Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

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.

A joyful collection of the most popular, provocative and unforgettable essays from the New York Times 'Modern Love' column. A young woman goes through the five stages of ghosting grief. A man's promising fourth date ends in the emergency room. A female lawyer with bipolar disorder experiences the highs and lows of dating. A widower hesitates about introducing his children to his new girlfriend. A divorcée in her 70s looks back at the beauty and rubble of past relationships.

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?

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.

Young Gav can remember the page of a book after seeing it once, and, inexplicably, he sometimes “remembers” things that are going to happen in the future. As a loyal slave, he must keep these powers secret, but when a terrible tragedy occurs, Gav, blinded by grief, flees the only world he has ever known. And in what becomes a treacherous journey for freedom, Gav’s greatest test of all is facing his powers so that he can come to understand himself and finally find a true home.

Things have quietened down for lovable troublemaker Rafe Khatchadorian, and after all the mishaps and adventures he's been through, he's feeling a little restless. So when he's invited to attend an all-expenses paid art field trip in California, Rafe jumps at the opportunity. But things go sideways, as they always do for Rafe, when he arrives and realises his trip isn't the Hollywood vacation he thought it would be. Instead, he'll be participating in a 'Cultural Campout' in the desert.

Cutthroat political consultant Thom Morgan is thriving, working on the governor of California’s presidential campaign. If only he didn’t have to deal with Clay Parker, the infuriatingly smug data analyst who gets under Thom’s skin like it’s his job. In the midst of one of their heated and very public arguments, a journalist snaps a photo, but the image makes it look like they’re kissing. As if that weren’t already worst-nightmare territory, the photo goes viral — and in a bid to secure the liberal vote, the governor asks them to lean into it. Hard.

All Alex Dassan needs to do is win second place in the debate team finals. The second place prize is a trip to the Nottingshire Retreat in London, where she'll have a chance to take a class with her writing idol, Mary Noelle Simmons. Alex knows that once she meets Mary, then her life will fall into place and her dreams of becoming a writer will be possible (and less scary). Nothing is going to stand in Alex's way - especially not a dad who's never home and a mom who left to go "find herself" in India.

Aidan and Olivia live in a creaky old house on the edge of a dirty, swampy lake. Craving some excitement, they convince their parents to let them camp out by the lakeshore under a full moon, with only their dog for company. Aidan loves to scare his sister and has plenty of funny tricks up his sleeve for their campout. But the twins are about to find out that the creepy old book that washed ashore, Tales from the Scaremaster, has a mind of its own - and its mind is set on scares beyond Aidan's wildest dreams!

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.

Against the backdrop of gritty 1970s New York, in a simple, straightforward style, he tells us his story. The son of an absent Jewish father and a devout Italian mother, Abram was drawn to the meaningful structure of the seminary, eventually becoming a parish priest in Manhattan. His sincerest wish is to do God’s work, but he is not without human failings: he is irresistibly attracted to women and has a secret lover named Lisa. But when an anonymous letter arrives threatening to expose his liaison, he is forced to decide whether the risks of his sin have become too great.

After thwarting the man behind the gruesome ironborn murders—and breaking several fae laws to do so—all Arlo wants is a quiet summer. As the deity of luck's Hollow Star, capable of bringing about endless possibilities, this shouldn't be too much to ask, right? But someone is still trying to summon the mythical Seven Deadly Sins. All signs point to immortal meddling, and if this is the gods' attempt at returning to the Mortal Realm, it's Arlo they're going to use to do it.

Rafe and Jimmy, two misunderstood troublemakers, are finally up to something good. They're in charge of a huge celebration of books and reading - but when a small issue snowballs into a big problem that threatens to derail the whole event, they need to work fast to keep things on track!

An ancient religion grotesquely modernized, The Purpose, deifies children for their deformities - a beautiful girl with three arms, a brave boy with one eye...the exceptional list goes on. Painted and costumed, they are worshiped on stage. Shy and exposed, they are ridiculed in the streets, often by the same faces. Glorious or repulsive? Gods or freaks? How deep will the identity divide be dredged, and to which side will the truth finally tip?

One year ago, there was a party. At the party, someone died. Five teens all played a part, and up until now, no one has told the truth. But tonight, the five survivors arrive at an isolated mansion in the hills, expecting to compete in a contest with a $50,000 grand prize. But of course...some things are too good to be true. They realise they’ve been lured together by a revenge seeker who wants to unravel the truth about what actually happened that deadly night, one year ago. Five arrived, but not all can leave. Will the truth set them free?

Ten years ago, a tragic accident tore through a community. Ever since, the nine survivors - just teenagers at the time - have met on the anniversary to remember those they lost. They made a promise to keep each other safe from harm. For Cassidy, always the outsider at school, this group has felt almost like friendship. But this year, their reunion is overshadowed by death and the disappearance of one of their own. As the week unravels, Cassidy begins to fear something darker than survivors' guilt has bound them together. Was their pact to protect one another a promise, or a threat?

Thomas and Viv Adler have a picture-perfect family. Affluent and attractive, with two well-mannered kids almost out of the nest, they live in a beautifully restored Craftsman house in a well-to-do neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Their jobs are secure; their children are thriving; the world is their oyster. Until one morning, when they wake up to find that their house and car have been pelted with eggs. Thomas dismisses it as the work of a few out-of-control kids, but when a smoke bomb is tossed on their front lawn, and the tires on their BMW are punctured, he begins to worry.

When Adeline, a wealthy art student, chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat, the two begin a fiery friendship that propels them through a decade of New York life. In the apartments and bars of downtown Manhattan to the infamous nightclub The Limelight, Adeline is Baby's guardian angel, introducing him to a city not yet overrun by gentrification. They live through an era of New York punctuated by the deaths of Warhol, Basquiat, Wojnarowicz, and Tompkins Square Park.

In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River and much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The retreating Confederate army is being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous.

A brand-new, heart-wrenching story from the best-selling author of If I Stay and I Was Here, Gayle Forman. Around the time that Freya loses her voice while recording her debut album, Harun is making plans to run away from home to find the boy that he loves, and Nathaniel is arriving in New York City after a family tragedy leaves him isolated on the outskirts of Washington state. After the three of them collide in Central Park, they slowly reveal the parts of their past that they haven't been able to confront, and together they find their way back to who they're supposed to be.