Showing results by narrator "E. J. Lavery" in All Categories

Kai Sosa is so passionate about swimming he is practically a fish. This summer, he's determined to become the athlete he once was on an elite invitational team. But something invisible holds him back. His race times are off. Dreams of his sister Cali haunt him. And he hasn't found her missing gold cuff, her last request. When Kai discovers a library book Cali had checked out multiple times—about an underwater realm and a mysterious place called the Library of Despair and Sorrow—details from the story begin to appear in his own life.

In the introduction to this selection of tales of the macabre, anthologist Arthur Reeve writes: "What is the fascination we feel for the mystery of the ghost story? Man is incurably fascinated by the mysterious. If all the ghost stories of the ages were blotted out, man would invent new ones. For, do we not all stand in awe of that which we cannot explain, of that which, if it is not in our own experience, is certainly recorded in the experience of others, of that of which we know and can know nothing?"

Apolonia "Lina" Flores is a sock enthusiast, a volleyball player, a science lover, and a girl who's just looking for answers. Even though her house is crammed full of books (her dad's a bibliophile), she's having trouble figuring out some very big questions, like why her dad seems to care about books more than her, why her best friend's divorced mom is obsessed with making cascarones (hollowed eggshells filled with colorful confetti), and, most of all, why her mom died last year. Like colors in cascarones, Lina's life is a rainbow of people, interests, and unexpected changes.