Showing results by narrator "Graham Halstead" in All Categories

Welcome to picturesque Provence, where the Lady of the Chateau, Séraphine Demargelasse, has opened its elegant doors to her granddaughter Darcy and three friends. Twenty years earlier, the four girlfriends studied abroad together in France and visited the old woman on the weekends, creating the group’s deep bond. But why this sudden invitation? Amid winery tours, market visits and fancy dinners overlooking olive groves and lavender fields, it becomes clear that each woman has a hidden reason for returning. Then, following a wild evening’s celebration, Séraphine is found brutally murdered.

Moses and his cousin Charlie were best friends, wisecracking pranksters, unstoppable forces of teenage energy - until the night they became accidental arsonists and set in motion a chain of events that left Moses alone, guilt-stricken, and most likely trapped in his dead-end town. Then Moses gets a lucky break: the chance to volunteer as a camp counselor for a week and prove the incident at the bowling alley should be expunged from his record. And since a criminal record and enrollment at Duke are mutually exclusive, he’s determined. But tragedy seems to follow him wherever he goes.

America, 2049: Summer temperatures are intolerably high, the fossil fuel industry has shut down, and humans are implanted with a 'Flick' at birth, which allows them to remain perpetually online. The wealthy live in the newly created Floating City off the coast, while people on the mainland struggle to get by. For Rose, a job as a hostess in the city's elite club, feels like her best hope for a better future.

After finally reuniting on the Orchard Fortress, it seemed like the team would make a clean getaway...until a magical glimpse into the future revealed their horrible—and imminent—demise. At least they finished their first quest, right? Even if they somehow escape their impending doom in the next thirty seconds and make it back to the Stradivarius, their troubles are far from over. The soulforged vessel is a floating warzone. In addition to all the normal dangers that space travel poses, the derelict ship is packed with fromlirs.

NASA’s race with the Russians to land a man on the moon. The meteoric rise of the Beatles, considered by many to have revolutionized the music industry. In the postwar era, each stood as an unprecedented cultural watershed. Together they captured the heady zeitgeist of the 1960s, and ignited the imagination of - just about everyone on the planet.

A beguiling story of an adventurous traveler, from the Edgar Award-winning author of the best-selling Deputy Charlie Hood series. Fresh out of college, a young man is hired by a high-end travel agency. His fears that he might be in over his head prove to be well-founded when he is dispatched to a potential new destination, Playa Amazonia. Twenty hours of traveling leads him to a luxurious hotel, the world's most beautiful beach - and an encounter with a highly unusual invasive species.

Titus "Crisp" Crespo was raised by his white mother and his Russian grandparents. He has two legacies from his absent father, Mo: his weird name and his brown skin. Crisp has always been the odd kid out, but a fundamentally good kid, with a bright future. But one impulsive decision triggers a horrible domino effect - an arrest; no reason not to accompany his richer whiter friend, Glynnie, on a visit to her weed dealer; and a trip onto his father's old home turf, where he'll face certain choices he's always strived to avoid.

Faldistoire’s grandfather thinks he’s a ghost. Sylvie’s mother reads Tarot and summons storm clouds to mete her witch’s justice. Behind his Dad-of-the-Year demeanor, Sébastien’s father hides dark designs. It’s Croustine’s grandfather who makes the boy a pair of slippers from the dead family dog, but it’s his dad, the uncannily named Kevin Lambert, who always seems to be nearby when tragedy strikes, and in the cemetery, under the expressionless gazes of toads, small graves are continuously being dug: Chicoutimi, Quebec, is a dangerous place for children.

In 1998, at the very moment that a publisher had approached Bruce Davidson about a book of his 1959 Brooklyn Gang photographs, former gang leader Bobby Powers unexpectedly telephoned the Davidsons. Over the next decade, Emily Davidson maintained an ongoing conversation with Powers in order to bring to light his struggle to overcome his drug-ridden and violent past and to inspire others with his example.

An unprecedented constellation of experts - leading cancer doctors, policymakers, cutting-edge researchers, national advocates, and more - explore the legacy and the shortcomings from the 50-year war on cancer and look ahead to the future.

Why is his dolphin acting so strangely? Something must be wrong. It is the year 2013, and Robby lives in an Underwater Research Station with his scientist parents. Most of the time he has fun exploring the ocean caves with the dolphin who is his favorite companion. But something has frightened the dolphin, and Robby sets out to investigate. Then he finds the giant footprints. And he knows that something enormous and unknown is walking here across the bottom of the sea.

Based on years of archival research and on interviews with hundreds of Warhol's surviving friends, lovers and enemies, Warhol traces the artist's path from his origins as the impoverished son of Eastern European immigrants in 1930s Pittsburgh, through his early success as a commercial illustrator and his ground-breaking pivot into fine art, to the society portraiture and popular celebrity of the '70s and '80s, as he reflected and responded to the changing dynamics of commerce and culture.

A profoundly beautiful memoir about disability, difference, and living as a vulnerable body. Jan Grue had just become a father when he inherited a stack of his childhood medical records. Following a diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three, the raft of doctors' notes, clinical descriptions and case histories defined his body as defective and his future as bleak and limited. They conjured a childhood nothing like the one he remembered, that failed to anticipate the life he lived now. "I Live a Life Like Yours" is Grue's beautiful, groundbreaking search for a literary language that could better tell his story.

A high school boy arranges for his Pontiac Sunfire to take over his life. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

Following the 'three days of peace and music' at Woodstock, the 1969 gathering in Bethel, NY that would change the world forever, hippie paradises began to emerge all around the world. In the Dam Square in Amsterdam, long-haired young people wearing vibrant clothes and burning incense could be found meditating, playing music and discussing sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness and the search for an inner truth. They were a generation refusing to live the robotic and unquestioning life that their parents had known.

Have you ever wondered where we came from before we were born? Why we are here? Why supposed bad things happen to good people? The Land of Perception and Time is a fictional tale that provides clues to answer some of these questions. It is a journey of one’s imagination, understanding, and healing. Kenny is a good person who is unexpectedly diagnosed with a terminal illness. But that isn’t the biggest surprise he is about to experience.

Matthew and Hannah were just playing in the woods, a little way from home. But now he's tying Hannah to a tree. And she has never been so terrified. Patrick is there too, hidden, watching. He can't move. He can't take his eyes off Matthew's gun. Years later, in New York City, leading adult lives they never would have imagined, the three will meet again. With even more devastating consequences.

One cold, crisp night, Jack Sommers was faced with a choice – live forever according to the ancient, magical rules of Gaia, or die. Jack chose to live and in exchange he became a Winter – an immortal physical embodiment of the season on Earth. Every year, he must hunt the Season who comes before him. Summer kills Spring. Autumn kills Summer. Winter kills Autumn. And Spring kills Winter. Jack and Fleur, a Winter and a Spring, fall for each other against all odds.

Eran Sharon knows nothing of his father except that he left when Eran was a baby. Now a senior in high school and living with his protective but tight-lipped mother, Eran is a passionate young man deeply interested in social justice and equality. When he learns that the Houston police have launched a program to increase traffic stops, Eran organizes a peaceful protest. But a heated moment at the protest goes viral, and a reporter connects the Sharon family to a tragedy fifteen years earlier - and asks if Eran is anything like his father, a supposed terrorist.

One evening in South Florida, an author is dozing beside a swimming pool when a stranger interrupts his peace. The newcomer, a self-professed fan and a literary agent of sorts, has a proposal for the author, one that may shape the course of literary history. With just a few thousand words, this charming short story from Ray Bradbury may change the way you look at classic literature forever.