Showing results by narrator "Pete Cross" in All Categories

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.

The worst thing that ever happened to Craig is also the best: Amy. Amy and Craig never should've gotten together - Craig is an awkward Dungeons & Dragons-playing geek, and Amy is the beautiful, fiercely intelligent student-body president of their high school. Yet somehow they did - until Amy dumped him. Then got back together with him. Then dumped him again. Then got back together with him again. Over and over and over. Unfolding over their senior year, Amy and Craig's relationship is a kaleidoscope of joy, pain, and laughter as an uncertain future looms on the horizon.

From the moment Ben and June met in a hospital waiting room on New Year’s Eve, their love has seemed fated. Looking back at all the tiny, unlikely decisions that brought them together, it was easy to believe their relationship was special. But now, after several years of marriage, June is struggling as a new mom. At times, she wonders about the life she didn’t choose—what might have been if she hadn’t given up the lead role in a famous ballet to start a family. Feeling like a bad mom and more alone than ever, she writes to her deceased mother, hoping for a sign of what she should do next.

July 22, 2011, was the darkest day in Norway's history since Nazi Germany's invasion. It was 189 minutes of terror - from the moment the bomb exploded outside a government building until Anders Behring Breivik was apprehended by the police at Utoya Island. Breivik murdered 77 people, most of them teenagers and young adults, and wounded hundreds more. Breivik is a "lone wolf killer", often overlooked until they commit their crime. Breivik is also unique as he is the only lone wolf killer in recent history to still be alive and in captivity.

After leveling up from basement roleplaying games to saving an entire magical realm, 12-year-old Ben isn’t happy returning to his ordinary life of homework and chores. So when his very un-magical LARP session is crashed by monstrous frog-men from another dimension, he can't wait to get back into hero mode. Someone is after all the Spellbinder’s books, which grant the users—including Ben—epic reality-shifting powers. Ben, Niara, Merv, Drake, and their new friend Agnes must embark on an epic quest to save the books and their owners.

You know the protocol. You've completed countless drills. Yet nothing can truly prepare you for what’s coming. No one is ever ready for zombie season . . . Joule refuses to evacuate with her mom. She can't leave town while her dad's still missing. He's out there, somewhere, and Joule is going to find him. But what if he's not just lost? What if he's become what she most fears?

Set in the fifteenth century, The Three Musketeers follows a young D'Artagnan leaving home for Paris with hopes of joining the King's Musketeers. He meets the titular three musketeers—Athos, Porthos, Aramis—and finds himself quickly wrapped up in matters of both court and state.

Can we ever truly comprehend the universe before we fully understand consciousness and the wonders, and limits, of the mind? Ulf Danielsson, an acclaimed theoretical physicist who has dedicated his career to probing the deepest mysteries of nature, thinks not. As he dismantles the arguments of esteemed mathematicians and scientists, who would substitute their mathematical models for reality and equate the mind to a computer, he makes a lucid and passionate case that it is nature, full of beauty and meaning, which must compel us. 

Curtis Quinn is a Chicago mob legend with a price on his head and a particular set of skills. Beth Jarvis is a plucky teenager unwrapping the secrets of her hometown, Harlow, where no one is allowed to leave and a mysterious ceremony awaits her on her 18th birthday. What Beth doesn't know is the truth about her sister, Kate, who escaped more than a decade ago and has evaded the town's sinister ruler, known only as the Mayor, and his High Servants, Scouts, and Disciples who rule the town, making her a local legend....

Psychic-medium Sylvie Young starts every show with her origin story, telling the audience how she discovered her abilities. But she leaves out a lot—the plane crash that killed her parents, an estranged adoptive family, and the fact that her agent insists she research some clients to ensure success. Thomas Holmes’s next story at the L.A. Times may be his last, but he’s got a great personal pitch: “grief vampires” like Sylvie who prey upon the loved ones of the deceased have bankrupted his mother. He’s dead set on using his last article to expose Sylvie as a fraud.

Written in seclusion following the intense negative public reaction to the publication of his novel Pierre, The Piazza Tales is Herman Melville's accessible and entertaining collection of short stories and novellas concerning love, labor, and loss. The collection includes his three most important achievements in the genre of short fiction: the short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and the novellas Benito Cereno and The Encantadas.

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. 

Ben doesn’t feel chosen by anybody—not by his friends, who haven’t kept in touch since he moved after his parents’ divorce, or by his mom, who’s so busy he barely sees her. He spends all his time living in fantasy worlds and writing extensively planned adventure campaigns in his role-playing-game notebook. So when Niara, a character who could be right out of one of his favorite games, shows up and tells him he’s destined to save her realm (like, foretold-by-a-prophecy destined), Ben has two possible moves: tell her the truth or play along.  

Seven years have passed since Orris, a mage of Tobyn-Ser’s Order, returned from the violent chaos of Bragor-Nal. The threat of attack from Lon-Ser has been eliminated, but the establishment of trade between Tobyn-Ser and its western neighbor has brought new and disturbing changes to the land. Large tracts of woodland have been logged and sold off in exchange for more of Lon-Ser’s “advanced goods.” The Order and the League continue their struggle for supremacy, and a new force, a “People’s Movement”, has allied itself with so-called independent mages.

It’s June 2012. The magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club is alive with the spirit of fun competition when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, looming over their carefully planned pasta parties, tie-dye nights, and pep rallies, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma. Gillian responds by trying to control everyone around her while Kristy relapses into her dangerous addiction to love. 

The America that Alexander Hamilton knew was largely agricultural and built on slave labor. He envisioned something else: a multi-racial, urbanized, capitalistic America with a strong central government. He believed that such an America would be a land of opportunity for the poor and the newcomers. But Hamilton's vision put him at odds with his archrivals who envisioned a pastoral America of small towns, where governments were local, states would control their own destiny, and the federal government would remain small and weak.

Born in a cabin deep in the backwoods of Kentucky and growing up in a family considered the poorest of the poor, Abraham Lincoln rose to become the 16th president of the United States. As president, he guided the United States through the Civil War, helped end slavery in America, and strengthened the federal government. This third installment in the Making of America series continues the story of the first 100 years of America's constitutional history, a story that began with Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson.

Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants - all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. In this critically acclaimed collection, Lydia Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture.

Buster's in big trouble. He's been dragged to Dog Court for breaking one of the most sacred of all dog rules: Never ever talk to a human, or let a human know how smart you really are. But he swears he had a good reason! The boy he's been taking care of, Tonio, needed his help in a big way. You see, Tonio is afraid all the time - afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, afraid of making a fool of himself or (even worse) hurting someone else's feelings.

In The Great Great Wall, architectural historian and critic Ian Volner takes a deep dive into the story of Donald Trump’s wall. Volner follows the conception, selling, design, and construction (or lack thereof) of this expensive and consequential barrier, giving listeners a detailed description of what’s happening in Washington, DC - and along the border. He also travels far afield, to China, the Middle East, northern England, and back to our border to examine the barriers we’ve been building for centuries.