Showing results by narrator "Laura Knight-Keating" in All Categories

New York Times best-selling author Gordon Korman harkens back to his No More Dead Dogs days in this stand-alone that takes a tone more serious than you've ever heard from him before. A boy who's been a bully and hanging out with the wrong friends gets a new start after a memory-loss-inducing accident. But can someone really change who he is, or will the old him merely come back over time?

When it comes to love, hex marks the spot in this enchanting romance that will delight fans of Practical Magic and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. As a child, Delia Merriweather believed with all her heart that she was a witch. Because all Merriweather women were witches. There was...

Unconventional--yet effective--parenting strategies, carefully curated by the creator of the popular podcast The Longest Shortest Time Some of the best parenting advice that Hillary Frank ever received did not come from parenting experts, but from friends and podcast listeners who acted on a...

Maggie loves her new life in the Enchanted Forest now that she gets to help her friend, Bob, take care of magical animals at his stable. Not only does she look out for the creatures in his barn, but she also accompanies him on special trips to save injured ones. When they hear about a hurt unicorn in the forest, Maggie and Bob set off to find and rescue him. But along the way, Maggie's stepbrother Peter has his own plans to stop them. Will they reach the unicorn in time?

A year ago, Katie and her cousin Aster survived a night that left their world and easy friendship fractured. Desperate to heal and leave the past behind them, they tackle four days of hiking in the Utah backcountry. But the desert they’ve loved for years has tricks up its sleeve.

Freshman year is stressful enough without accidentally being married to the king of England. Of course, Wren Wheeler can’t tell her Northwestern classmates about that. Wren knows she needs to move on from Theo, but she can’t forget the look in his eyes when he left her on that island in Greece—and also, he took her dog. When an ill-fated attempt to rescue Comet the Apocalypse Dog turns into a chemistry-fueled reunion with Theo that’s caught by the paparazzi, Wren finds herself under the royal spotlight.

Merriment Feast's life is one constant party, complete with dazzling gowns and delicious pastries. Everything is perfect … except for her aunt's physically grueling training. Merri believes it's her responsibility to protect her family's traditions and the power they've held for generations. Rue Famine knows that only Feasts benefit from Feast rule. As the heir of House Famine, she spends her days studying potion-making in an enormous, dusty library and learning how to use her magic to help others.

Blair might be a little type-A, but she never thought of herself as completely overbearing … that is, until her two best friends drop her from their housing arrangement a week before her pre-college summer coding program is about to start. Blair knows if she switches to an on-campus dorm, her parents will make her give up her expensive sculpture class with her dream mentor in order to pay for it. Desperate, she agrees to be the fifth roommate to four off-campus sophomores who are also in a last-minute bind.

Girls in New America must have a chaperone with them at all times. Because of this, Stella is never alone. She can't go out by herself or learn about the world. She can't even spend time with boys except at formal Visitations. Still, Stella feels lucky that her chaperone, Sister Helen, is like a friend to her. And then the unthinkable happens. Sister Helen dies suddenly, and Stella feels lost. Especially when she's assigned a new chaperone just days later.

Jo Rivers, safely back in Seattle, asks the same question daily - how does a math genius go from taking down international criminals and saving the world economy to living a normal teenage life? The only answer she can come up with is - she doesn’t. With an overprotective father on her back and Kai on the other side of the world, Jo accepts an offer from Prodigy Stealth Solutions (PSS), who may have found a way to get her gift back.

Like the work of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, and Annie Proulx, Battleborn represents a near-perfect confluence of sensibility and setting, and the introduction of an exceptionally powerful and original literary voice. In each of these ten unforgettable stories, Claire Vaye Watkins writes her way fearlessly into the mythology of the American West, utterly reimagining it.

Wren Wheeler has flown five thousand miles across the ocean to discover she’s the worst kind of traveler: the kind who just wants to go home. Her senior-year trip to London was supposed to be life-changing, but by the last day, Wren’s perfectly planned itinerary is in tatters. There’s only one item left to check off: breakfast at the World’s End restaurant. The one thing she can still get right.

Twelve-year-old Lark is determined to escape her squalid life at Miss Starvenger’s boarding house, but she needs to find the coin to do it. Her grand scheme? To steal her fortune from the Royal Museum. Unfortunately, her heist goes off the rails, and Lark ends up stealing a magical sword right out from under the nose of Prince Jasper, who’s none too happy to have his plans thwarted. Lark soon discovers that the sword has a mind of its own, and has chosen her to be the next Nightingale, a fabled hero who must vanquish an ancient evil that is waking after centuries of sleep.

As far as Creel is concerned, all is finally right with the world. The dragon king, Shardas, and his queen, Velika, have made a home for themselves on the Far Islands, and for the first time in centuries, it seems dragons and humans might be able to live together in peace. So what better time for Creel and Luka to plan their wedding? But then Velika gets kidnapped by a band of rogue dragons in need of their own queen. And Creel and Luka leap to aid Shardas and rescue her - only to discover that Luka's father has set his sights on taking back the Far Islands from the dragons.

When a kid is dragged to Central Park in New York on a Saturday (when he could be at home watching the ball game), the last thing he wants is a history lesson from his mom. But then his mother starts telling him a story. A story about the giant structure sitting in right in front of them—Cleopatra’s Needle. It turns out that an enslaved boy and hundreds of other people spent more than six hundred days carving the Needle out of stone and pulling it upright. And another kid’s drawings were used to create the hieroglyphs on its sides.

Cincinnati, Ohio, lives and dies by college basketball, with two elite Division I rivals separated by a mere three miles. Rory’s dad just secured a new coaching gig at the University of Cincinnati, so it means yet another school and move for her, only this time to her dad’s hometown. Rory’s life revolves around basketball; she’s never had a close friend outside of it. Could this be a chance for a fresh start?

After a night of magic turns deadly, Iris Gray vows to never let another person learn she’s a witch. It doesn’t matter that the Witches’ Council found her innocent or that her magic was once viewed as a marvel—that night on the lake changed everything. Now settled in Washington, Iris hides who she really is and vents her frustrations by writing curses she never intends to cast. And while she loves working at the wildlife refuge she runs with her mother, she loathes Pike Alder, the witch-hating aspiring ornithologist who interns with them.

The Manhattan School for Magic is the newest kindling school in New York, but Maeve O’Donnell knows she doesn't deserve her place there. Though her sister, Izzy, is one of the school's founders and a hero to those who can now kindle, Maeve can't control her magic and she lives in fear of anyone—especially Izzy—finding out. When Maeve’s worst fears come true and her magic goes rogue, it damages not only the new school but Izzy’s reputation as well. While trying to repair what she’s broken, Maeve discovers a mysterious garden in the tenement neighborhood of the Tarnish.

Creel can't believe her aunt wants to sacrifice her to the local dragon. It's a ploy to lure a heroic knight so that he will fight the dragon, marry Creel out of chivalrous obligation, and lift the entire family out of poverty. Creel isn't worried. After all, nobody has seen a dragon in centuries. But when the beast actually appears, Creel not only bargains with him for her life, she also ends up with a rare bit of treasure from his hoard: a pair of simple blue slippers, or so she thinks.

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed. Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives.