Michael Crouch has narrated 174 audiobooks on Listento.it by 172 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 3,066 ratings. The most-rated is The Sea in the Sky.
The Transparency Tonic
Summary
It has been nine months since Gordy and his friends, Max and Adilene, stopped Esmeralda from destroying B.R.E.W. and the Vessel. Gordy is starting the eighth grade, where he meets another Dram, Sasha Brexil, whose mother is the new President of B.R.E.W. Gordy has also been practicing new brewing techniques and has even taken some of his potions to school - something expressly forbidden - but when he starts zoning out during practice, he knows something is wrong. Strange things are also happening at B.R.E.W., because after Wanda confronts the dark Elixirists, she is unexpectedly fired by Mrs. Brexil. And in Greenland, Mezzarix is offered a chance to escape by an old friend, who is working for the mysterious Ms. Bimini. The woman reveals that she needs Mezzarix to replicate an unusual solution known as "Silt". Mezzarix agrees on one condition: that Ms. Bimini uses the power of Silt to destroy B.R.E.W. forever. Gordy and his friends continue to work on their potions, but when Adilene learns she will never be able to brew potions - that the only reason she had ever come close was because Gordy was projecting his ability through her - she is crushed. Against her better judgment, she uses an invisibility potion given to her by her new friend, Cadence, to spy on Gordy. As Gordy's potion-making talents increase, so does the frequency of his blackouts, which raises a troubling question: What if Mezzarix attacks during one of Gordy's blackouts? Both B.R.E.W and the Vessel are in danger, and with the potion world in chaos, it's up to Gordy, Max, and Adeline to rally the remaining Potion Masters before it's too late.
©2019 Frank L. Cole (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Change
Summary
Tobias has gotten used to his new life. He's a red-tailed hawk with the mind of a kid. It was difficult when he first became trapped in his morph, but he's started to come to terms with things. After all, how many kids actually get the chance to fly? But now Tobias is about to make a very difficult choice: a choice that the other Animorphs know nothing about. And it could mean the difference between living the rest of his life as a hawk...and being human.
©2017 Katherine Applegate (P)2021 Scholastic Inc.
Who Put This Song On?
Summary
"Unflinchingly irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartbreakingly honest." (Elizabeth Acevedo, National Book Award winner and New York Times best-selling author of The Poet X) In the vein of powerful stories like The Hate U Give and The Poet X comes poet Morgan Parker's pitch-perfect novel about a black teenage girl searching for her identity when the world around her views her depression as a lack of faith and blackness as something to be politely ignored. Trapped in sunny, stifling, small-town suburbia, 17-year-old Morgan knows why she's in therapy. She can't count the number of times she's been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her "weird" outfits, and been told she's not "really" black. Also, she's spent most of her summer crying in bed. So there's that, too. Lately, it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat - and it's telling them how to feel, who to vote for, what to believe. Morgan wonders, when can she turn this song off and begin living for herself? Loosely based on her own teenage life and diaries, this incredible debut by award-winning poet Morgan Parker will make listeners stand up and cheer for a girl brave enough to live life on her own terms - and for themselves. "Morgan Parker put THIS song on - and I hope it never turns off." (Nic Stone, New York Times best-selling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out) “A triumphant first impression in the YA space.” (Entertainment Weekly) “An incredibly heartfelt, deep story about a girl's coming of age.” (Refinery29)
©2019 Morgan Parker (P)2019 Listening Library
The Haters
Summary
From Jesse Andrews, author of the New York Times best-selling Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and screenwriter of the Sundance award-winning motion picture of the same name, comes a groundbreaking young adult novel about music, love, friendship, and freedom as three young musicians follow a quest to escape the law long enough to play the amazing show they hope (but also doubt) they have in them. Inspired by the years he spent playing bass in a band himself, The Haters is Jesse Andrews' road trip adventure about a trio of jazz camp escapees who, against every realistic expectation, become a band. For Wes and his best friend, Corey, jazz camp turns out to be lame. It's pretty much all dudes talking in jazz voice. But then they jam with Ash, a charismatic girl with an unusual sound, and the three just click. It's three and a half hours of pure musical magic, and Ash makes a decision: They need to hit the road. Because the road, not summer camp, is where bands get good. Before Wes and Corey know it, they're in Ash's SUV heading south, and The Haters' Summer of Hate Tour has begun. In his second novel, Andrews again brings his brilliant and distinctive voice to YA, in the perfect book for music lovers, fans of The Commitments and High Fidelity, or anyone who has ever loved - and hated - a song or a band. This witty, funny coming-of-age novel is contemporary fiction at its best.
©2016 Jesse Andrews (P)2016 Listening Library
Across the Winding River
Summary
A woman unlocks the mystery of her father's wartime past in a moving novel about secrets, sacrifice, and the power of love by the bestselling author of Daughters of the Night Sky. Beth Cohen wants to make the most of the months she has left with her elderly father, Max. His only request of his daughter is to go through the long-forgotten box of memorabilia from his days as a medic on the western front. Then, among his wartime souvenirs, Beth finds a photograph of her father with an adoring and beautiful stranger - a photograph worth a thousand questions. It was 1944 when Max was drawn into the underground resistance by the fearless German wife of a Nazi officer. Together, she and Max were willing to risk everything for what they believed was right. Ahead of them lay a dangerous romance, a dream of escape, and a destiny over which neither had control. But Max isn't alone in his haunting remembrances of war. In a nearby private care home is a fragile German-born woman with her own past to share. Only when the two women meet does Beth realize how much more to her father there is to know, all the ways in which his heart still breaks, and the closure he needs to heal it.
©2020 Aimie K. Runyan (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Other Side
Summary
From the best-selling author of the Bright Side series comes a thought-provoking, eye-opening story about the complexity of family, the devastation of loss, the destruction of depression, and the unequivocal power of kindness and perspective. An Amazon Top 50 best seller, The Other Side is a stand-alone novel. There are two sides to every story. The surface reality that’s presented to the world. And then, there’s the other side. The real one. The one that matters. Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed asshole Toby Page is alone. No friends. No family. He trades maintenance work in exchange for room and board. Every day, he fights demons no one else can see. Every day, he wants to give up. But he can’t. Not yet. When Alice Eliot moves in downstairs, she offers Toby some light in his dark world. At a crossroads and barely hanging on, it’s hard to have perspective. It’s difficult to see your own worth when you’re the villain in your story. Luckily for Toby, Alice brings things out in him that no one else ever has. As the two sides of Toby’s story are revealed, and the full reality comes into view, truth is gained, unlikely heroes emerge, and improbable alliances prove that kindness is fundamentally human. The question is: Will it all be enough to save him? The audiobook is produced by One Night Stand Studios. Praise for the book: "With grace, care, honest words, and a hopeful message, Holden has woven a story that will sit in your soul and has the power to make so many of us feel less alone. A must-read for young and old alike.” (Ginger Scott, best-selling author)
©2019 Kim Holden (P)2020 Kim Holden
The Princess Game
Summary
There are no happy endings for the Princesses of Chaminade High in this short, twisty tale of teenage murder games by the New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil series. The victims are the most popular girls in school, each murdered and arranged in a grim fairy-tale tableau. To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning - but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play. The Princess Game is part of Faraway, a collection of retold fairy tales that take the happily-ever-after in daring new directions. Whether read or listened to in one sitting, prepare to be charmed, moved, enlightened, and frightened all over again.
©2020 Soman Chainani (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Big Dark
Summary
In this pause-resisting adventure by Newbery Honor author Rodman Philbrick, a solar event knocks out our planet's electricity, and a boy must risk his life to save his sick mother. What would you do if every spark of electricity suddenly vanished, as if somebody had flipped a switch on the entire planet? Cars won't start, the heat shuts off, there's no water in your faucet, and your radio, TV, and flashlight go dark. Everyone in Charlie's small town is baffled. But as time passes, lawlessness erupts and takes an ugly turn. When the market and pharmacy are torched by an anti-Semitic arsonist, Charlie realizes his mother will die without her medicine. So he dons skis and heads off alone, seeking the nearest hospital. After traveling 50miles through brutal ice and snow, Charlie encounters a burned-out, looted city of terrified citizens. Will he be able to save his mom? Heroic, eloquent, and unforgettable, The Big Dark raises timely questions about responsibility, tolerance, and love.
©2016 Rodman Philbrick (P)2016 Scholastic Inc.
Verona Comics
Summary
From the author of Hot Dog Girl comes a fresh and funny queer YA contemporary novel about two teens who fall in love in an indie comic book shop. Jubilee has it all together. She's an elite cellist, and when she's not working in her stepmom's indie comic shop, she's prepping for the biggest audition of her life. Ridley is barely holding it together. His parents own the biggest comic-store chain in the country, and Ridley can't stop disappointing them - that is, when they're even paying attention. They meet one fateful night at a comic convention prom, and the two can't help falling for each other. Too bad their parents are at each other's throats every chance they get, making a relationship between them nearly impossible...unless they manage to keep it a secret. Then again, the feud between their families may be the least of their problems. As Ridley's anxiety spirals, Jubilee tries to help but finds her focus torn between her fast-approaching audition and their intensifying relationship. What if love can't conquer all? What if each of them needs more than the other can give? "A deep dive into first love while learning to manage significant mental health challenges...Dugan's strength is in creating a diverse cast of characters. Ridley is bisexual, Jubilee struggles with how to identify and label her sexuality, and most of the supporting characters are queer-identified."(School Library Journal)
©2020 Jennifer Dugan (P)2020 Listening Library
Daily Rituals: Women at Work
Summary
More of Mason Currey's irresistible Daily Rituals, this time exploring the daily obstacles and rituals of women who are artists - painters, composers, sculptors, scientists, filmmakers, and performers. We see how these brilliant minds get to work, the choices they have to make: rebuffing convention, stealing (or secreting away) time from the pull of husbands, wives, children, and obligations in order to create their creations. From those who are the masters of their craft (Eudora Welty, Lynn Fontanne, Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie Curie) to those who were recognized in a burst of acclaim (Lorraine Hansberry, Zadie Smith)...from Clara Schumann and Shirley Jackson, carving out small amounts of time from family life, to Isadora Duncan and Agnes Martin, rejecting the demands of domesticity, Currey shows us the large and small (and abiding) choices these women made - and continue to make - for their art: Isak Dinesen, "I promised the Devil my soul, and in return he promised me that everything I was going to experience would be turned into tales," Dinesen subsisting on oysters and champagne but also amphetamines, which gave her the overdrive she required...and the rituals (daily and otherwise) that guide these artists: Isabel Allende starting a new book only on January 8...Hilary Mantel taking a shower to combat writers' block ("I am the cleanest person I know")...Tallulah Bankhead coping with her three phobias (hating to go to bed, hating to get up, and hating to be alone), which, could she "mute them", would make her life "as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water"...Lillian Hellman chain-smoking three packs of cigarettes and drinking 20 cups of coffee a day - and, after milking the cow and cleaning the barn, writing out of "elation, depression, hope" ("That is the exact order. Hope sets in toward nightfall. That's when you tell yourself that you're going to be better the next time, so help you God.")...Diane Arbus, doing what "gnaws at" her...Colette, locked in her writing room by her first husband, Henry Gauthier-Villars (nom de plume: Willy) and not being "let out" until completing her daily quota (she wrote five pages a day and threw away the fifth). Colette later said, "A prison is one of the best workshops"...Jessye Norman disdaining routines or rituals of any kind, seeing them as "a crutch"...and Octavia Butler writing every day no matter what ("screw inspiration"). Germaine de Staël, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Edna Ferber, Doris Lessing, Pina Bausch, Frida Kahlo, Marguerite Duras, Helen Frankenthaler, Patti Smith, and 131 more - on their daily routines, superstitions, fears, eating (and drinking) habits, and other finely (and not so finely) calibrated rituals that help summon up willpower and self-discipline, keeping themselves afloat with optimism and fight as they create (and avoid creating) their creations.
©2019 Mason Currey (P)2019 Random House Audio
Man of the Year
Summary
A sinister, sophisticated debut thriller by “a remarkable new voice to watch” (J.T. Ellison, New York Times best-selling author), Man of the Year has been lauded by Shelf Awareness as “an impressive slow burn that builds suspense and cracks the whip at the end...redolent with menace and ego". Dr. Robert Hart, Sag Harbor’s just-named man of the year, is the envy of his friends and neighbors. His medical practice is thriving. He has a beautiful old house, a beautiful new wife, and a beautiful boat docked in the village marina. Even his wayward son, Jonah, is back on track, doing well at school, and finally worthy of his father’s attentions. So when Jonah’s troubled college roommate needs a place to stay for the summer, Hart and his wife generously offer him their guesthouse. A win-win: Jonah will have someone to hang with, and his father can bask in the warm glow of his own generosity. But when Robert suspects his new houseguest of getting a little too close to his wife, the good doctor’s veneer begins to crack, and all the little lies he tells start to mount. Before long, Robert is embroiled in a desperate downward spiral, threatening to destroy anyone who stands in his way. It’s only the women in his life - his devoted office manager, his friends and neighbors, his wife - who can reveal the truth...if he’s willing to look. Biting and timely, Man of the Year races along at an electric pace, building to a wicked twist you won’t see coming.
©2019 Caroline Louise Walker (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
Lights All Night Long
Summary
A gripping and deftly plotted narrative of family and belonging, Lights All Night Long is a dazzling debut novel from an acclaimed young writer. "A luminous debut.... It's hard not to read the book in a single sitting." (The Los Angeles Times) "Lights All Night Long is utterly brilliant and completely captivating.... One of the most propulsive, un-put-downable literary novels I've read in ages." (Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena) Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. The abundance of his new world - the super Walmarts and heated pools and enormous televisions - is as hard to fathom as the relentless cheerfulness of his host parents. And Sadie, their beautiful and enigmatic daughter, has miraculously taken an interest in him. But all is not right in Ilya's world: He's consumed by the fate of his older brother, Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their town's seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison. With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimir's descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect him - a truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind. A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other.
©2019 Lydia Fitzpatrick (P)2019 Penguin Audio
19 Love Songs
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Every Day, Someday, and Two Boys Kissing is back with a short story collection about love - perfect for Valentine's Day or year-round listening! A resentful member of a high school Quiz Bowl team with an unrequited crush. A Valentine's Day in the life of Every Day's protagonist, "A". A return to the characters of Two Boys Kissing. 19 Love Songs, from New York Times best-selling author David Levithan, delivers all of these stories and more. Born from Levithan's tradition of writing a story for his friends each Valentine's Day, this collection brings all of them to his listeners for the first time. With fiction, nonfiction, and a story in verse, there's something for every listener here. Witty, romantic, and honest, teens (and adults) will come to this collection not only on Valentine's Day, but all year round.
©2020 David Levithan (P)2020 Listening Library
The Knockout Queen
Summary
"Full of verve... Revelatory." (Los Angeles Times) A dazzling and darkly comic novel of love, violence, and friendship in the California suburbs Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore? - beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer father and a swimming pool in her backyard. Michael?? - with a ponytail down his back and a septum piercing? - lives with his aunt in the cramped stucco cottage next door. When Bunny catches Michael smoking in her yard, he discovers that her life is not as perfect as it seems. At six foot three, Bunny towers over their classmates. Even as she dreams of standing out and competing in the Olympics, she is desperate to fit in, to seem normal, and to get a boyfriend, all while hiding her father's escalating alcoholism. Michael has secrets of his own. At home and at school Michael pretends to be straight, but at night he tries to understand himself by meeting men online for anonymous encounters that both thrill and scare him. When Michael falls in love for the first time, a vicious strain of gossip circulates and a terrible, brutal act becomes the defining feature of both his and Bunny's futures?? - and of their friendship. With storytelling as intoxicating as it is intelligent, Rufi Thorpe has created a tragic and unflinching portrait of identity, a fascinating examination of our struggles to exist in our bodies, and an excruciatingly beautiful story of two humans aching for connection.
©2020 Rufi Thorpe (P)2020 Random House Audio
Conviction
Summary
Ten years ago, God gave Braden a sign, a promise that his family wouldn't fall apart the way he feared. But Braden got it wrong: His older brother, Trey, has been estranged from the family for almost as long, and his father, the only parent Braden has ever known, has been accused of murder. The arrest of Braden's father, a well-known Christian radio host, has sparked national media attention. His fate lies in his son's hands; Braden is the key witness in his father's upcoming trial. Braden has always measured himself through baseball. He is the star pitcher in his small town of Ornette, and his 94-mile-per-hour pitch already has minor league scouts buzzing in his junior year. Now the rules of the sport that has always been Braden's saving grace are blurred in ways he never realized, and the prospect of playing against Alex Reyes, the nephew of the police officer his father is accused of killing, is haunting his every pitch. Braden faces an impossible choice, one that will define him for the rest of his life, in this brutally honest debut novel about family, faith, and the ultimate test of conviction.
©2016 Kelly Loy Gilbert (P)2016 Listening Library
Love, Creekwood
Summary
New York Times best seller Fall in love all over again with the characters from the best-selling Simonverse novels in this highly anticipated epilogue novella. Perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli, the movie Love, Simon, and the new Hulu series spin-off Love, Victor! It’s been more than a year since Simon and Blue turned their anonymous online flirtation into an IRL relationship and just a few months since Abby and Leah’s unforgettable night at senior prom. Now the Creekwood High crew are first-years at different colleges, navigating friendship and romance the way their story began - on email.
©2020 Becky Albertalli (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
The Best Man
Summary
Newbery Medalist Richard Peck tells a story of small-town life, gay marriage, and everyday heroes in this novel for fans of Gary Schmidt and Jack Gantos. Archer Magill has spent a lively five years of grade school with one eye out in search of grown-up role models. Three of the best are his grandpa, the great architect; his dad, the great vintage car customizer; and his uncle Paul, who is just plain great. These are the three he wants to be. Along the way he finds a fourth - Mr. McLeod, a teacher. In fact the first male teacher in the history of the school. But now here comes middle school and puberty. Change. Archer wonders how much change has to happen before his voice does. He doesn't see too far ahead, so every day or so a startling revelation breaks over him. Then a really big one when he's the best man at the wedding of two of his role models. But that gets ahead of the story. In minutes that ripple with laughter, there's a teardrop here and there. And more than a few insights about the bewildering world of adults, made by a boy on his way to being the best man he can be.
©2016 Richard Peck (P)2016 Listening Library
I Know You Know Who I Am
Summary
An Elle Magazine Best Book of the Year an O, the Oprah Magazine Must-Read LGBTQ Book of the Yearan Electric Lit Best Short Story Collection of the Year "Riveting.... Every lie reveals itself so exquisitely that the parallels become an added pleasure, as soon as we uncover the ways they diverge." (New York Times Book Review) "Dazzling. Here is a confident, psychologically astute new writer with a bold new vision." (Garrard Conley, New York Times best-selling author of Boy Erased) Throughout this striking debut collection, we meet characters who have lied, who have sometimes created elaborate falsehoods, and who now must cope with the way that those deceptions eat at the very fabric of their lives and relationships. In the title story, the narrator, desperate to save a love affair on the rocks, hires an actor to play a friend he invented in order to seem less lonely, after his boyfriend catches on to his compulsion for lying and demands to know this friend is real; in "Aim for the Heart", a man's lies about a hunting habit leave him with an unexpected deer carcass and the need to parse unsettling high school memories; in "Rorschach", a theater producer runs a show in which death row inmates are crucified in an on-stage rendering of the New Testament, while being haunted daily by an unrequited love and nightly by ghosts of his own creation. In I Know You Know Who I Am, Kispert deftly explores deception and performance, the uneasiness of reconciling a queer identity with the wider world, and creates a sympathetic, often darkly humorous, portrait of characters searching for paths to intimacy.
©2020 Peter Kispert (P)2020 Penguin Audio
The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom
Summary
Twelve-year-old Aaron Broom is protecting his father's car from repossession when he witnesses a jewelry store robbery gone wrong. To Aaron's shock, his father, a struggling salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Aaron - precocious, plucky, not a little naïve - must seek out gangsters, diamond dealers, bootleggers, and street kids in order to prove his father's innocence. In his search for justice, Aaron draws upon the resources of a world-weary paperboy, an aspiring teen journalist, and a kindly lawyer. As they dig into the details of the case, these unconventional detectives reveal a cover-up that goes much deeper than a jewelry-store heist gone sour. Through it all, Aaron's optimism and resourcefulness shine through. Hotchner's latest is a rollicking ride through St. Louis at its lowest, as seen through the eyes of his most lovable narrator to date.
©2018 A.E. Hotchner (P)2018 Random House Audio
What I Leave Behind
Summary
After his dad commits suicide, Will tries to overcome his own misery by secretly helping the people around him in this exquisitely crafted story made up of 100 chapters of 100 words each, by award-winning and best-selling author Alison McGhee. Sixteen-year-old Will spends most of his days the same way: Working at the Dollar Only store, trying to replicate his late father’s famous cornbread recipe, and walking the streets of Los Angeles. Will started walking after his father committed suicide, and three years later he hasn’t stopped. But there are some places Will can’t walk by: The blessings store with the chest of 100 Chinese blessings in the back, the bridge on Fourth Street where his father died, and his childhood friend Playa’s house. When Will learns Playa was raped at a party - a party he was at, where he saw Playa, and where he believes he could have stopped the worst from happening if he hadn’t left early - it spurs Will to stop being complacent in his own sadness and do some good in the world. He begins to leave small gifts for everyone in his life, from Superman the homeless guy he passes on his way to work, to the Little Butterfly Dude he walks by on the way home, to Playa herself. And it is through those acts of kindness that Will is finally able to push past his own trauma and truly begin to live his life again. Oh, and discover the truth about that cornbread.
©2018 Alison McGhee (P)2018 Simon & Schuster