Showing results by narrator "Pete Cross" in All Categories

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.

Forget the gold medals, the championships, and the undefeated seasons. When all-star athletes were growing up, they had regular-kid problems just like you. Baseball legend Babe Ruth was such a troublemaker that his family sent him to reform school. Race-car champion Danica Patrick fended off bullies who told her “girls can’t drive”. And football superstar Peyton Manning was forced to dance the tango in his school play.

From Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the youngest comedy writers ever for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and masterminds behind the viral 2018 Yale graduation speech, comes a hilarious collection of short stories taking on coming-of-age, memes, sex, politics, relationships, and Goop, with satire, self-deprecation, and utter irreverence.

On January 22, 2003, four men stepped onto a stage in Brooklyn and did something no one else was doing at that time, in that place. They played rock 'n' roll: old-fashioned rock 'n' roll with skyscraping riffs and sloppy solos, topped with extraordinary lyrics about an out-of-focus America, blurred by pills and powders, of crime and fear and desperation and redemption. Twenty years later, The Hold Steady are one of America's most beloved rock bands. To mark those twenty years, The Hold Steady tell their full story.

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.

Chicago hairstylist Bastian Russo has only three things to his name: a pair of $1,200 shears, a Boystown studio apartment, and a list of men's names written on his closet wall. His constant worry that he's not good enough and his chronic inability to trust are what leaves him heartbroken time and again. After he adds the latest name, he turns to his best friend, Andres Wood, for solace. But instead of treating Bastian to dinner, drinks, and the usual effortless banter, Andres makes an interesting suggestion: that Bastian should get over the breakup by dating…Andres.

Today is the day Jo Monarch has been wishing on the moon about her entire life. It's the day of the Lineup, when she could be selected to leave her life in the Ashes behind. The day she could move across the mountains to a glittering, rich future. Once Jo is plucked from the Lineup, the real test begins. She still needs to impress the New Georgia Reps at tonight's Gala, and her path forward leads straight to Cove Wells. The damaged stepson of one of the Reps, Cove has been groomed as an emotional weapon, taught that love is a tool -- and he's set on breaking Jo's heart 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.

Hop aboard a flying saucer and travel alongside your alien guides who are on a mission to understand the wonders of human body systems. Explore the circulatory system, the digestive system, the skeletal system, and more. Lively audio introduces concepts such as what the body is made of and how it responds to stimuli such as broken bones, burns, and illnesses. From major organs to types of blood cells, story-driven text delivers expert-reviewed nonfiction information about the amazing human body and how it works to stay healthy.

Every great author started out as a kid. Before the best sellers, fan clubs, and beloved stories we know today, the world's most celebrated writers had regular-kid problems just like you. Sam Clemens (aka Mark Twain) loved to skip school and make mischief, with his best friend Tom, of course! A young J. R. R. Tolkien was bitten by a huge tarantula - or as he called it, "a spider as big as a dragon." Toddler Zora Neale Hurston took her first steps when a wild hog entered her house and started chasing her!

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....

Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation? Like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which provided a new perspective on how evolution works, Life on the Edge alters our understanding of life's dynamics.

In Sicily: Land of Love and Strife, the process of capturing the island nation on film is revealed. Mark Spano invites the listener to follow him on his journey to celebrate the real Sicily, and to change the public perception of his family's homeland.

Richard Weatherford is a successful small-town preacher in the Arkansas Ozarks. He’s a proud husband and father of five and has worked hard to grow his loyal flock with strong sermons and smart community outreach. But while Weatherford is a man of influence and power - including a big force in local politics - he’s also a man with secrets. In the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, Weatherford’s world is threatened when he’s blackmailed by a former lover. Collecting the money the blackmailer demands will be a nearly impossible feat, especially over Easter weekend.

Bob Ryan has scored every baseball game he's attended, at every level, since the start of the 1977 season. It's a deeply personal tradition still going strong at more than 1,400 games and counting. The tattered scorebooks he's filled are worn from age, travel, and countless summer days, but their grids and scrawled symbols tell the stories of milestones, rivalries, rare historic achievements, and more. In Scoring Position captures the incomparable spirit of baseball, with its infinite possibilities and madcap anomalies.

We take the seven-day week for granted, rarely asking what anchors it or what it does to us. Yet weeks are not dictated by the natural order. They are, in fact, an artificial construction of the modern world. With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources - including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries - David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the 19th century.

Although humankind today can peer far deeper into the universe than ever before, we still find ourselves surrounded by the unknown and perhaps the unknowable. All great science fiction has used the human imagination to explore that realm beyond the known, just as theistic religions have done since long before the genre existed. As Hugo Award-winning author Robert Charles Wilson argues, the genre’s freewheeling speculation and systematic world-building make it a unique lens for understanding, examining, and assessing the truth claims of religions in general and Christianity in particular.

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.

Flint Larsen 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. From that moment, Flint's done everything he can to make his death more bearable. Cutting off all his friends, refusing to eat his favorite foods, reading only the most depressing literature by long-dead writers. He plans to spend his final days back in his hometown with his parents, quietly waiting to die.

Filled with catchall research, American Hemp examines what this new domestic crop can be used for, what makes it a superior product, and what made it illegal in the first place; the book also delves into the many health and medical benefits of the plant. Hobbs weighs in on how hemp can improve existing industries, from farming to energy to 3D printing, plus how it can make a serious impact on climate change by removing toxins from the soil and by decreasing our dependence on plastics and fossil fuels.