Showing results by narrator "Stephanie Willing" in All Categories

What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there? Unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose? The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case.

Great horned owl Rufus is eight months old and still can’t hunt. When his mother is hit by a car, he discovers just how dangerous the forest can be. Reenie has given up on adults and learned how to care for herself - which is a good thing since she’s been sent to live with an aunt she’s never met. Yet this aunt has a wonderful secret: She’s a falconer who agrees to help Reenie catch an injured passage hawk in the wild and rehabilitate it. When Reenie traps bedraggled Rufus, his eyes lock onto her heart, and they form a powerful friendship.

Do you love Texas so much that you want to tell your friends and family all about it? We know the feeling! Take them on a tour of the best things about Texas! From Big Bend National Park, to the Texas State Fair, to the Dallas Farmers Market, to the Alamo, all audiences will learn fun facts showing them how much they, too, will love Texas!

People fear death (apparently just a tiny bit less than public speaking). We don't know how to talk about it, especially to children, and we're afraid to bring it up for fear of making people sadder. Yet children, especially, have questions, and this incredibly gentle and surprisingly light story is full of both comfort and vividly imagined answers. The first one gives the story its title: A boy hears the voice of his sister calling him one day, a sister he's never met because she died before he was born. The sister in the faded photograph on the wall.

It's 1969. Molly is a girl who's not sure she can feel anything anymore, because life sometimes hurts way too much. Her brother Barry ran away after having a fight with their father over the war in Vietnam. Now Barry's been drafted into that war - and Molly's mother tells her she has to travel across the country in an old schoolbus to find Barry and bring him home.

Santa has it so easy: a workforce of elves to make the presents, a team of reindeer to deliver them, even a hi-tech factory! The Easter Bunny has to make and wrap all the chocolate eggs and deliver them all by himself. Now Bunny has had enough. But will his plan for a Christmas disaster turn into a Christmas delight?

As an award-winning songwriter, Melody Mitchell has no time for distractions - and no time for romance. But when a sudden death in the family calls her back to the hometown she left behind, she’ll find herself questioning the many sacrifices she’s made on the path to success...especially when she learns she’s been named guardian of a newly orphaned infant.

Lily is reading a bedtime story to her younger brother and sister. The story tells about how they all became a family and about their life on an alpaca farm in Hawaii. Lily discovers a secret gate which she goes through to help Uncle Santee and the Menehune prepare for Christmas. 

Eleven-year-old Andie Jennings, of Morning Glory, Virginia (population: 8), is set to inherit her family's magic on Midsummer's Eve. And Andie plans to use it to bring her dad home for good from his long-haul trucking job. Except her gift doesn’t come. But when a see-through cat starts following her, Andie realizes she didn't fail to get her magic at all. Her gift just isn’t what anyone expected. Turns out, her new ability to communicate with the ghosts she can suddenly see may be the very thing that Morning Glory—and her own family—needs.

In VOLUME 9 of The Things Our Fathers Saw® series, ‘Homefront/Women At War’, we will take an often-overlooked view of the story of World War II. You will visit with the people on the homefront, from schoolkids navigating growing up during the Great Depression and the War, to the women on the factory floor and the armed services, newly independent but having to fight for their rights and later, their jobs, laying the seeds of societal change for the future.

A diverse range of community helpers introduce the vehicles that help them keep their communities safe while teaching children about what each vehicle was built to do. In volume one of Finn's Fun Trucks, learn about vehicles used by rapid responders, the airlines, the military, the post service, and even those who work in space!

A diverse range of community helpers introduce the vehicles they use to keep produce and grow their cities as well as keep their cities clean. In Volume 2 of Finn's Fun Trucks, children will discover an assortment of vehicles, including those that clean and haul stuff, construction vehicles, demolition vehicles, and farm vehicles.

He sees the world differently than most, and he feels like he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to raising his fifteen-year-old daughter, Cleo. She also feels like he has no idea what he’s doing, especially now that her mom is gone. They were both better off when Jana was around—Dave's wife, Cleo's mother. But now she's not, and they are left to figure out life on their own.

Isaac and Cass continue their harrowing journey and are forced to perform an act they'd never dreamed they would ever have to do in their lives. Meanwhile in Meadowview, tensions are rising as tragedy hits the community. And Harper discovers that all is not what it seems in a place she'd once thought was sleepy small-town America.

Finally, Isaac pours his heart out to Cass about his troubled childhood. Meanwhile, larger than life personalities clash in Meadowview, and tragedy strikes again. How much more can this small community take before it implodes? Perfect for fans of Harley Tate, Ryan Schow, Grace Hamilton, Kyla Stone, and Boyd Craven, Grip of Evil is the sixth book in this enthralling post-apocalyptic EMP survival thriller featuring flawed, complex characters and adrenaline-fueled action and adventure.

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.

Paleontology-loving Haven West and her older sister, Margie, have hardly talked with their mom since she retreated into a deep depression. Each morning Haven wonders if it’s going to be a “good” or “bad” day, and the only thing that seems to occupy her mom is collecting fossils for her bone garden. But one night, after an ominous moonlight heart-to-heart, her mom disappears—right before Haven discovers she’s inherited a monstrous family trait. It turns out that she is the latest in a long line of cryptids, a past her mom has been hiding.

Flint Larson has 41 days, 9 hours, and 42 minutes to live. He’s known exactly when he’s going to die since he was eight years old and half-lifed, a small twinge that tells a person when they’ve lived half their life. And from that moment, Flint’s done everything he can to make dying seem like a good thing. Cutting off all his friends, refusing to eat his favorite foods or listen to the best bands, reading only the most depressing literature by long-dead writers. He plans to spend his final days quietly back in his hometown with just his parents, waiting to die.

Two days after the disastrous town meeting, Charlie thinks she might go crazy being stuck indoors. But helping her next-door neighbor Kayla find some diapers for her baby might not have been the uneventful errand she'd planned, and when she takes the trip to her parents’ place out of town, she comes across a sight that will haunt her dreams forever. Grip of Death is the fourth book in this enthralling post-apocalyptic EMP survival thriller featuring flawed, complex characters, and adrenaline-fueled action and adventure.

Eleven-year-old Juniper Berry lives in a cabin with her family deep in the wild woods. Living off the grid is usually exciting, like the time she chased off three growling raccoons with a tree branch and some acorns, or when she thought she glimpsed the legendary Bigfoot. But her happy life in the wild ends abruptly when her younger brother gets sick, and the family moves to the city to be closer to the hospital. Juniper and her older sister are sent to live with cousins they hardly know and attend a public school for the first time, which is harder to navigate than the wild woods ever were.