Showing results by narrator "Michael Crouch" in All Categories

Eleven-year-old Jake’s life has just turned upside-down. His father was wounded in Afghanistan, and his mother is going to leave to care for him. That means Jake’s spending the summer on tiny Dewees Island with his grandmother. The island is a nature sanctuary - no cars or paved roads, no stores or restaurants. To make matters worse, Jake’s grandmother doesn’t believe in cable or the internet. Which means Jake has no cell phone, no video games...and no friends. This is going to be the worst summer ever!

We found out who Visser Four is. And he has found the Time Matrix, the machine Elfangor had hidden in the abandoned construction site. The same place we met him on a night none of us will ever forget. Especially me. Now Visser Four has the Matrix, and he plans to use it to become Visser One. But Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Ax and I can't let that happen. We can't let him alter time so that the Yeerks will win the invasion. So we're prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. Eventually, one of us will lose this fight.

I've promised myself that this was going to be the year to finally buckle down. I'm a junior, and I’ve settled on a major. I've got focus and determination. The one thing I haven't figured out yet? How to deal with the massive crush I've been harboring on the guy in study carrel six. I don’t know his name, and some of my friends think it’s time for me to move on, but he has this whole sexy, broody, dark eyes and messy hair thing going for him. And yeah, he seems like he could be my polar opposite.

Jeremiah is the world’s biggest baseball fan. He really loves baseball and he knows just about everything there is to know about his favorite sport. So when he’s told he can’t play baseball following an operation on his heart, Jeremiah decides he’ll do the next best thing and become a coach. Hillcrest, where Jeremiah and his father Walt have just moved, is a town known for its championship baseball team. But Jeremiah finds the town caught up in a scandal and about ready to give up on baseball.

In the newest novel by beloved National Book Award finalist Lisa Graff, kids have turned the tables on their parents, and all the rules have been tossed out the window. But does Winnie have what it takes to hold her ground and keep everyone happy? This story, with a pitch-perfect middle grade voice and zany yet poignant situation, is perfect for fans of Sharon Creech, Louis Sachar, and Jack Gantos.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan, read by Michael Crouch. Loki the trickster god is free from his chains. Now he's readying Naglfar, the Ship of the Dead, armed with a host of giants and zombies, to sail against the Norse gods and begin the final battle of Ragnarok. It's up to Magnus Chase and his friends to stop Loki's plans, but to do so they will have to sail across the oceans of Midgard, Jotunheim and Niflheim in a desperate race to reach Naglfar before it's ready to sail on Midsummer's Day.

Ten years ago, the small town of Bates, South Carolina, was changed forever with the appearance of a slip of paper. Six names. Six people set to die. Six months later, they were gone. But the list maker was far from done with their town. Like clockwork, new lists come out every six months. To keep their names off of them, the citizens go to extraordinary lengths and keep terrifying secrets. Someone is controlling their town. But who? And, most importantly, why?

After an experience he’d rather forget, Vincent is determined to be done with art. So when he and his little sister, Lili, spend spring break with their art conservator great-uncle, Vincent's plan is to stay glued to his phone. That is, until Lili disappears into one of the world's most famous paintings and Vincent learns his parents have been hiding something from him: Their family is the last of The Restorationists, a secret society with the power to travel through paintings—and a duty to protect them from evil forces.

“If a man won’t fight for what is rightly his, then he ain’t much account.” With this challenge from his dying father, young Shell Tucker rode out after three men who had stolen the twenty thousand dollars his father was carrying. Two of the men he hunted, Doc Sites and Kid Reese, were his friends. Dreaming of adventure, Tucker had wanted to join their gang. But now, with his father gone and the people back home desperately in need of the proceeds from the cattle drive, Shell was determined to uphold his father’s reputation and recover their money.

J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world. J is one of only 26 students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know - and all they are allowed to know. But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place?

When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. In his transcendent fourth novel, Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason delivers a magisterial and highly inventive tale brimming with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other.

In the early 1970s, in Stovall, Texas, seventeen-year-old Earl—a loner, dreamer, lover of music and words—meets Tina, the new girl in town. Tina convinces Earl to drive her to see her mother in Austin, where Earl and Tina are quickly separated. Two days later, Earl is being questioned by the police about Tina’s disappearance and the blood in the trunk of his car. But Earl can’t remember what happened in Austin, and with little financial support from his working-class family, he is sentenced for a crime he did not commit.

Lewis Madigan is young, gay, out of work, and getting antsy when he’s roped into providing end-of-life care for his insufferable homophobic neighbor, Chester Wheeler. Lewis doesn’t need the aggravation, just the money. The only requirements: run errands, be on call, and put up with a miserable old churl no one else in Buffalo can bear. After exchanging barbs, bickering, baiting, and pushing buttons, Chester hits Lewis with the big ask. Lewis can’t say no to a dying wish.

Cloning is a luxury for the wealthy. For Chance Harker, it’s a way of getting on with his lives. Five years ago, when he was sixteen, he and his brother, Marley, were murdered in a kidnapping gone wrong. Chance was revived—and his grieving parents met his existence with anger, neglect, and aversion. The public, though? They can’t get enough of the death-defying stunts he has parlayed into a social media spectacle. But after Chance’s latest “refresh,” he awakens to accusations that he’s killed Lee Conway, a stranger Chance has never met.

After a life-changing summer, four friends are finally ready for senior year. Gabriel is thrilled to create his school's first LGBTQ+ advocacy group, but his long-distance relationship is fading from summer love to something else. Heath feels secure for the first time in years, but with his future riding on a baseball scholarship each pitch triggers his anxiety. Reese is set on pursuing a career in fashion design, but his creativity takes him in an unexpected direction. Sal wants to be in politics. After a chat with his aunt, he is ready for an unlikely path.

On a foggy night in Amsterdam, a man falls from a rooftop to the wet pavement below. It's Archibald McQuinn, the notorious cat burglar, and he's dying. As sirens wail in the distance, Archie manages to get out two last words to his young son, March: "Find jewels." But March learns that his father is not talking about hidden loot. He's talking about Jules, the twin sister March never knew he had. No sooner than the two find each other, they're picked up by the police and sent to the world's worst orphanage. It's not hard time, but it feels like it.

Alexandra Jennings might be the hero of The Medoran Chronicles, but she would be lost without her three closest friends. They are her heroes, and like all heroes, they each have their own story. Meet the real D.C. in 'Crowns and Curses' and discover how she becomes the princess Alex once despised but now adores. Follow Jordan on his healing journey in 'Scars and Silence' as he struggles in the wake of being rescued from his living nightmare. Walk beside Bear in 'Hearts and Headstones' as he faces an unspeakable trauma while helping his world prepare for the coming war.

Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. But all is not right in Ilya's world: He's consumed by the fate of his older brother, Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison. With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence.

​Veronyka is no longer an orphaned stable boy or a nameless Phoenix Rider apprentice: she is the daughter of Pheronia Ashfire, the last queen of the Golden Empire…and the niece of Avalkyra Ashfire, the resurrected rebel queen who tore the empire apart.

Local weather reporter Suzanne Maretto craves nothing more than to transcend life at her suburban cable television news station and follow in the footsteps of her idol: Barbara Walters. When she concludes that her unglamorous husband is getting in the way of her dream of stardom, the solution seems obvious: Get rid of him. She seduces a 15-year-old admirer, Jimmy, and persuades him to do her dirty work. Mission accomplished, Suzanne takes to the airwaves in her new role as grieving widow, in search of a TV deal. If that means selling Jimmy down the river, she’s ready.