Showing results by narrator "Pete Cross" in All Categories

A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

For a millennium, the Children of Amarid have served the people of Tobyn-Ser. Drawing upon the Mage-Craft, which flows from the psychic bond they forge with their avian familiars, the Mages of the Order have fulfilled their oaths by healing the injured and ill, repelling invasions by the land's enemies, and caring for the people in times of crisis. They are governed by laws handed down by Amarid, the first of their kind, who committed the Mage-Craft to the people's protection. Only once in a thousand years has a mage defied those laws.

The Case for Open Borders deflates the mythology of national security through border lockdowns by revisiting their historical origins; it counters the conspiracies of immigration’s economic consequences; it urgently considers the challenges of climate change beyond the boundaries of narrow national identities. This book grounds its argument in the experiences and thinking of those on the frontlines of the crisis, spanning the world to do so. In each chapter, John Washington profiles a character impacted by borders.

December 6, 1941: Best friends Frank and Stanley have it good. Their dads are Navy pilots stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the boys get a front-row view of the huge battleships and the sparkling water. Yes, World War II is raging in Europe and in Asia, but the US isn't involved in the war, and the boys are free to dream about becoming comic book creators. They've even invented a superhero of their own, in the style of Batman, Superman, Captain America, and other stars of the Golden Age of Comics. December 7th, 1941: Everything explodes.

Pint-sized Seattle middle-school teacher and gay dating blogger Hayden McCall and his best friend Hollister are invited to a fundraiser for Bakers Without Borders. The celebrity performer, Kennedy Osaka, is the artistic director of Mysterium, an upscale circus arts show combining magic, acrobatics, and a Michelin-star dinner. But Kennedy is a no-show—until she’s found dead in her hotel suite. When frenemy Sarah Lee is discovered in the room with the body, Hayden and Hollister are on the case to find the real culprit before Sarah Lee is charged with the crime.

When German troops moved into Austria in 1938, Jägerstätter was the only man in his village to vote against the Anschluss (Annexation of Austria). Although he was not involved in any political organization and did, in fact, undergo one brief period of military training, he remained openly anti-Nazi and declared he would not fight in Hitler's war. This 20th century martyr, a husband and father of three, was beheaded for his refusal to serve a ruler his conscience could not accept.

Widely considered one of the great American novels, Herman Melville's masterpiece went largely unread during his lifetime and was out of print at the time of his death in 1891. Called the greatest book about the sea ever written by D.H. Lawrence, Moby Dick features detailed descriptions of whale hunting and whale oil extraction as well as beautiful, incisive writing on race, class, religion, art, and society.

Edward Dinnissen leads a charmed life. He’s the Crown Prince of Canada, gets the royal treatment at his exclusive private school, and resides in a ritzy mansion. He thrives off being the perfect prince as he prepares for the Investiture Ceremony on his 18th birthday, the final step in his role as heir—and Canada’s future king. But this closeted Crown Prince has just one tiny problem: He’s unsure how to tell his parents, his beloved country, and his adoring fans that he’s gay.

Wyatt Westlock has one plan for the farmhouse she's just inherited—to burn it to the ground. But during her final walkthrough of her childhood home, she makes a shocking discovery in the basement—Peter, the boy she once considered her best friend, strung up in chains and left for dead. Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Peter has suffered hundreds of ritualistic deaths on her family's property. Semi-immortal, Peter never remains dead for long, but he can't really live, either. Not while he's bound to the farm, locked in a cycle of grisly deaths and painful rebirths.

This historical adventure with a hint of romance takes place during the American Revolution, when a man, only known as Mr. Harper, requests shelter at The Locusts during a storm. When another unknown stranger appears in want of shelter, Mr. Harper, and the Locust family, become quite suspicious. As the battle between the Patriots and the British is fought in their midst, an internal struggle occurs in the house of one family.

On the Shoulders of Giants is a collection of essays based on lectures Eco famously delivered at the Milanesiana Festival in Milan over the last 15 years of his life. Previously unpublished, the essays explore themes he returned to again and again in his writing: the roots of Western culture and the origin of language, the nature of beauty and ugliness, the potency of conspiracies, the lure of mysteries, and the imperfections of art.

On a quiet Saturday morning in August 2000, two explosions - one so massive it was detected by seismologists around the world - shot through the shallow Arctic waters of the Barents Sea. Russia's prized submarine, the Kursk, began her fatal plunge to the ocean floor. Award-winning journalist Robert Moore presents a riveting, brilliantly researched account of the deadliest submarine disaster in history.

The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society - even if, after more than 200 years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the listener in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society.

Set in 1959, the year the music died, The Smoke in Our Eyes is a cinematic, clock-ticking saga set in a small Montana town. When a fatal car accident shatters ten-year-old Lucas's world, he finds himself confronting crime and vengeance, humor and heroism, all against the backdrop of growing up.

Alexsi Smirnoff, a Russian orphan, is trained as an agent by the Russian Secret Service and inserted into Nazi Germany, where he rises to a position in German intelligence services. As the war grinds on, trapped between two brutal dictatorships, Alexsi betrays both sides in a desperate ploy that succeeds...and fails. His false identities burned, his life at risk, Alexsi attempts to disappear in the hills—but is caught by the British. Sequel to A Single Spy, The Double Agent is a fast-paced, compelling novel of espionage set in the most momentous and dangerous of times.

The greatest super-team ever assembled tries to find out who abducted two of their teammates. With the help of the Incredible Hulk, they learn that their foe is the deadly Leader. But the search is more difficult than imagined, for the Leader has the power of the Gamma Sentinels behind him—and another surprise ally.

Peter Parker is caught in a complicated web. Working in a cutting-edge laboratory, he's a young scientist who's trying to make a difference. Yet he's constantly burdened by the responsibilities of his second career as the crime-fighting Spider-Man. Wilson Fisk - the so-called Kingpin of Crime - has returned to New York, establishing himself publicly as an altruistic entrepreneur and philanthropist. Spider-Man knows better, but he can't uncover Fisk's scheme, which, if executed, will make the crime lord too big to fail.

We have a glut of text and trade books on American history. But what we don’t have is a compact, inexpensive, and authoritative book that will offer to American citizens a clear, informative, and inspiring narrative account of their own country. Such an account can shape and deepen their sense of the land they inhabit and, by making them understand that land’s roots, and share in its memories, equip them for the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship in American society.

In the quiet streets of Prague, all manner of otherworldly creatures lurk in the shadows. Unbeknownst to its citizens, their only hope against the tide of predators are the dauntless lamplighters - a secret elite of monster hunters whose light staves off the darkness each night. Domek Myska leads a life teeming with fraught encounters with the worst kind of evil: pijavica, bloodthirsty and soulless vampiric creatures.

Considered to be French novelist Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables, which was published in 1862, is a sprawling historical and philosophical epic that covers from 1815 through the Paris Uprising in 1832. Notable for its many subplots and digressions from the main storyline, the novel's stated aim is a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, which can be seen most clearly in the story of the central character Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who struggles to shake the sins of his past and become a good man.