Vale’s best-kept secret. When a terrified girl claims she and her father were attacked by a creature, one that could not have been Copper, her accusation threatens Copper’s secret, his closest friendship, and the fate of all Windydown.

Jasmine Yap’s life is great. Well, it’s okay. She’s about to move in with her longtime boyfriend, Paul, before starting a nursing program at community college - all of which she mostly wants. But her stable world is turned upside down when she catches Paul cheating. To her giant, overprotective family, Paul’s loss is their golden ticket to showing Jasmine that she deserves much more. The only problem is, Jasmine refuses to meet anyone new. But...what if the family set up a situation where she wouldn’t have to know? A secret Jasmine Project.

A year after losing their best friend, JD and Danny are still brokenhearted. JD’s decision to join the Air Force only makes him yearn for “before” more than ever. Danny, who’d rather paint murals than open a book and certainly never thought of himself as college material, makes the equally impulsive choice to do what Juan will never be able to and enrolls in a community college. Danny’s father, The Sarge, is proud of him for the first time ever for living out Sarge’s own dream of being a first-generation college student, but Danny can’t shake the thought that it should be Juan, not him

Roscoe is a Search and Rescue Force rookie who doesn’t play by the rules. Serge is a veteran of the Force, looking forward to a well-earned retirement. Roscoe can’t wait to make his first rescue, while Serge just wants to get through the next three days so he can finally just . . . chillax. But when the largest fire Colorado has ever seen starts tearing through the forest, it’s all paws on deck for the Search and Rescue team.

Drawing from his own experience leading worship in a large congregation and feeling the pull of performance, Manuel Luz guides us on a journey through worship that takes us far beyond style and deep into our own souls. He calls us back to an honest worship that moves past facades and pulls us inward toward the true self God is forming within each of us.

Sociologist Albert Amao analyzes the accuracy of self-help and positive-thinking claims in this groundbreaking - and wholly unexpected - exploration of what works, what doesn't, and why. Contrary to the critics who blithely dismiss self-help methods, or the New Age gurus who sell them as miracles, Amao - writing with sobriety and scholarship and drawing on deep personal experience - explores the conditions under which self-help is authentic.

Filipino-American bounty hunter Domingo has made a career of catching criminal undocumented immigrants. He’s the best in the business—and it isn’t lost on him that he’s so good because of his similarities to his targets. Despite Domingo’s claims that he is unsympathetic to their plight, yet spends his spare moments on stakeouts and in between jobs writing a book of advice for aspiring immigrants. Brash, funny, and candid, he compiles the names of all the people he’s apprehended, documenting the hazards of his profession, and imparting advice to foreigners who dare to dream of life in America.

Oddonis and his misfit friends don’t exactly love competition and they aren’t exactly athletes. So they’re definitely not excited when their middle school gets challenged to a sports competition by the Roman middle school on the other side of Mount Olympus. It’s bad enough that the Greek Odds have to compete against their Roman twins, but when Zeus and his Roman counterpart, Jupiter, get a little too involved, the Greek and Roman kids end up in a competition over who gets to run the whole mountain.

Set at the height of the Roman Empire, in the last half of the first century AD - about the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, when Christianity was still an unimportant Jewish sect - these stories chronicle the cases of one of the few actual crimesolvers that we know of in ancient Rome. The stories are fictional, but the character of Quintilian is based on a real Roman barrister whose writings on rhetoric and on the education of the young are still read today.

A young writer, living abroad, returns home to his native Argentina to say goodbye to his dying father. In his parents' house, he finds a cache of documents - articles, maps, photographs - and unwittingly begins to unearth his father’s obsession with the disappearance of a local man. Suddenly he comes face to face with the ghosts of Argentina's dark political past and long-forgotten memories of his family’s resistance against an oppressive military regime.

In August of 2019, Donald Trump finished building his border wall - at least a portion of it. In San Diego, the Army Corps of engineers completed two years of construction on a 14-mile steel beamed barrier that extends 18 feet high and cost a staggering $147 million. As one border patrol agent told reporters visiting the site, "It was funded and approved and it was built under his administration. It is Trump’s wall." 14 Miles is a definitive account of all the dramatic construction, showing listeners what it feels like to stand on both sides of the border.

A whole army of evil Librarians! And Alcatraz Smedry has only his friend, Bastille; a few pairs of glasses; and an unlimited supply of exploding teddy bears to help him defend the island of Mokia. Even Alcatraz's extraordinary talent for breaking things may not be enough to defeat the evil Librarians' giant robots. Can Alcatraz find a way to save the Free Kingdoms?

Westly is a caterpillar who is destined to be a monarch butterfly, but when he emerges from his cocoon, he is not what he expected. He's a spider! Westly flees his home among the butterflies and is eventually adopted by the "dirt eaters".

From the Chelsea House Galaxy of Superstars series, this is an exciting biography of one of today’s hottest stars.

Ranging in age from six to 40, 38 sons and daughters of lesbians offer brief essays that could be valuable to like offspring, as well as to relatives and friends trying to understand the problems such children face. Homophobia, visited upon the children as well as their mothers, is the most commonly cited concern; some younger contributors feel isolated from their peers, and a couple of boys endure rejection from radical lesbian acquaintances.

Norman Mailer Fellow Alex Gilvarry delivers a witty satirical gem with his debut novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant. Boyet Hernandez aspires to be a high-end fashion designer. But the night before he’s set to make it big, he hears a knock on his door. Shortly after, he finds himself in a Gitmo prison cell - locked up as a suspect in a deadly terrorist plot.