Showing results by narrator "Johnny Heller" in All Categories

This entertaining and humorous chapter book features animals who can perform amazing acts like riding motocross, foretelling the weather, and playing a guitar. These stories will enchant readers and empower them to devour the more text-heavy “grown up” style of the book, while still keeping...

Fired from his longtime job as captain of the Coal Patrol, two-foot-three-inch, 1,300-year-old elf Gumdrop Coal is angry. He's one of Santa's original elves, inspired by the fat man's vision to bring joy to children on that one special day each year. But somewhere along the way, things went sour for Gumdrop. Maybe it was delivering one too many lumps of coal for the Naughty List. Maybe it's the conspiracy against Christmas that he's starting to sense down every chimney.

When facing the impossible, will you believe? Storm clouds gather over a small Michigan town. As thunder shakes the sky, the lights inside St. Thomas Church flicker...and then go out. All is black until a thick bolt of lightning slices the sky, striking the church’s large wooden cross - leaving it ablaze and splintered in two. When the storm ends, the search for answers begins. James Lindy, the church’s blind minister, wonders how his small congregation can repair the cross and keep their faith in the midst of adversity.

Luke Bledsoe has a wicked fastball. But he shouldn’t be pitching, or even playing ball—especially not left-handed. That’s the side of the devil, says his pa‚ a fundamentalist preacher. But Luke’s new-found friends and left-handed uncle say he’s blessed with God-given talent. Luke doesn’t know who to believe anymore. All his life, this young teen’s been trying to please his pa. Now it’s time to sort out what he wants for himself.

When a cafeteria contest kicks off in school, all the kids in Room 3B are eager to take the prize - and none more than Horrible Harry. It seems the day's winners are being decided by a mathematical code, and if Harry can crack it he'll get a leg up on his competition. But cracking the code is easier said than done, and if pesky Mary finds out what he's up to, she's sure to cry foul.

He's played a deranged groundskeeper, a bellowing lounge singer, a paranormal exterminator, and a grouchy weatherman. He is William James "Bill" Murray, America's greatest national treasure. From his childhood lugging golf bags at a country club to his first taste of success on Saturday Night Live, from his starring roles in Hollywood blockbusters to his reinvention as a hipster icon for the 21st century, The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray chronicles every aspect of his extraordinary life and career.

From Afghanistan's Hindu Kush peaks and sunbaked Helmand Valley to Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi in Iraq, American snipers have braved heart-pounding situations to hit their human targets dead-on. Few military feats stir the imagination like the image of a pair of riflemen waiting quietly in a building, a bomb crater, or a mountain pass for a Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter to walk into their crosshairs. Sniper presents real-life tales from the military's frontline snipers---their hits and their misses, the anguish of loss, and the anxiety of the first kill.

Virgil Erath is on death row for a crime he didn't commit. But he gets a new beginning when he is mystically transported to a planet of hallucinatory landscapes, warring humanoid races, and a cloud-filled sky that has never seen the sun. Its inhabitants of this world call it Amtor—others have called it “Venus.” Captured by a clan of winged warriors, Virgil is brought before the great Jong Kum Kloojong. But this “king of kings” is under attack by a deadly terrorist sect, and Virgil may be his only hope of saving Amtor from an apocalyptic war.

The era of hope and change is dead...and it only took six months in office to kill it. Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard.

On a break from the Windy City, aspiring crime novelist Jake Justus and his wife, Helene, are acquainting themselves with Manhattan’s finest cocktail lounges when they befriend Dennis Morrison, a blind-drunk groom. The handsome former male escort thought he’d found his bounty in homely heiress Bertha Lutts, but while their wedding night may have been a bust, the morning after turned out to be the real horror. It seems Bertha has vanished from their bridal suite and in her place is an unidentified beheaded woman.

Western culture has largely reduced Jesus to being an other-worldly savior of the soul pointing the way to heaven. But the messiah was far more. Ancient followers knew Jesus as one who came to redeem humanity physically mentally, spiritually and culturally. Wholly Jesus has a surprising voice in this holistic, pluralistic, ecological, peace-seeking world. And his message of transformed people transforming their world is radically unique and wonderfully freeing.

Few legal cases in American history are as riveting as the controversy surrounding the will of Virginia Senator John Randolph (1773-1833), which—almost inexplicably—freed all 383 of his slaves in one of the largest and most publicized manumissions in American history. So famous is the case that Ta-Nehisi Coates has used it to condemn Randolph’s cousin, Thomas Jefferson, for failing to free his own slaves.

Defense attorney John J. Malone may be a habitué of Windy City dive bars, but he's never lost his balance - until now. Not only is he shaken by the contract killing of his latest client, but one of his best friends, socialite Helene Justus, is turning into a complete stranger.

Chris West’s deadly prowess with his weapon of choice had earned him the name Red Axe in the Stone Age world of Pellucidar at the Earth’s core. Sentenced to die along with the woman he loved by the merciless Mahars, West had fought his way free of the lethal laboratories and ghastly arenas of their underground city. Now he must carve a path for his small band of fugitives through a primordial landscape teeming with monstrous beasts and brutish men bent on their destruction.

Talented children’s author Claudia Mills pens this inspiring story about one boy’s quest for independence. Oliver Olson’s teacher wants her students to come up with one idea to change the world. Oliver doubts he’ll think up anything great, since his overprotective parents never let him think for himself. But completing a science project—without his parents’ help—makes him realize that he may have one great idea after all.

American Civil Wars takes listeners beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the US Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings - all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s.

There are few jobs that Harvey Longmire hasn't had, but he made his name as campaign trail fixer, an expert in the art of exploiting an enemy's secrets. For nearly a decade, Harvey was the sharpest man in the Beltway, but he quit in 1972, trading political dirty work for a quiet life on a farm. Now two old friends want him back in the game. A millionaire named Vullo has started a foundation to investigate conspiracies, and Harvey happens to be the expert on the most prominent case: the infamous disappearance of a man named Arch Mix.

Mars has been a source of fascination and speculation ever since the ancient Egyptians observed its blood-red hue and named it for their god of war and plague. But it wasn't until the 19th century when "canals" were observed on the surface of the Red Planet, suggesting the presence of water, that scientists, novelists, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs became obsessed with the question of whether there's life on Mars. The Big Book of Mars is the most comprehensive look at our relationship with Mars - yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Starting for the first-place Cubs and hitting a career high of .274, for the first time in his life, Mickey Rawlings is feeling comfortable enough to buy furniture. But it is a time of mixed blessings; ominous battles are brewing at home and abroad. On the homefront, Major League baseball may be suspended for the duration of the war, anti-German sentiment is running high, and Mickey's best friend - a rookie named Willie Kaiser - has just been shot right on the diamond.

The kids in Room 3B are holding a Sharing and Caring Tag Sale to earn money for charity. Song Lee and Ida are selling friendship bracelets, Doug is selling books, and Sid is selling delicious, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. But something else is on Harry's mind: His grandmother is having money trouble, and Harry wants to help. So he comes up with a plan to raise money for her. The problem is that Harry doesn't realize his plan involves stealing from the class' charity collection! How can Doug stop his friend from becoming a horrible thief?