Compass & Codex

Two more scouts vanished during the night patrol. The disappearances are moving closer. And Cinder just found a piece of shell that doesn’t belong to any ant.

In this episode, the colony wakes to an emergency meeting. Cinder, Blaze, and Thistle eavesdrop from a hidden tunnel junction and learn the food shortage is far worse than anyone is publicly admitting. Then Cinder discovers something in the supply room that Thist...

A third of the colony’s food has vanished overnight. Nobody knows why. And the keeper in charge of the stores is pretending everything is fine.

In this episode of the Compass & Codex ant adventure audiobook for boys, Cinder, Blaze, and Thistle notice the missing food, confront the keeper Etta Lorne, spy on a secret military briefing from a ledge above the Grand Chamber — and learn that three patrol ants never...

Queen Aureline addresses the entire colony. The decree is absolute: no ant — especially no young ant — ventures beyond the inner boundaries. Cinder, Blaze, and Thistle have three days before the food runs out.

In this episode, the Queen’s announcement sends panic through the Grand Chamber. Cinder sneaks into the record chamber that night to find ancient accounts of pill bug territorial disputes — and ...

They were ready to sneak out before dawn. Then someone stepped out of the shadows. She already knew everything.

In this episode, the colony healer Silke Greer reveals she overheard their plans — and instead of stopping them, she helps. She teaches Cinder, Blaze, and Thistle how to mask their scent from predators, how to find water in the dry terrain, and how to approach Moss Wren, the territorial spider that guards the...

Four days of food. An injured scout barely alive, whispering about “rolling thieves.”  The tunnels sealed. And a maintenance passage just barely wide enough for three young ants.

In this episode, hunger grips the Fire Ant Kingdom. An injured scout is carried in — Harper Blackwood, missing two legs, gasping a warning before losing consciousness. Captain Selwick seals the tunnels and declares a colony-wi...

Cinder has a plan. Blaze says it’s suicide. Thistle has done the math. The colony has four days of food left.

In this episode, Cinder gathers Blaze and Thistle and proposes the mission: slip out
beyond the colony boundaries to investigate the pill bugs before the food runs out
completely. Silas Venn discovers their meeting place and refuses to report them. The debate gets heated. Then Etta announces another ratio...

They’ve been underground their entire lives. The world outside is enormous. And it is trying to kill them.

In this episode, Cinder, Blaze, and Thistle emerge from the maintenance tunnel at dawn into the outside world for the first time. Thistle immediately begins mapping landmarks. Blaze leads through the dense grass. They detour around a colony of black ants defending their territory. They encounter a vast puddle. The...

Max built a LEGO town called Brickhaven. Every wall, every street, every guard. Then he woke up inside it — one-and-a-half inches tall. And they closed the gates.

Brickhaven Ep.1 follows Max across the vast landscape of his bedroom floor — now a wilderness at minifig scale — to the walls of the town he built with his own hands. When he gets there, the guards raise their spears.

For fans of the LEGO M...

Fire ants don't enter beetle territory. Cinder Marlowe just did — and now his whole team is locked in a hollow log while the beetles prepare to use them as bait at dawn.

This fire ant adventure story follows Cinder, Blaze, Thistle, and Silas as they cross the border, face Rook Calder, and discover something nobody expected: the beetles are starving too.

For fans of Empires of the Undergrowth and AntsCanada &mdas...

Jim Hawkins has never left the Admiral Benbow Inn. Then Billy Bones arrives.

He’s a weathered, scar-faced pirate who takes the corner table by the window and never takes his eyes off the road. He pays in strange foreign coins, drinks rum from morning to night, and whispers warnings about a seafaring man with one leg. Jim takes his money. And watches the road too.

Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson&rs...

Marcus Aemilius Corvus is sixteen years old and about to swear twenty-five years of his life to Caesar's army. Once the sacramentum passes his lips, he belongs to Rome.

In this episode, Marcus arrives at the legion camp outside Genava, joins the line of
recruits, and takes the military oath that will define the next quarter-century of his
life. He meets his contubernium — the eight men who will share his tent, hi...

Three senior engineers refused to take this route tonight. That left Gunnar Harlan.

He’s fourteen years old, running his late father’s steam engine through a Montana blizzard in 1879. The Widow-Maker knows every inch of this mountain. So does Gunnar. But when they arrive at Harrow Gulch, the Ironclad Syndicate is waiting — and the cargo they promised to deliver has been quietly rerouted.

Gunnar opens...

Max knows this LEGO town better than anyone alive. He built every brick, designed every guard, placed every lamp and fountain. But when he's escorted through the gates of Brickhaven under armed escort, the citizens look away and Krag — the champion Max designed himself — calls him confused, or dangerous.

Max gets to see his creation alive for the first time at ground level: the bakery with real bread, the fountai...

Four fire ant scouts are locked in a jar with no way out. A strange caterpillar arrives with a deal — and the entire wild world hangs on it.

Cinder, Blaze, Thistle, and Silas are prisoners in a cracked clay jar deep inside the beetle camp. Escape comes from the last place they expect: Miri Solace, a brightly colored caterpillar who slides through the glass with a proposition. Help her collect three rare leaves — ...

The pirates have found Billy Bones — and now everything Jim Hawkins knew about his quiet life at the inn is over.

A thin, knife-like man named Black Dog arrives at the Admiral Benbow asking for Billy. The visit ends in a cutlass fight, a stroke, and Billy collapsed on his bedroom floor. That same evening, a blind man named Pew taps through the fog toward the inn and presses a black spot into Billy's palm — a pira...

A Roman legionary carries forty-five pounds of armor — and then they make him run.

At dawn, Marcus receives his full kit from the quartermaster: lorica hamata chainmail, scutum shield, two pila, gladius, belt, cloak, cooking pot, and water skin. Forty-five pounds, distributed across every joint. He barely makes it to formation without collapsing. Then comes the training obstacle course — walls to climb, logs to c...

The Millston run is over. Gunnar Harlan is back at Mrs. Okafor's boarding house before the rest of the town wakes up — and some things about the house feel like they were waiting for him.

Mrs. Okafor has run this boarding house for thirty years. She knew Emmet Harlan when he was young — same window seat, same black coffee, same refusal to explain why he took the night runs nobody else would. She never presses. Bu...

Max has been exiled from his own creation...and one small scout is waiting for him on the other side of the gate.

Pip is a former member of Brickhaven's scout division. He left when Krag started making midnight deliveries to the eastern hills, and he has been watching from outside ever since. His hidden shelter is covered wall-to-wall with three years of documentation: guard rotations, delivery schedules, and a correlation c...

Fire ant adventure audiobook series for boys ages 8-14 — Colony in Danger, Chapter 11.

A jumping spider controls every path through this section of the meadow. Cinder Marlowe and his crew face three encounters with Moss Wren — each one more revealing than the last. The spider knows things no one should know: the pill bugs aren’t acting alone, and whatever is guiding them is very old. He can’t eat the ...