Fenton Hardy, the famous private detective and father of the Hardy Boys, asks his sons to help him with his latest case involving the illegal drug trade. Hardy sends Frank and Joe to a house on the cliff, whose location offers an excellent vantage point to watch for smugglers. The Hardy Boys are tricked into going inside the house by cries for help and find themselves trapped for a short time in the attic, meanwhile, their telescope and motorcycles...

Flailing thirty-four-year-old Bridget (Kelly O’Sullivan) finally catches a break when she meets a nice guy and lands a much-needed job nannying six-year-old Frances (played by a scene-stealing Ramona Edith-Williams). But an unwanted pregnancy introduces an unexpected complication. To make matters worse, she clashes with the obstinate Frances and struggles to navigate a growing tension between Frances’s moms. Amidst her tempestuous personal relationships,...

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

Independently produced by Bennie Zeidman, Hell's house (1932) is a Pre-Code melodrama that captured Bette Davis and Pat O'Brien just before they were catapulted to superstardom at Warner Bros. An exposé of the American penal system (not unlike I am a fugitive from a Chain Gang and The mayor of hell), Hell's house stars Junior Durkin as a wholesome farmboy who moves to the city after the death of his mother. Dazzled by the smooth talk and beautiful...

In his groundbreaking book, Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices, Ralph Fletcher took an expedition into the murky and sometimes dangerous world of boys and writing. Ralph's new video, Dude, listen to this! explores the issue face-to-face as he meets with a group of boys who voluntarily give up recess time each week to meet and talk about their writing. Dude, listen to this! thoughtfully examines the exuberance, sly humour, and surprising sensitivity...

Saga of an American boyhood.

The tragic tale of a Montana family ripped apart by scandal and murder: “a significant and elegant addition to the fiction of the American West” (Washington Post).
 
In the summer of 1948, twelve-year-old David Hayden witnessed and experienced a series of cataclysmic events that would forever change the way he saw his family. The Haydens had been pillars of their small Montana town: David’s father was...

In a small village near Paris, 14-year-old boys and girls enter the training center for future lads and jockeys. For these young pupils, the transition between the family environment and this new world is brutal. Though sharing the world of teenagers -- flirting, cell phones and PlayStation -- they enter a world where the comfort of the horses comes before that of the human.

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for grandfather's renowned intoxicant, and the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than...

After a dying criminal confesses that his loot has been stashed "in the tower," the Hardy boys make an astonishing discovery.