Showing results by narrator "August Ross" in All Categories

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now armed with his father's mysterious and deadly atheme, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay. Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage.

It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move on. His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live - not walk around half dead, pining for her. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare with the dead girl he fell in love with. Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong....

Frederick is the shy new boy, and Xio is the bubbly chica who lends him a pen on the first day of class. They become fast friends - but when Xio decides she wants to be more than friends, Frederick isn't so sure. He loves hanging out with Xio and her crew, but he doesn't like her that way. Instead he finds himself thinking more and more about Victor, the captain of the soccer team. But does that mean Frederick's gay? He hopes not - he sees how everyone makes fun of Iggy, a boy all the other kids think is gay. Frederick has to deal with some tough choices.

Twelve-year-old George Stable wants to be a rock star someday, but he gets horrible stage fright - unless he has his old teddy bear with him. Hiding the teddy in his guitar seems like a brilliant idea. Then George discovers that someone has hidden stolen jewels in the stuffing of his beloved bear. George's embarrassing "teddy bear habit" becomes the center of a life-and-death chase through Manhattan. Can George survive long enough to make his first TV appearance?

At 14, Fergy is tired of his family’s lifestyle. He’s tired of living in a van. He’s sick of peddling pamphlets of his father’s writings. And most of all he hates stealing things, even though J. P. says it’s all right to "reclaim" necessities from society. Fergy listens to J.P. talk about the evils of "the system," and gradually Fergy realizes that he no longer respects his father. Early one morning, with Ooma in tow, Fergy runs away. Gussie’s wealthy parents live in Boston, and Fergy hopes that if he can find them, he and Ooma can have the "regular and normal" life he longs for.

It’s 1895 in New York City. Hard times have hit, and life isn’t going to get noticeably better any time soon. Almost-13-year-old Chipper Carey is running with the Midnight Rats kid gang just to survive. Ma died of consumption when he was six. He knows Ma wouldn’t have approved. But what ultimately has to matter is reality, and without the Midnight Rats, Chipper would have nothing. He’d starve. Fortunately for Chipper, fate takes over and introduces him to the wealthy Miss Sibley.

At 13, George Stable still hasn't made his mark on the world. Oh, he plays the guitar and sings a little. And he appeared on television for six whole seconds once. A couple of years ago, he even wrote a sort of book, called The Teddy Bear Habit. But nothing really exciting has happened to him. But now, it looks as if his big chance has finally come. This agent of his, Woody Woodward, who discovered him during his six-second TV career, has come up with a plan to make him a hot new guitar-playing teenage star.

Back before the stock market crash, Jack’s dad had been working steadily, and their family had had plenty of money. But now, in the middle of the 1930s depression, there isn’t much work for a trombone player - just a gig down in New York City once in a while. So 14-year-old Jack is doing his best to help out. He’s lucky enough to get a weekend job at the town boat club where the “rich folks” hang out, but Jack wishes his dad would at least try to get a regular job.

After a tumultuous first semester in seventh grade, Jed Rivers returns triumphant - or so he thinks. After embracing his undeadness to put his archenemy Robbie in his place, the 13-year-old zombie thought he'd have a much easier time surviving the second semester relatively intact. That was before he came across the antizombie propaganda published by the mysterious NZN Network, a group trying to push Hollywood stereotypes as the truth.

In Mexico, fitting in might be easier than Jed imagined, with holidays such as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Here, a rising eighth-grade zombie boy and his zombie dog won't draw that much attention. But then Tread unwittingly sets off Mexico's Chupacabra Defense Network, and Jed accidentally collides with a bus. So much for blending in. The unusual pair catch the eye of a professional wrestler, who challenges Jed to a fight!

Paulie Horvath is never going to be a good student like his brother, John, never going to follow his hardworking father into the plumbing trade, never going to ease his mother's mind by passing tests or cleaning up his room. But once he hears jazz by accident from the basement of a speakeasy, he knows exactly what he will do: learn that music and make it his life. Jazz is all around in gangland Chicago, but not so easy for a 12-year-old to find, especially when his father disapproves of it. Paulie has to lie, beg, and steal just to get time for lessons, time to practice, time to slip across town to see stars like King Oliver and Louis Armstrong.

Jed's not your typical middle school geek. He is, to use the politically correct term, cardiovascularly challenged. And while his parents have attempted to shield him from the implications of being different for as long as they could (Jed was eight and at a friend's sister's birthday party when he blew his lips off onto the cake in front of everyone, finally prompting the "big talk" from his parents and an emergency superglue repair by his dad), seventh grade at Pine Hollow Middle School as a target of Robbie the supreme school bully and his pack of moronic toadies is rapidly becoming unbearable.