Showing results by narrator "Will Ropp" in All Categories

In spite of a harrowing past still haunting her, Gwen Proctor is trying to move forward. Until a new assignment gives her purpose: the cold-case disappearance of a young man in Tennessee. Three years missing, no clues. Just Ruth Landry, a tortured mother in limbo. Gwen understands what it’s like to worry about your children. Gwen’s investigation unearths new suspects…and victims. As she follows each sinister lead, the implications of the mystery grow more disturbing. Because the closer Gwen gets, the closer she is to a threat that looms back home.

In this thrilling adventure by bestselling author Oliver Pötzsch, thirteen-year-old Lukas has been trained as a swordsman by his father, a nobleman who was once a famed Musketeer. When the threat of war and accusations of witchcraft spread across the land, Lukas's life is forever changed. He flees his home and vows to find his missing sister.

Lukas wants only two things: to rebuild his castle home in time to make it through the coming winter and to reconnect with the sister who was stolen from him in a plot against his family. But then an astrologer appears with foreboding news: his old adversary, Inquisitor Waldemar von Schönborn, has stolen three royal artifacts, which are required to coronate a new German emperor. With these valuable objects - the sword, the crown, and the scepter - he could blackmail the empire. The treasures are currently hidden in three different places in the old imperial city of Prague.

Seventeen-year-old Ethan Underwood is totally unprepared to search for his father in the Blythe River National Wilderness. Not only is he small, scrawny, and skittish but he's barely speaking to the man after a traumatic betrayal. Yet when his father vanishes from their remote cabin and rangers abandon the rescue mission, suddenly it's up to Ethan to keep looking. Angry or not, he's his father's only hope.

Twelve-year-old Patryk knows little of the world beyond his tiny Polish village; the Russians have occupied the land for as long as anyone can remember, but otherwise life is unremarkable. Patryk and his friends entertain themselves by coming up with dares - some more harmful than others - until the Germans drop a bomb on the schoolhouse and the Great War comes crashing in.

A heartbroken and humiliated Ricky Graves took the life of a classmate and himself. Five months later, the sleepy community is still in shock and mourning. Ricky's sister, Alyssa, returns to confront her shattered, withdrawn mother and her guilt over the brother she left adrift. Mark McVitry, the lone survivor of the deadly outburst sparked by his own cruelty, is tormented by visions of Ricky's vengeful spirit. Ricky's surrogate older brother, Corky Meeks, grapples with doubts about the fragile boy he tried to protect but may have doomed instead.

Jimmy is sure that his dog Abby is special. After all, it was Abby who (with the help of Jimmy & friends) helped nab the criminal Barnaby Bratford and shut down Barnaby's babysitting service, a front for robbing the nice folks of Quietville. Jimmy's parents, on the other hand, are starting to feel like Abby is one destructive little dog (she chewed up Mom's entire shoe collection!) and they insist on enrolling Abby in obedience training.

Noah Keller has a pretty normal life, until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn't really Noah and he didn't really just turn eleven in March. And he can't even ask them why - not because of his Astonishing Stutter, but because asking questions is against the newly instated rules. (Rule Number Two: Don't talk about serious things indoors, because Rule Number One: They will always be listening).

A new state, a new city, a new high school. Mike's father has already found a new evangelical church for the family to attend, even if Mike and his plainspoken little sister, Toby, don't want to go. Dad wants Mike to ditch art for sports, to toughen up, but there's something uneasy behind his demands. Then Mike meets Sean, the new kid, and "hey" becomes games of basketball, partnering on a French project, hanging out after school. A night at the beach. The fierce colors of sunrise.

In a series of interwoven fictionalized stories, Deborah Noyes gives voice to the marginalized women in P. T. Barnum’s family - and the talented entertainers he built his entertainment empire on. Barnum was a legendary showman, entrepreneur, marketing genius, and one of the most famous nineteenth-century personalities. For those who lived in Barnum’s shadow, however, life was complex.

A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that's when the corpses start turning up.

Paul Walden is not an alpha lobster, the king lobster who intimidates the other male lobsters, gets all the lady lobsters, and wins at life. At least not according to anyone in his freshman seminar. But Paul has found a funny, faithful friend in Roby Smalls and, just maybe, caught the interest of smart, beautiful Natalia Guitierrez. Life as a sharply dressed beta lobster seems just fine, but in the tricky currents of high school, its pretty easy to get pulled too deep.