Showing results by narrator "Andrew Eiden" in All Categories

Twelve-year-old Lowen Grover is still reeling from the shooting death of his best friend, Abe, when he stumbles across an article about a small town giving away homes for just one dollar. It seems like the perfect escape from Flintlock and all of the awful memories associated with the city - and to his surprise, his mum, dad, and older brother are all onboard. Only his sister, Anneth, is reluctant to leave her friends and the familiarity (and amenities!) of Flintlock, but with the rest of the family anxious to do what’s best for grief-stricken Lowen, her protests fall on deaf ears. But is the Dollar Program too good to be true?

Ryan Shanley prefers to be called Shan. It's not much, but it helps put some distance between his life during and after serving in the Union army. And he'll put even more distance between the two once he arrives in the Wyoming Territory, where he has a land grant for two square miles. On the stage to Tico, the town nearest his ranch, he meets Sarahlee Gordon. She was only planning to visit Wyoming long enough to sell the cabin she inherited from her uncle. But the attraction between the two becomes obvious on the stage and grows after they arrive.

When the family patriarch, Elliot, dies, it's revealed that he had been keeping five separate families, and in the aftermath of their discovery, his widows and children must come together to keep from losing all they have. But their livelihood is threatened when Elliot's estranged son tries to blackmail them, unleashing a series of violent confrontations between different factions of the family. A sparse family drama reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, combined with the intimate first-person narratives of Kazuo Ishiguro, Lord of California is a powerful debut novel.

Ed and his childhood friend Danny are gearing up in Kodiak, Alaska, preparing to join the Angie Piper's crew for another season of crab fishing. Ed is a relative newcomer, but despite the perils of the trade, he sees no reason to fear for Danny's safety. The Angie Piper has always been blessed. She has a stalwart captain, Fred; a crack engineer, Dave; and two time-tested pros to keep the rest of the operation running smoothly, exuberant Loni and the more reticent Salazar.

After years of trying to hit it big with his band, Adam Rees' dream is finally about to come true. A new lead singer brings with him a hot tour invite, but with a catch - his sister has to come with them. Despite an off-limits edict, Adam is instantly attracted the smart and beautiful Landry. But if he wants to claim his woman, it might be at the expense of all his ambitions.

This one-of-a-kind treasury brings together the talents of nearly two dozen best-selling middle-grade authors - including Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, Ally Condie, and Jennifer A. Nielsen - who have created original short stories and modern-day fairy tales based on the lives and dreams of children they have met who all have two things in common: They have very big hopes and dreams, and they are all cancer patients.

Joseph Johnson has lost just about everyone he's ever loved. He lost his pa in an accident. He lost his ma and his little sister to sickness. And now, he's lost his pony - fast, fierce, beautiful Sarah, taken away by a man who had no right to take her. Joseph can sure enough get her back, though. The odds are stacked against him, but he isn't about to give up. He will face down deadly animals, dangerous men, and the fury of nature itself on his quest to be reunited with the only family he has left.

Family means safety. Family means protection. Until it doesn't. Eleven-year-old Kate Whitby, the youngest member of her odd family, leads an invisible life. They live in their historic small-town hotel, where she is an expert at keeping everyone's secrets: Her sister's a thief, her great-grandmother isn't as crazy as people think, her mother lives in the past, and her beloved grandfather might have killed his best friend.

Wintric Ellis joins the army as soon as he graduates from high school, saying goodbye to his girlfriend and to the backwoods California town whose borders have always been the limits of his horizon. Deployed for two years in Afghanistan in a directionless war, he struggles to find his bearings. Two career soldiers, Dax and Torres, take Wintric under their wings. The aftershocks echo long after each returns home to a transfigured world, where his own children may fear to touch him and his nightmares still hold sway.

Mia Galliano is an aspiring filmmaker. Ethan Vance has just played his last game as a collegiate soccer star. They're sharp, hungry for success, and they share a secret. Last night, Ethan and Mia met at a bar, and, well, one thing led to another, which led to them waking up the next morning together. Things turned awkward in a hurry when they found themselves sharing a post-hookup taxi to the same place: Boomerang headquarters.

It was just your typical, run-of-the-mill scout field trip - that is, until Kit spotted an object from space plummeting to Earth.

"I live in a coastal town in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the war this was IV Corps, which saw many savage fights. Although the battles might have long been forgotten, some places cannot forget." Thus begins the harrowing yet poignant story of a North Vietnamese communist defector who spends 10 years in a far-flung reform prison after the war, and now, in 1987, a free man again, finds work as caretaker at a roadside inn in the U Minh region. One day new guests arrive at the inn: an elderly American woman and her daughter, an 18-year-old adopted Vietnamese girl....

In rural North Georgia two decades after the Civil War, 13-year-old Lulu Hurst reaches high into her father's bookshelf and pulls out an obscure book, The Truth of Mesmeric Influence. Deemed gangly and undesirable, Lulu wants more than a lifetime of caring for her disabled baby brother, Leo, with whom she shares a profound and supernatural mental connection.

Ethan is living a solid, rational life as a bail bondsman in Florida when he’s compelled to make a seemingly irrational decision: abandon his job and his girlfriend and head south to rescue the daughter of his ex-lover, Michelle. She appears to have been kidnapped by the Mara - vicious street gangs ripping apart the fabric of Central American life - and there’s every reason to believe the girl is dead already. Except for the one that Ethan has been hiding from everyone: she is calling to him in his dreams with three desperate words…I’m still alive.

Meet Jack Jordan. He’s a smooth-talking con artist with a penchant for the fast life. He’s snuck into Lufkin, Texas, in the dead of night with little more than a beat-up Honda, a hollowed-out King James Bible full of cocaine, and enough emotional baggage to sink a steamship. He’s charming, dedicated, and extremely paranoid.

Thirty years ago, Martin Owenby came to New York City with dreams of becoming a writer. Now his existence revolves around cheap Scotch and weekend flings with equally damaged men. When he learns that his older brother, Leon, has gone missing, he must return to the Owenby farm in Solace Fork, North Carolina, to assist in the search. But that means facing a past filled with regrets, the family that never understood him, the girl whose heart he broke, and the best friend who has faithfully kept the home fires burning.

For better or for worse, Google and social media - “Big Tech”, collectively - have become the new public square. Unfortunately, this public square has a watchful referee standing behind them, ready and waiting to blow the whistle if they veer too far from the preferred narrative. Americans have given these companies enormous power to select the information they read, share and discuss with their neighbors and friends.

In a series of interwoven fictionalized stories, Deborah Noyes gives voice to the marginalized women in P. T. Barnum’s family - and the talented entertainers he built his entertainment empire on. Barnum was a legendary showman, entrepreneur, marketing genius, and one of the most famous nineteenth-century personalities. For those who lived in Barnum’s shadow, however, life was complex.

Winchester, Virginia, is an emblematic American town. As the US economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation - about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn't exist, about what we salvage, and what we leave behind.

Nashville Sound enforcer Thor Eastrom has been married, divorced, engaged, and dumped. But the hardest thing he’s ever done is bury his twin babies. The last thing he wants or needs in his life right now is a relationship. All he wants is one more year in the NHL, so he can go out as a member of the 20-year club. Tradd Davenport’s dream is to succeed in the hardscrabble world of country music. She has the talent and the drive - and she’s ready to work hard for something that her father’s money can’t buy her.