Finding Miracles

Return to Sender

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 32 mins)
• By Julia Alvarez
• Narrated By Ozzie Rodriguez, Olivia Preciado
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Tyler isn’t sure what to make of these workers.Tyler isn’t sure what to make of these workers. Are they undocumented? And what about the three daughters, particularly Mari, the oldest, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but also increasingly connected her American life. Her family lives in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities and sent back to the poverty they left behind in Mexico. Can Tyler and Mari find a way to be friends despite their differences?

Esperanza Rising

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Pam Munoz Ryan
• Narrated By Trini Alvarado
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Esperanza Ortega possesses all the treasures a young girl in Aguascalientes, Mexico could want. But a sudden tragedy shatters that dream, forcing Esperanza and Mama to flee to California and settle in a Mexican farm labor camp. There they confront the challenges of hard work, acceptance by their own people, and economic difficulties brought on by the Great Depression. Pam Munoz Ryan eloquently portrays the Mexican workers' plight in this abundant and passionate novel.

Weedflower

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 18 mins)
• By Cynthia Kadohata
• Narrated By Kimberly Farr
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to. That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor.

Echo

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 37 mins)
• By Pam Muñoz Ryan
• Narrated By Mark Bramhall, David de Vries, Andrews MacLeod, and others

Audie Award, Middle Grade, 2016. Lost and alone in the forbidden Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each become sinterwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives, binding them by an invisible thread of destiny. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together.

Breaking Through

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 36 mins)
• By Francisco Jiménez
• Narrated By Adrian Vargas
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

At the age of 14, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for 20 hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice.

In the Time of the Butterflies

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Julia Alvarez
• Narrated By Noemi de la Puente, Alma Cuervo, Bianca Carnacho, and others
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of General Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship.

Accidental Love

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 45 mins)
• By Gary Soto
• Narrated By Barrie Kreinik
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

It all starts when Marisa picks up the wrong cell phone. When she returns it to Rene, she feels curiously drawn to him. But Marisa and Rene aren’t exactly a match made in heaven. For one thing, Marisa is a chola; she’s a lot of girl, and she’s not ashamed of it. Skinny Rene gangles like a sackful of elbows and wears a calculator on his belt. In other words, he’s a geek. So why can’t Marisa stay away from him?

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Ishmael Beah
• Narrated By Ishmael Beah
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This is how wars are fought now by children, hopped up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. In the more than 50 violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now 26 years old, tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of 12, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence.

The Afterlife

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 12 mins)
• By Gary Soto
• Narrated By Robert Ramirez
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Adept at portraying Latino teenage culture, author Gary Soto has won many honors, including an ALA Best Book Award for his young adult novels. After an East Fresno student is murdered, his mind leaves his body. Now he must get used to being an invisible spirit, one who watches his friends and family deal with his death.

Twelve Years a Slave

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Solomon Northup
• Narrated By Sean Crisden
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Twelve Years a Slave is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of twelve years. Northup's account is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar plantation and the daily routine of slave life during the first part of the 19th century.

Reaching Out

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 4 mins)
• By Francisco Jiménez
• Narrated By Adrian Vargas
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

From the perspective of the young adult he was then, Francisco Jiménez describes the challenges he faced in his efforts to continue his education. During his college years, the very family solidarity that allowed Francisco to survive as a child is tested. Not only must he leave his family behind when he goes to Santa Clara University, but while Francisco is there, his father abandons the family and returns to Mexico.

Kira-Kira

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 29 mins)
• By Cynthia Kadohata
• Narrated By Elaina Erika Davis
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining

Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare.

Serena

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Ron Rash
• Narrated By Phil Gigante
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire, vowing to let no one stand in their way, especially those newly rallying around Teddy Roosevelt's nascent environmental movement.

Crazy Weekend

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Gary Soto
• Narrated By Anthony Perez
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

When Hector's mother suggests that he and his amigo Mando get out of East L.A. for the weekend and see some of the world, he's thinking Paris. So he's a little disappointed when they end up in Fresno, sleeping on a lumpy couch in his Uncle Julio's messy apartment. Hector figures it's going to be one boring weekend. He couldn't be more wrong.

The Circuit

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs)
• By Francisco Jiménez
• Narrated By Adrian Vargas
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Beautifully and authentically rendered by actor and playwright Adrian Vargas, these twelve stories tell of the almost unendurable journey most migrant campesinos undertake to find the "American Dream."

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 54 mins)
• By Ron Rash
• Narrated By Alexander Cendese, Robert Petkoff, Prentice Onayemi, and others
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times best-selling author Ron Rash turns again to Appalachia to capture lives haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear, in unforgettable stories that span from the Civil War to the present day. In the title story, two drug-addicted friends return to the farm where they worked as boys to steal their former boss' gruesomely unusual war trophies. In "The Trusty", which first appeared in The New Yorker, a prisoner sent to fetch water for his chain gang tries to sweet-talk a farmer's young wife into helping him escape, only to find that she is as trapped as he is.

The Thing About Luck

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 14 mins)
• By Cynthia Kadohata
• Narrated By Joy Osmanski
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Summer knows that kouun means good luck in Japanese, and this year her family has none of it. Just when she thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong, an emergency whisks her parents away to Japan - right before harvest season. Summer and her little brother, Jaz, are left in the care of their grandparents, who come out of retirement in order to harvest wheat and help pay the bills.

Winesburg, Ohio

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 21 mins)
• By Sherwood Anderson
• Narrated By George Guidall
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.