Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Teen & Young Adult

Freckles is the only name he has ever known. His right hand is missing at the wrist, and he is haunted by not knowing how it happened. Raised since infancy in a Chicago orphanage, he speaks with a slight Irish accent and sings with a beautiful voice. Now, exhausted after many days of walking, he applies for a job with the Grand Rapids Lumber Company, guarding timber in the Limberlost Swamp from timber thieves. His Swamp Angel declares her love for him and promises that she will find his parents and prove that Freckles comes from "a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages."

A dark, allegorical, Gothic horror fable in verse telling of seduction, enthrallment, and deep sisterly love by the British Victorian poet, Christina Rossetti. The goblin market men, selling sweet and delicious fruits, inveigle Laura, a young girl, to partake of their tempting wares. Soon, she is lost to the world and her life begins slowly to fade away. Only the courage of her sister, Lizzie, can possibly save her from her fate. Will it be enough?

Award-winning audiobook narrator Mike Vendetti performs Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, one of Poe's best. Poe had a fear of being buried alive, and this theme runs through many of his tales, as it does this one. Poe may have also been a bit mad, and there is definitely madness in the House of Usher. Turn out the lights, and give this Gothic tale of horror a listen, but make sure you aren't alone.

Will is 16-year-old Lucy's best friend. Their lives intersect in dreams, where destiny pulls them together through different times in history. Even though their meetings are more real to Lucy than the present, Lucy is uncertain if Will exists outside her mind. Lucy's mum thinks there is something wrong when Lucy sleeps for days at a time. She is so caught up with finding a cure she doesn't see the real problem. Lucy is bullied at school and is thinking of ending her life. When the bullying goes too far and Lucy ends up in a coma, only Will can reach her.

Follow young Mary's journey from India to the mysterious grand house in Yorkshire, England. Packed with interesting characters, positive thinking, and bursting with nature, The Secret Garden continues to enthrall and educate children and adults alike. Subtle sound effects, along with evenly paced reading, makes this adaptation a delight to listen to.

This is a lovely piece of history of the renowned zoo. Easily noted are the magnificent donations of Ellen B. Scripps and the great time and energy of Dr. Harry Wegeforth among others.

Two of the scientists from the acclaimed Spindrift Scientific Foundation in New Jersey are missing in the Philippines. When the staff zoologist, Dr. Howard Shannon, and the staff archaeologist, Dr. Anthony Briotti, fail to turn up on schedule from an expedition to the Sulu Sea, the entire Foundation became personally concerned. All work stops while the staff speculates on what might have happened and what course of action to take.  

Two scientists working on a top-secret government project suddenly start talking gibberish. The government does not know how or why this has happened and asks the Brants if they can move the remaining scientists to Spindrift Island, a scientific foundation located on an island off the New Jersey Coast, in order to better protect them. The Brants agree. Rick and Scotty become suspicious of a new barber in town and believe he is part of an espionage ring.  

Who wants to live a century before seeing the outside world? Not Ariadne. Restless and idealistic, the young immortal sneaks out of the Eves’ secret compound and finds the outside world more dangerous than she could have imagined. Cut off from her own kind and hunted by mortals, she is forced to hide among the Adams, the immortal sons born of her sisters. But the Adams have sinister plans of their own. Ariadne must find a way to stop them, even if it means sacrificing her immortal life.

Chace, a teenage orphan with the power to see the future, saves people anonymously by leaving them a letter to find in their moment of crisis. When his friends are in danger, he is there. He saves them but cannot predict the consequences. He can see their future, but he cannot see his own. Chase is interrupted while writing to save his best friend, Sarah. With an incomplete letter, her rescue feels equally incomplete inside. Sarah cannot rest until she speaks to the one person who helped her want to go on living.

This short story is one of those things that literally took a village to accomplish. From bouncing around ideas to coming up with the characters to listening to me ramble on and on and on about it. In itself, it is a fun little piece that the author fell in love with while trying to flesh out a few of the main characters of his fLUX Runners series.

"The Raven" and other poems suitable for the 10th and 11th grades.

A poor tailor is too ill to finish the beautiful coat and waistcoat he has been stitching for the mayor of Gloucester to wear at his wedding on Christmas morning. He sends his cat, Simpkin, out in the snowy evening to buy some food and, most importantly, the cherry-colored silk he needs to finish his coat and waistcoat. While Simpkin is out, the tailor discovers all the mice Simpkin has hidden under the teacups and accidentally frees them all. They run out of the house, but not before they overhear him speak aloud his fears that he will not be able to complete his work.

Old Judge Anderson feared the inevitable - he was to be replaced by a Cyber, a lightning-fast, softly-speaking machine that deals out decisions from its cyber-bench free of human errors and motions. The District Attorney has a surprise up his sleeve for the Judge, a case against a man who claims he can outwit any Cyber, and is willing to prove it in Judge Anderson's court room. As the trial gets underway, Judge Anderson must come to grips with a future he wishes would just go away. What would his judicial and ethical hero, Justice Holmes, think?

Guy de Maupassant, French master of the short story, had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the daily lives of humans, which often reveal our darker nature. Many of his works also centered on the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served.  

In this collection of stories, we follow Buster, who is born on the river and lives with his mother as a cub. While his mother is out hunting for food, Buster meets Loup the lynx who has only bad intentions. Buster manages to escape from Loup and ends up on a series of adventures he could not imagine. 

Ginnie Dare is the communications officer for her family's spacefaring shipping company. They arrive at Eshu for a routine supply drop and discover the entire settlement's population has vanished. Their search of the site reveals nothing out of place, except the people, but ends in a tense confrontation with the natives. During the conflict, Ginnie discovers an alien artifact that may be the key to diffusing the conflict. Can she decode the artifact before it's taken by the Sector Defense Force?

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's collection of fairytales called Kinder- und Hausmärchen ( Children's and Household Tales) was published in 1812. Filled with moral lessons that are not wrapped up in the now-expected "Disney-esque" feel, these stories may shock or scare you, but they have been the inspiration for some of the most beloved modern fairytales we know and love. Sixty-two fairytales are included in this collection.

A Christmas Carol is one of Charles Dickens' best loved tales. Ebenezer Scrooge, described as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner," is certainly no lover of the Christmas season. He is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him that he will be visited by three further spirits: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come.

The wonderful ghostly world of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, re-told in a proper, warm, friendly London accent. Ebenezer Scrooge is a bitter old man, his hard-nosed attitude to Christmas and the hard-up of the streets of London, summed up as "bah, humbug!" In this passionate telling, C. C. Hogan will take you back to 1843, to the world of the common man, of extreme poverty, but of honest hearts and honest souls.