Showing results by narrator "Christian Barillas" in All Categories

Palmer Sinclair has never needed anyone’s help. A successful loan officer, she’s all work and no play. But when splitting headaches and blurred vision begin to affect her job, she begrudgingly sees a doctor and receives a diagnosis that leaves her shaken to her core and with little time left. Facing an uncertain future, Palmer makes a bucket list, determined to do the things she’d only dreamed of before she goes.

It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself.

When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family’s hopes and dreams—and the burden of sharing his late uncle’s name. Daniel flounders at first, but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light. But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam’s hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel’s life forever.

A unique collection of 41 groundbreaking essays, poems, and artwork by migrants, refugees and Dreamers—including award-winning writers, artists, and activists—that illuminate what it is like living undocumented today.

Omega, they called that day. The end of the end. One enormous burst of electromagnetic radiation and everything that was even remotely electronic was fried to a crisp.With the country in ruins, the new government declared it the Republic of the True America, imposed martial law, and separated all survivors into settlement camps. Now, 20 years later, three 16-year-olds uncover the dark truth: All this time they've been labeled Less Thans.

Five students meet in the school cafeteria when they're forced to complete their school community service hours. There's George: the brain. Sara: the loner. Dayara: the tough kid. Nico: the rich kid. And Miguel, the jock. They immediately know that they have nothing in common with each other... even though their school administration has decided that they all belong together.

The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God’s eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent. The Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded?

Wherever he goes, the Dreamseller enchants, stirs up trouble, and inspires his listeners to search for the most important thing: the heart of the human soul. Every person he meets is someone who has abandoned their dreams and is struggling through life: a professor who has stopped pursuing his passions; a lonely alcoholic with no family; the elderly who have lost their zest for life. Through his wisdom, the Dreamseller helps them to look into their silent hearts and get to the root of their unhappiness.

Set in 1981 Guatemala, a lyrical debut novel tells the powerful tale of a boy who must decide what it means to be a man during a time of war. Carlos knows that when the soldiers arrive with warnings about the Communist rebels, it is time to be a man and defend the village, keep everyone safe. But Mama tells him not yet - he’s still her quiet moonfaced boy. The soldiers laugh at the villagers, and before they move on, a neighbor is found dangling from a tree, a sign on his neck: Communist.

Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth, with an estimated ten thousand members operating in dozens of states and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year in the US and abroad. But it is also misunderstood—less a drug cartel and more a hand-to-mouth organization whose criminal economy is based mostly on small-time extortion schemes and petty drug dealing. Steven Dudley brings listeners inside the nefarious group to tell a larger story of how a flawed US and Central American policy, and exploitative economic systems, helped foster the gang and sustain it.

David Espinoza is tired of being messed with. When a video of him getting knocked down by a bully’s slap goes viral at the end of junior year, David vows to use the summer to bulk up - do what it takes to become a man - and wow everyone when school starts again the fall. Soon David is spending all his time and money at Iron Life, a nearby gym that’s full of bodybuilders. Frustrated with his slow progress, his life eventually becomes all about his muscle gains. As it says on the Iron Life wall, What does not kill me makes me stronger.

What has two eyes, a mouth, and wrinkly green skin? Mark's shrunken head! It's a present from his Aunt Benna. A gift from the jungle island of Baladora. And Mark can't wait to show the kids at school! But late one night the head starts to glow. Because it's actually no ordinary head. It gives Mark a strange power. A magical power. A dangerous power...

Our Red Book takes us through stories of first periods, last periods, missing periods, and everything about bleeding that people wish they had been told. Weaving together powerful voices—from teenagers, midwives, Indigenous scholars, Olympic athletes, incarcerated writers, disoriented fathers, elected leaders who fought to make period products free, friends transitioning genders, grandmothers, and lovers—the book invites us on a collective journey of growth and change, with Rachel’s own voice as a guide.

It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's 40, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or 'externalising' memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

Itza era la princesa más hermosa de la tierra, y muchos pretendientes viajaban de todas partes para cortejarla. Aun siendo la hija del emperador, Itza no quería casarse con un hombre de poder y riqueza. En cambio, se enamoró de Popoca, un valiente guerrero que peleaba en el ejército de su padre, quien no le ofreció riquezas, sino la promesa de quedarse a su lado para siempre.

When the Smithsonian’s Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965 it featured 160 Andean skulls affixed to a wall to visualize how the world’s human population had exploded since the birth of Christ. Through a history of Inca mummies, a preHispanic surgery called trepanation, and Andean crania like these, Empires of the Dead explains how “ancient Peruvians” became the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and beyond.

Nothing exciting happens on the Hill of Dust in the remote mountains of Mexico in the 1950s. There's no electricity, no plumbing, no cars, just day after day of pasturing goats. And now, without his sister and mother, 11-year-old Teo's life feels even more barren. And then one day, the mysterious young Esma, who calls herself the Gypsy Queen of Lightning, rolls into town like a fresh burst of color. Against all odds, her caravan's Mistress of Destiny predicts that Teo and Esma will be longtime friends.

"HEY! What are you guys doing?" "We're going to metamorphosize." "Meta-WHAT-now?" "Transform into butterflies." "Right. Right. I knew that... WAIT?! You're telling me I can become a BUTTERFLY?" "Yes." "With wings?" "Yes." "Wait for ME!!"​​​​​​​ Ross Burach's hilarious, tongue-in-cheek exploration of metamorphosis will make you flutter with glee, while also providing real facts about how caterpillars transform into butterflies.

Una colección de 35 ensayos y poemas audaces, importantes e innovadores de inmigrantes, refugiados y soñadores, incluidos escritores, artistas y activistas galardonados, que iluminan la experiencia de vivir sin documentos.

Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. In this “exceptional work of investigative journalism…laced with compassion, insight, and humor” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Jeff Hobbs stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future — both their own and the cultures in which they live — in contemporary America.