Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

Janie and Micah, Micah and Janie. That's how it's been ever since elementary school, when Janie Vivien moved next door. Janie says Micah is everything she is not. Where Micah is shy, Janie is outgoing. Where Micah loves music, Janie loves art. It's the perfect friendship - as long as no one finds out about it. But then Janie goes missing, and everything Micah thought he knew about his best friend is colored with doubt.

At first we were almost strangers. But ever since I moved to New York, Amos was the one person I could count on. And together we were there for Poppy. (I mean, what kind of parents leave their kid to be raised by a nanny?) I just didn't expect to fall for him - and I never expected him to leave us.

Siblings Sam and Ilsa Kehlmann have spent most of their high school years throwing parties for their friends - and now they've prepared their final blowout, just before graduation. The rules are simple: each twin gets to invite three guests, and the other twin doesn't know who's coming until the partiers show up. With Sam and Ilsa, the sibling revelry is always tempered with a large dose of sibling rivalry. One night. One apartment. Eight people. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, we all know the answer is plenty. But plenty also goes right...in rather surprising ways.

A stunning debut novel set in the late 1990s as an androgynous youth arrives in small-town Minnesota searching for the mother who abandoned him as a child.

Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state candidate - as long as he’s behind the scenes. There’s no way he’d ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes...until he meets Maya. Maya Rehman’s having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is cancelled, her parents are separating and now her mother thinks the solution to her problems is political canvassing - with some awkward guy she hardly knows....

Rafe isn't exactly considered a winner in Hills Village Middle School, to say the least, but everything's about to change: he's won a school-wide art competition, and the fabulous prize is getting to jet-set off to Australia for a whirlwind adventure! But Rafe soon finds that living in the Land Down Under is harder than he could've ever imagined; his host siblings are anything but welcoming, the burning temperatures are torturous and poisonous critters are ready to sting or eat him at every step.

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.

Virgil is making his older siblings trek to a mountain lake on a trip unlike any they have taken before. They carry precious cargo: the ashes of their beloved mother, who asked that her remains be scattered at her favorite spot. But when a forest fire is sparked by a bolt of lightning at the exact moment when their van breaks down, the journey quickly turns to disaster. Virgil finds himself separated from his sister and alone in the wilderness. He isn’t sure he can make it, but with the memory of his mother and her lessons to guide him, he learns that survival starts with letting go.

THE TERRIBLES HAVE BEEN CHALLENGED to a game of CREEPOBALL, a sport that is played by all monsters on Creep's Cove Island (just don't ask them how to play it—nobody knows ALL the rules!). Their rivals? A horde of relentless, fierce, low-down GNOMES. Can THE TERRIBLES defeat these Gnomes without anyone DISAPPEARING into an ALTERNATE DIMENSION? Why are you asking me?

The secrets of Bellwound’s lineage and lifelong love have led him away from a once quiet life and into the Dark Beyond, the realm where Lucifer and his Fallen Stars were imprisoned. The once sacred land has turned into a luscious prison, riddled with mystery, guarded by the judged goddess Romiria. The arrival of Lucifer’s son disrupts an ancient order, stirring chaos in this doomed paradise. While the Dark Beyond is shaken by Bellwound’s presence, Lucifer and his servants plot against mortals and the Creator with an army of Shadows.

Ross Molloy just wants to be normal. He doesn't want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don't know what to say to 'the cancer kid'. But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, simply blending in is no longer an option. Ross - and his friends and his family - all need to work out how to deal with this devastating challenge that Life has thrown down. Maybe Batpig can come to the rescue.

Pesha and Fen have shouldered the grief, pain, and fear for the people they love for as long as they can remember. Fen as his sister’s protector and handler, and Pesha as his brother’s trusted right hand. Neither has given thought to their own happiness, because a life of crisis only allows for chaos. Contentment is an affliction neither can afford. When Pesha embarks on a desperate, risky journey to a homeland he’s never been to, in a final attempt to save his dying sister, Fen doesn’t hesitate to come along to help the man he’s been slowly falling in love with.

Cole Weston - former friend, former boyfriend - has become dangerous, erratic. Something needs to be done. Getting rid of Cole is practically a public service. So high school seniors Holly Morse, Grayson Hobbs, Logan Bailey, and Meeka Miller devise a plan. Kill Cole. Bury him in the woods behind Meeka's house. Bury him deep, deep in the ground along with four old cell phones, wiped except for their video confession as insurance that no one will ever betray the group.

Fifth-grader Abe Mitchell is fed up with sharing. All he wants is something to call his own. And he just might get it when he finds a loophole in the fine print of a doughnut shop coupon. Abe thinks it entitles him to a fresh-baked mountain of crullers, dunkers, and chocolate-frosteds. But cashing in means war with Marlene Paczki, the daughter of the doughnut shop owner and Abe’s new crush.

On Whidbey Island, the Gray quintuplets are the stuff of legend. Pixie and her brothers have always been bigger and blonder than their neighbors, as if they were birthed from the island itself. Together they serve as an unofficial search-and-rescue team for the island, saving tourists and locals alike from the forces of wind and sea. But when a young boy goes missing, the mysteries start to pile up. While searching for him, they find his mother's dead body instead - and realize that something sinister is in their midst.

Learning is an adventure in Ms. Frogbottom’s class because she’s got a magic map - one that takes her students all over the world to battle mythical monsters no one believes are real. All Ms. Frogbottom has to do is take out the map, tap a country, and - SHAZAAM! - off they go to a place somewhere far far away. When Ms. Frogbottom whisks the class away to Egypt, they not only come face-to-face with a mummy but also have to solve the riddle of his ancient curse!

Laura: a teenage girl struggling to fit into her small, sleepy town in upstate New York, slowly drifting away from reality, into the secret life she inhabits online. Paul: a twentysomething wannabe rock star, back home from NYC, broke and jobless, living with his mother. April: a math teacher with two kids, running her church's vacation Bible school, discontent with another summer planning crafts and regurgitating verses. Ben: a boy stuck at VBS, still adjusting to the presence of his foster brother, DeShawn, a quiet, brooding kid from Brooklyn. Over summer, their paths will collide.

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor. If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit. And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

San Francisco, 1968: Jeannie and Kip are lost and half-orphaned, their mother dead under mysterious circumstances, and their father - a decorated WWII veteran - consumed by guilt and losing sight of his teenage children. Kip, a dreamer and swaggerer prone to small-time trouble, enlists to fight in Vietnam; Jeannie finds a seemingly safe haven in early marriage and motherhood. But when Kip is accused of a terrible military crime, Jeannie is seduced into joining an ambiguous anti-war organization.

Rumor Mora fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill and failure. Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters and for his strange abilities to vanish. But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them. Nyx Llorca keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she's in love with her best friend. Braeden Tennant wants two things: to get out from his mother's shadow and to unlearn his colony's darkest secret. To save everyone they love, they'll both have to commit treason.