Showing results by narrator "Christopher Ragland" in All Categories

Literary Critters is a truly unique book, introducing young readers to classic literary figures and encouraging them to use their imaginations. As William Shakesbear visits his fellow Literary Critter Guild members, he’s greeted with lots of advice from his author friends and has some adventures along the way. This playful story promotes literacy and storytelling as quirky playwright William Shakesbear sets off to find some inspiration for his new play.

To be an airman in the Eighth Air Force flying over the war-torn skies of Europe required skill, tenacity, and luck. Those who were shot down and evaded capture needed all of that and more if they were to make it back to friendly lines. These are their stories. Each is compiled from the original intelligence debrief written by the pilots or aircrew themselves. Bill Yenne details how a spider web of escape routes sprang up, created by the local Résistance.

You're woken early by the doorbell. It's a young girl, the daughter of the love of your life. She's scared, covered in blood, she says her mother is hurt. You let her in, try to calm her down, tell her you're going to get help. You reach for your phone, but it lights up with a notification before you touch it. It's an Amber Alert - a child has been abducted by a dangerous suspect. The child is the girl standing in front of you. The suspect? You.

Rumor has it that the abandoned house by the cemetery is haunted by the ghost of a witch. But rumors won’t stop carpenter Mike Kostner from rehabbing the place as a haunted house attraction. Soon he’ll learn that fresh wood and nails can’t keep decades of rumors down. There are noises in the walls, and fresh blood on the floor: secrets that would be better not to discover. And behind the rumors is a real ghost who will do whatever it takes to ensure the house reopens. She needs people to fill her house on Halloween. There’s a dark, horrible ritual to fulfill. Because while the witch may have been dead...she doesn’t intend to stay that way. 

Finger-wagging moralizers say the love of money is the root of all evil. They assume that making a lot of money requires exploiting others, and that the best way to wash off the resulting stain is to give a lot of it away.

Teachers deal with change on a regular basis, but there are some principles at the core of teaching that remain constant and that have the biggest impact on student achievement. In this inspiring book from the authors', bestselling author and speaker, you’ll learn how to focus on the most important things in the classroom, not just the "current" things. The authors reveal essential truths that will make you a more effective educator in areas such as student relationships, classroom management, and classroom culture.

Six circles of relationship formed around Jesus in his time on earth. In the outermost circle, the Crowds who were curious. Next, the Five Thousand who were needy, while the Seventy worked and served in Jesus’ ministry; then came the Twelve who walked with Jesus, the Three who suffered and celebrated with him, and finally the One who sat beside him at the Last Supper. In The One Jesus Loves, you will learn about each of the six circles, and what it takes to move further in, closer and closer to Jesus.

In a world ravaged by the effects of climate change, sixteen-year-old Joe has been left with nothing but mountains full of junk. When Joe and his friends are caught in an avalanche of waste, six-year-old Lily is left deathly ill, and Joe sets out towards a mysterious city to seek out help. Nothing could prepare him for what he finds on the way: a dangerous prince wearing a suit made of stars, the wolf from Red Riding Hood bearing its teeth, and the reality-changing power of storytelling aloud.

Written by one of the world's leading missionary statesmen, this book describes the spiritual dynamics of leadership, how one can be more fully a Spirit-filled leader, and how to be more aflame for God.

Esteemed historian Dr Carter Malkasian explains how this conflict in a small peninsula in East Asia had a tremendous impact on the entire international system and the balance of power between the two superpowers, America and Russia. In this history, he examines how the West demonstrated its resolve to thwart Communist aggression and the armed forces of China, the Soviet Union and the United States came into direct combat for the only time during the Cold War.

Daily Guideposts 2018 centers on the theme “Unfailing Love” from Psalm 33:22, and is filled with brand-new devotions from forty-nine writers. Each day listeners will enjoy a Scripture verse, a true first-person story told in an informal, conversational style, which shares the ways God speaks to us in the ordinary events of life, and a brief prayer to help focus the listener to apply the day’s message. For those who wish for more, “Digging Deeper” provides additional Bible references that relate to the day’s reading.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 19th January 1809. Poe is also one of a number of authors credited with inventing the detective genre with his Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin. He's featured in three stories, including the legendary ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, and by sheer deduction, logic and a touch of Gallic arrogance revealed what was hidden to the rest of us.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. ‘Rapaccinni’s Daughter’ is a classic piece of literature from his pen. Set in Italy, it is an unsettling story of romance destroyed by science.

Wallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and worked briefly as a journalist. In 1923 ‘Harmonium’ was published. At last, at age 38, he was an overnight success. His career was not prodigious in quantity but its quality was exceptional and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

Get a Financial Grip looks at the psychology and mindset of success as well as looking at the asset classes that can be used to attain the leverage and returns to achieve financial goals. The author presents a comprehensive, but easy-to-understand plan for building and balancing a portfolio for generating wealth through compound growth. It shows how your money can work for you and give you the best odds of breaking the link between work and income. This is not just another text on financial and investment theory; it is a practical, specific and life-changing plan to propel your finances.

Dealing with the tragic death of his father, 14-year-old Reggie finds the isolation of the woods near his house comforting. Until one day, a man – stumbling, bleeding, clearly distressed – emerges from the shadows. Reggie hides the man in his treehouse, and helps the stranger recover. Each with stories to share, soon the pair form a strange friendship. But then Reggie learns that his new friend is a ruthless contract killer.

Benét was born on 22nd July in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Prodigiously his first book was published at 17 and for he obtained his M.A. in English when he submitted a poetry volume as his thesis. Whilst travelling in France, in the early '20s, he met and quickly married a fellow writer and poet, Rosemary Carr. She would also collaborate with him on several works. In Paris he wrote the book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War ‘John Brown's Body’, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Henry James was born 15th April 1843, in New York City. A prolific author he was able to easily move across genres to create vivid and totally real worlds and situations and to offer sophisticated observations of human relations as well as realistic social criticism. The Great Good Place is a formidable short story with a sharp view of a writer who really needs to find peace but unexpectedly finds himself in paradise. Or does he?

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? Ambrose Bierce is an author whose words take us one way and then send us another. These miniature masterpieces all have a central truth and plausibility that seems to vanish in an ending that can be anything from wry, to shocking to hallucinatory.