Books with author Lane Roberts

Nothing is worse than being the new kid, especially when your only friend is a puppet! If you loved Darci Lynne Farmer on America's Got Talent, you'll love this entertaining story about fitting in, making new friends, and learning to be the star of the show. Goodbye Seattle.Goodbye baseball buddies.Goodbye Gram & her cool puppet shows.Hello, Texas.Baker is sure there isn't anything worse than moving. Except being THE NEW KID. Sure, Gram gave him Waldo, a ventriloquist's dummy, for company -- but a puppet, no matter how funny it is, can't take the place of real friends. Baker is bummed.Until he starts school and discovers that kids in Texas (cowboy hats aside) aren't as different as he thought. And that puppets just might be the key to fitting in. Let the show begin!

The tree is so called because in its early days two young trees separated by about five feet somehow grew toward each other and finally intertwined leaving a large gap at their bases to form an upside down "Y." None of the locals seem to know exactly what kind of plant it is but it has always been called the "Y" tree. Teenagers Trudi Hartmann and Erik Richter began their summer vacation with the expectation of hanging with their friends and generally relaxing from the rigors of high school. Their parents, however, have different plans by using their children to complete necessary chores around their farms. To demonstrate their disappointment with their parents' decisions, the teens plan to escape for a couple of weeks. They agree to meet at the "Y" tree before striking out to the big city for fun and adventure. Fate intervenes with the "Y" tree figuring prominently and the teens discover themselves trapped in an alien parallel universe with little hope of returning home. They make their mark in this other world earning them the gratitude of the denizens of this world and eventually find that their adventure comes full circle.

Elvis Blue just turned sixteen and struggles with the challenges of becoming a man. In the small town of Hillsborough, North Carolina, there aren't a lot of opportunities for young kids who come from the wrong side of the tracks, especially kids with an alcoholic father and immigrant mother. He is also dealing with the unfamiliar emotions that go with finding his first love in neighborhood girl Maria Palmero. Together with his best friend Monk and loyal puppy Sherlock, Elvis decides to embark on a ghost-hunting career to find his fame and fortune. Elvis chooses the most haunted place in the county to start the hunt, the rickety old Simmons mansion. Rumors still swirl in town about Josiah Simmons who went on a crazy murder spree forty years ago. No one knows how many people Josiah killed or where he buried his legendary fortune, but Elvis and his friends are determined to find out. The kids hit an obstacle right off the bat. Somebody else is interested in the old Simmons mansion. Despite warnings, they pursue the investigation and stumble into the middle of another mystery. There is a new killer stalking the town now and the bodies are rapidly piling up. Elvis and his friends must learn how to deal with a lot of devious people and find more clues while handling all of their problems at home. Unseen danger threatens at every turn, but they learn to support each other and muddle through it. His courage and character are put to the test, and Elvis always comes through. In the end, they will find the ghost, discover the treasure, and then confront the killer. But in order to live through it, Elvis must face his fears and figure it all out.

This book argues that the best way to understand the stories of the Old and New Testaments is to consider them as human stories with sophisticated narrative techniques at play. God is a character in these stories from the beginning and considering god as a character in a narrative proves fruitful in responding to the human voices of these stories.Although many readers go to the Bible to find the revealed word of Yahweh or of the Christian God, what they find there is always an interpretation of the text through the filters of a religious dogma which exists prior to the reading of the text. Reading the Bible suggests another way of reading the texts, a way of reading which concentrates not on "what does it mean?" but on "what does it say?" and "what do I see there?" The result is a fresh approach to the reading of these biblical texts, an approach which celebrates human storytelling while investigating myth, language, and the act of reading a text.