Charles Constant has narrated 103 audiobooks on Listento.it by 110 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 1,122 ratings. The most-rated is Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.
Winning Ugly
Summary
He's been called the best in the world at the mental game of tennis. Brad Gilbert's strokes may not be pretty, but looks aren't everything. He has beaten the tour's biggest names - all by playing his "ugly" game. Now, in Winning Ugly, Gilbert teaches recreational players how to win more often without necessarily even changing their strokes. The key to success, he says, is to become a better thinking player - to recognize, analyze, and capitalize. That means out-thinking opponents before, during, and after a match - forcing him or her to play your game. Gilbert's unconventional advice includes: How to identify the seven "Hidden Ad Points", and what to do when they come up Six reasons why you should never serve first How to beat a lefty, a retriever, a serve-volley player, and other troublesome opponents How to keep a lead or stop a match from slipping away How to handle psyching and gamesmanship Winning Ugly is an invaluable combat manual for the court, and its tips include "some real gems", according to Tennis magazine. Ultimately, Winning Ugly will help you beat players who have been beating you.
©1993, 2013 Brad Gilbert and Steve Jamison (P)2013 Tantor
Her Russian Returns
Summary
Rytsar Durov should be dead. But in the BDSM world, loyalties run as deep as kinky passions. Sir Thane Davis is determined to save his Russian brother, but must call on his friends at the Center to execute the plan. Clinging to hope, Brie trusts the sexy sadist will keep his promise to her. Rytsar is not a man to go down easily, but a sacrifice must be made if he is to survive....
©2017 Red Phoenix (P)2017 Red Phoenix
Rider's Revenge
Summary
Revenge is a seven-letter word that isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a word for those who have been wronged. Jo Turner has been waiting five, long years to finally turn revenge into vengeance. Using Rider, the pretty-faced manwhore, is simply the price she is willing to pay to satiate her desire for revenge. Little does she know, she makes herself a target from the one thing Rider has sworn to give his life to protect - The Last Riders. When you wake the soldier, be prepared for the consequences. Rider is going to teach her a hard lesson: Revenge is a double-edged sword...and it always cuts both ways.
©2011 Young Ink Press (P)2018 Young Ink Press
Bismarck
Summary
A gripping tale of heroism - and doom - on the high seas.... The sinking of the German battleship Bismarck - a masterpiece of engineering, well-armored with a main artillery of eight 15-inch guns - was one of the most dramatic events of World War II. She left the port of Gotenhafen for her first operation on the night of 18 May 1941, yet was almost immediately discovered by Norwegian resistance and Allied air reconnaissance. British battlecruiser Hood was quickly dispatched from Scapa Flow to intercept the Bismarck, together with new battleship Prince of Wales. They were ordered to find the ship quickly because, on their way from the USA, several large convoys were heading for Britain. On 24 May, Bismarck was found off the coast of Greenland, but the ensuing battle was disastrous for the British. The Hood was totally destroyed within minutes (with only three crewmen surviving), and Prince of Wales was badly damaged. The chase resumed until the German behemoth was finally caught, this time by four British capital ships supported by torpedo-bombers from the carrier Ark Royal. The icy North Atlantic roiled from the crash of shellfire and bursting explosions until finally the Bismarck collapsed, sending nearly 2,000 German sailors to a watery grave. Tamelander and Zetterling's work rests on stories from survivors and the latest historical discoveries. The book starts with a thorough account of maritime developments from 1871 up to the era of the giant battleship, and ends with a vivid account, hour by hour, of the dramatic and fateful hunt for the mighty Bismarck, Nazi-Germany's last hope to pose a powerful surface threat to Allied convoys.
©2009 Niklas Zetterling & Michael Tamelander (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Alienated America
Summary
Respected conservative journalist and commentator Timothy P. Carney continues the conversation begun with Hillbilly Elegy and the classic Bowling Alone in this hard-hitting analysis that identifies the true factor behind the decline of the American dream: It is not purely the result of economics as the left claims, but the collapse of the institutions that made us successful, including marriage, church, and civic life. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump proclaimed, “the American dream is dead”, and this message resonated across the country. Why do so many people believe the American dream is no longer within reach? Growing inequality, stubborn pockets of immobility, rising rates of deadly addiction, the increasing and troubling fact that where you start determines where you end up, heightening political strife - these are the disturbing realities threatening ordinary American lives today. The standard accounts pointed to economic problems among the working class, but the root was a cultural collapse: While the educated and wealthy elites still enjoy strong communities, most blue-collar Americans lack strong communities and institutions that bind them to their neighbors. And outside of the elites, the central American institution has been religion. That is, it’s not the factory closings that have torn us apart; it’s the church closings. The dissolution of our most cherished institutions - nuclear families, places of worship, civic organizations - has not only divided us, but eroded our sense of worth, belief in opportunity, and connection to one another. In Alienated America, Carney visits all corners of America, from the dim country bars of Southwestern Pennsylvania, to the bustling Mormon wards of Salt Lake City, and explains the most important data and research to demonstrate how the social connection is the great divide in America. He shows that Trump’s surprising victory was the most visible symptom of this deep-seated problem. In addition to his detailed exploration of how a range of societal changes have, in tandem, damaged us, Carney provides a framework that will lead us back out of a lonely, modern wilderness.
©2019 Timothy P. Carney (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Uncovering the Life of Your Dreams
Summary
Scott Billings has a pretty good life, or so it appears. But something is missing for him. Like many others, he finds himself just going through the motions, sleepwalking through life, until an unexpected and unique encounter with a street beggar allows him to see the possibility of a new reality; a dream world that is more real than anything he's ever experienced. It is a world that holds the answers to his questions about life...and his destiny. Based on the true story of the author's transformational journey, Uncovering the Life of Your Dreams takes you on a journey of your own toward a more enlightened life filled with abundance, joy, and absolute freedom. This entertaining tale of the universal truths that connect us all offers a much-needed and timely message to help you awaken to a more conscious world.
©2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2018 Gildan Media
In Vino Duplicitas
Summary
Few gain entry to the privileged world of ultrafine wines, where billionaires flock to exclusive auction houses to vie for the scarce surviving bottles from truly legendary years. But Rudy Kurniawan, an unknown 20-something from Indonesia, was blessed with two gifts that opened doors: a virtuoso palate for wine tasting and access to a seemingly limitless (if mysterious) supply of the world's most coveted wines. After bursting onto the scene in 2002, Kurniawan quickly became the leading purveyor of rare wines to the American elite. But in April 2008, his lots of Domaine Ponsot Clos Saint-Denis red burgundy - dating as far back as 1945 - were abruptly pulled from auction. The problem? The winemaker was certain that this particular burgundy was first produced only in 1982. Journalist Peter Hellman was there, and he would closely investigate as a singular cast of characters - including a Kansas-born billionaire, a wine-loving young prosecutor, and a crusty FBI agent - worked to unravel the biggest con in wine history. Whether driven by the love of wine or of justice, all were asking the same question: Was the mild-mannered Kurniawan himself a dupe? Or had one young man - with little experience and few connections - ensnared the world's top winemakers, sellers, and drinkers in a web of deceit?
©2017 Peter Hellman (P)2017 Tantor
The Real Lincoln
Summary
Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in American history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain's? In The Real Lincoln, author Thomas J. DiLorenzo uncovers a side of Lincoln not told in many history books and overshadowed by the immense Lincoln legend. Through extensive research and meticulous documentation, DiLorenzo portrays the 16th president as a man who devoted his political career to revolutionizing the American form of government from one that was very limited in scope and highly decentralized - as the Founding Fathers intended - to a highly centralized, activist state. Standing in his way, however, was the South, with its independent states, its resistance to the national government, and its reliance on unfettered free trade.
©2003 Thomas J. DiLorenzo (P)2017 Tantor
Female Serial Killers
Summary
Society is conditioned to think of murderers and predators as men, but in this fascinating book, Peter Vronsky exposes and investigates the phenomenon of women who kill - and the political, economic, social, and sexual implications. From history's earliest recorded cases of homicidal females to Irma Grese, the Nazi Beast of Belsen, from Britain's notorious child-slayer Myra Hindley to "Honeymoon Killer" Martha Beck, from the sensational murder-spree of Aileen Wournos, to cult killers, homicidal missionaries, and the sexy femme fatale, Vronsky challenges the ordinary standards of good and evil and defies the accepted perceptions of gender role and identity.
©2007 Peter Vronsky (P)2017 Tantor
Die for Me
Summary
In 1985, Charles Ng and Leonard Lake were spotted shoplifting. Ng escaped, but Lake's capture led police to a concrete bunker in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where they discovered the grisly evidence of an orgy of sex crimes, torture, and murder that claimed at least 16 victims. Lake committed suicide: Ng fled to Canada, where he was tracked down and extradited to California. This 14-year, $10 million legal case was the costliest and longest criminal prosecution in California history.
©2000 Don Lasseter (P)2020 Tantor
Hark! The Herald Angels Scream
Summary
Eighteen stories of Christmas horror from best-selling, acclaimed authors, including Joe R. Lansdale, Scott Smith, Michael Koryta, Sarah Pinborough, Seanan McGuire, Jonathan Maberry, Kelley Armstrong, and Josh Malerman. That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. Marley untying the bandage that holds his jaws together. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The heavy ledgers Marley drags by his chains. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.
©2018 Daring Greatly Corporation (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Billionaire in Wolf's Clothing
Summary
Real estate mogul werewolf Rafe Denali didn't get where he is in life by being a pushover. When sexy she-wolf Jade Ashton nearly drowns in the surf outside his beach house, he knows better than to bring her into his home and his heart. But there's something about her that brings out his strongest instincts.... Rafe has good reason to be suspicious. Jade Ashton and her baby son are pawns in an evil wolf's fatal plan. How can Jade betray the gorgeous man who rescued her? But if she doesn't, her baby will die, and her own life hangs in the balance. To get to the truth, Rafe is going to have to gain Jade's trust. If he can do that, he just might be her last - and best - hope. Contains mature themes.
©2016 Terry Spear (P)2016 Tantor
Power, Pleasure, and Profit
Summary
We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning-cost-benefit analysis-to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton reveals, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought to reveal how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton states, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.
©2018 Railshead Ltd. (P)2018 Tantor
Operation Greylord
Summary
Operation Greylord was the longest and most successful undercover investigation in FBI history, and the largest corruption bust ever in the US. It resulted in bribery and tax charges against 103 judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, and, eventually, more than 70 indictments. And it was led by Terrence Hake, a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago, who worked undercover for nearly four years, accepting bribes, making payoffs, wearing a wire in bars and to racetracks, bugging a judge's chambers, and befriending people he knew he would betray.
©2015 Terrence Hake and Wayne Klatt (P)2015 Tantor
Simple Ride
Summary
After surviving the heat, the torture, and making it out of the sandbox one mission at a time, I have spent years on the ride, going mile after mile to escape the past. I thought I had left hell behind. Only, it is hard to run from the demons inside you. It all changed when I found the Hellions brotherhood. My nightmares were chased away by the daylight of my new purpose in the club. I'm a whore, born from trash; that's what he always told me. Well, sugar, if you can't beat it back, you might as well stop fighting and make the best of it. The Hellions take care of me as long as I take care of their boys, and the arrangement works...until he finds me. Nathan "Boomer" Vaughn - Hellions MC's newest member, former Army Special Forces, and overall badass - is brought to his knees when he finds out the secrets his favorite barfly has been keeping. Pamela should have brought her problems to the club first, but she didn't. Now it's up to Boomer to keep her and her secrets safe. Contains mature themes.
©2015 Chelsea Camaron (P)2016 Tantor
Supreme Commander
Summary
Seymour Morris, Jr., combines political history, military biography, and business management to tell the story of General Douglas MacArthur’s tremendous success in rebuilding Japan after World War II in Supreme Commander, a lively, in-depth work of biographical history complementary to The Generals, The Storm of War, and Truman. He is the most-decorated general in American history - and the only five-star general to receive the Medal of Honor. Yet Douglas MacArthur’s greatest victory was not in war but in peace. As the uniquely titled Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, he was charged with transforming a defeated, militarist empire into a beacon of peace and democracy - "the greatest gamble ever attempted", he called it. A career military man, MacArthur had no experience in politics, diplomacy, or economics. A vain, reclusive, and self-centered man, his many enemies in Washington thought he was a flaming peacock, and few, including President Harry Truman’s closest advisors, gave him a chance of succeeding. Yet MacArthur did so brilliantly, defying timetables and expectations. Supreme Commander tells for the first time, the story of how MacArthur’s leadership achieved a nation-building success that had never been attempted before - and never replicated since. Seymour Morris, Jr., reveals this flawed man at his best who treated a defeated enemy with respect; who made informed and thoughtful decisions yet could be brash and stubborn when necessary, and who lead the Occupation with intelligence, class, and compassion. Morris analyzes MacArthur’s key tactical choices, explaining how each contributed to his accomplishment, and paints a detailed picture of a true patriot - a man of conviction who proved to be an outstanding and effective leader in the most extraordinary circumstances.
©2014 Seymour Morris Jr. (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers
Tesla
Summary
Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant, invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp, and the remote control. His breakthrough came in alternating current, the basis of the electric grid and long-distance electrical transmission. This pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct current empire, and bitter patent battles ensued. But Tesla's technology was superior, and eventually, he prevailed. Unfortunately, he had no business sense and could not capitalize on this success. His most advanced ideas were unrecognized for decades: 40 years in the case of the radio patent; longer still for his ideas on laser beam technology. Tesla's personal life was magnificently bizarre. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he was germophobic and never shook hands. He required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. In later years, he ate only white food and conversed with the pigeons in Bryant Park. This clear, authoritative, and highly enjoyable biography takes account of all phases of this remarkable life.
©2018 Richard Munson (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Long Fix
Summary
In The Long Fix, physician and health-care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health-care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who's paying, it's what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better - and that is both backward and dangerous. Dr. Lee proposes turning the way we receive care completely inside out. When doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are paid to keep people healthy, care improves and costs decrease. Lee shares inspiring examples of how this has been done, from physicians' practices that prioritize preventative care, to hospitals that adapt lessons from manufacturing plants to make them safer, to health-care organizations that share online how much care costs and how well each physician is caring for patients. Using clear and compelling language, Dr. Lee paints a picture that is both realistic and optimistic. It may not be a quick fix, but her concrete action plan for reform - for employers and other payers, patients, clinicians, and policy makers - can reinvent health care, and create a less costly, more efficient, and healthier system for all.
©2020 Vivian S. Lee (P)2020 Kalorama
Secrets to a Successful Startup
Summary
Everything You Need to Start and Succeed in Your Own Venture Trevor Blake built three successful startups and sold them for more than $300 million. Now he's written a complete instruction manual that covers everything the budding entrepreneur or existing business owner needs to know to build the career or business of their dreams. Unlike the many theoretical guides out there, this is a practical handbook based on Blake's wildly successful in-the-trenches experience. It incorporates leading-edge strategies that cover every aspect of running a business - including funding, developing systems, and marketing. Blake presents in-depth insight into managing effectively, maintaining cash flow, and adapting to the changing needs of customers in volatile economic times. One of his most innovative contributions is an emphasis on cultivating the right mindset, and he tells you exactly how to do that. "The secret to success isn't in the plan", he writes. "It's in the person holding it." His proven methods will give you the confidence to take the entrepreneurial leap and turn your winning idea into an efficient, profitable company.
©2020 Trevor Blake (P)2020 Gildan Media
Paganism in Depth
Summary
Paganism in Depth is a next level book for Pagans interested in taking their practice deeper. Author John Beckett helps you develop a detailed understanding of practical knowledge as well as ideas for working through new challenges you'll encounter as you advance in your practice, such as what happens when a deity makes demands of you, how to form and sustain community, and how to lead a community as a medium for the divine. This book shares several keys to help you find your way forward when you feel you've gone as far as you can, including daily spiritual practice, ancestor veneration, perceiving the otherworld, religious ecstasy, direct experience of the gods, offerings, divination, magical practice, and devotional practice. Your relationships with your community and with the gods and spirits are of the utmost importance. John Beckett helps you navigate those relationships so you can give and receive the energy you need on your unique spiritual journey.
©2019 John Beckett (P)2019 Tantor