Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Literature & Fiction

Twelve-year-old Rory is an artist like her father. Through a hundred drawing lessons, he has guided her hand, trained her eye, taught her how to mix colors and achieve perspective. Together they plan to paint a beautiful mural for Rory's mother, maybe a sunset, because she always misses the real sunset while she's at her job, supporting the family. Rory goes to find her father in his studio so she can show him her sketch for the mural. But when she arrives, she finds him kissing his model.

As Hailey is packing for the move, she finds a journal belonging to her older sister, who's away at college. The journal is called, "How to Be a Hater". Has Hailey found the Bible of coolness? Quite possibly. Armed with the journal and her sister's hand-me-down skinny jeans and ballet flats, Hailey takes on a whole new persona for her first week at West Hollywood High, and she is quickly noticed by Skyler and her crew, the most popular girls at school.

The end of everything is filled with beginnings in this surprising work of preapocalyptic fiction.

The world is spinning in the shadow of oncoming disaster. An asteroid is set to strike the Earth in just one week's time; catastrophe is unavoidable. The question isn't how to save the world - the question is what to do with the time that's left. Against this stark backdrop, three teens are swept up into intertwining stories of love,friendship, and family - all with the ultimate stakes at hand.

Sixteen-year-old Devon Mackintosh has always felt like an outsider at Keaton, the prestigious California boarding school perched above the Pacific. As long as she's not fitting in, Devon figures she might as well pad her application to Stanford's psych program. So junior year, she decides to become a peer counselor, a de facto therapist for students in crisis. At first, it seems like it will be an easy fly-on-the-wall gig, but her expectations are turned upside down when Jason Hutchins commits suicide.

In a small hospital town, a trio of teens rebel against their fatal diagnosis of XP (an allergy to sunlight) with late night Parkour, an extreme sport of daredevil risks. On a random summer night, while scaling a building like any other, the three happen to peer into an empty apartment and glimpse an older man with what looks like a dead girl. A game of cat-and-mouse ensues that escalates through the underground world of hospital confinement, off-the-grid sports, and forbidden love. Allie, who can never see the light of day, discovers she's the lone key to stopping a human monster.

ShadowStrike poisoned the water of Trinity Falls two months ago. Now the Trinity Four, the teens most affected by the poison, have been isolated in a remote mansion under 24-hour medical care while scientists on four continents rush to discover a cure. Meanwhile, US operatives scour the world for the bioterrorists responsible for this heinous crime as two teen virtual spies, also infected, hunt for the criminals on the Internet.

Young Marco Polo meets Kubla Khan, the King of Siam, and Saint Paul, and he falls in love with Khan's beautiful daughter, Golden Bells. After her magicians save him from death in the desert, he stays and marries her. Following her death, Polo returns to Venice as an old man.

The stories Hannah Gale’s father told her of breaking wild horses in Nevada one glorious summer when he was her age have captured her imagination. After her dad is called to fight in Iraq, she regularly stops to watch the horses at the nearby stable to feel closer to him, and finally gathers the nerve to ask the owner for a job. There she helps bring a rescued mare back from the brink, takes her first riding lesson, and witnesses the birth of the filly who steals her heart.

It is December 1681, and the words of Mr. Baggot, the tithingman, terrify young William. William is living a strange double life. By day he is a printer’s apprentice living in a white man’s house. By night, he is Weetasket of the Narraganset tribe who must risk Baggot’s wrath to search for his lost brother. Then comes the winter celebration of the Saturnalia - the ancient Roman holiday on which masters and slaves trade roles. Will William’s secrets be revealed? And what dark deeds of others will be brought to light on this fateful night?

Dark Dude captures New York City in the 1960s - violent, decaying, slouching away from the American dream - and brings to life a character who has no choice but to head out west in search of something better. But, when Rico and his ex-druggie friend arrive in Wisconsin, they discover that picket-fenced apple-pie people can be just as violent and judgmental as the neighbors they left behind.

Of The Lion of St. Mark, G.A. Henty wrote: "I have laid my story in the time not of the triumphs of Venice but of her hardest struggle for existence, when she defended herself successfully against the coalition of Hungary, Padua, and Genoa, for never at any time were the virtues of Venice, her steadfastness, her patriotism, and her willingness to make all sacrifice for her independence more brilliantly shown.

When sixteen-year-old Abigail’s mother dies in Scotland—leaving a faded photo, a weirdly cryptic letter, and a one-way ticket to America—she feels nothing. Why should she? Her mother abandoned her as a baby to grow up on an antinuclear commune and then in ugly foster homes. But the letter is a surprise in more ways than one: her father is living in California. What’s more, she has an eighteen-year-old sister, Becky. And the two are expecting Abigail to move in with them

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 vivid portrayal of the Civil War, and a look at the reasons behind the conflict. Johnny Heller, 14, convinces his mother to let him join a wagon train carrying food to Confederate soldiers. Along the way he’s captured by Blue Coats, and a black Union soldier insists that Johnny teach him to read. Brought up to believe that black people are inferior, Johnny deliberately tricks him. But as they get to know each other an uneasy alliance develops, followed by a friendship that surprises them both.

Hector and his amigo Mando are looking for adventure as they hit the road on a leisurely bike trip from their East L.A. neighborhood to the beach in Santa Monica. They've just set out when the fun begins, as Hector literally stumbles into a starring role in a TV commercial. Then he turns out to be the one-millionth fan at a Dodger game--and is escorted to a private box and treated like a VIP!

The Revolutionary War comes alive in this contemporary classic for young adults, a stirring, probing tale full of action and suspense, putting readers right into the heart of the war for independence.

Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his listener to a ground-level perspective, recreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold", the taps of his shoes, and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles", his worn tennies smelling of "summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of baseball". The child’s world is made up of small things - small, very important things.

Amid the sparkle and hum of a New York City winter, Jed and his best friend, Flyer, are filming a documentary of their neighborhood. In the process, Jed confronts painful memories of his older brother, Zeke, a poet who loved jazzman Charlie "Bird" Parker and who died, leaving behind his CDs, a notebook, and a lot of unanswered questions.

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."

In ancient Rome it was whispered that the great philosopher Plotinus could project his soul into another human being in a ritual that hinged on a kiss. In present-day Delphi, California, the sole remaining guardians of the Plotinus Ability hide in plain sight as members of the exclusive Oculus Society - until their leader, Octavia Harris, is killed in her own home. With no leads on the case, Octavia’s daughter, Gretchen, vows to find her mother’s murderer at any cost. One piece of the puzzle falls into place when Gretchen’s best friend, Jessica Shaw, discovers the Plotinus Ability.