Basket Case
Summary
Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, "plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff". Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling scuba "accident", might be the stiff of Jackâs dreams - if only he can figure out what happened. Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasnât yet fired anyone but plans to "break her cherry" on Jack; the rock starâs pop-singer widow, whoâs using the occasion of her husbandâs death to relaunch her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholdersâ meeting. With clues from the dead rock singerâs music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy Stomaâs strange fate - in a hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking journalism, and for the death-obsessed obituary writer himself. "Always be halfway prepared" is Jack Taggerâs motto - and itâs more than enough to guarantee a wickedly funny, brilliantly entertaining novel from Carl Hiaasen.
©2002 Carl Hiaasen; 2013 Random House Audio
Heaven
Summary
What will heaven be like? Randy Alcorn presents a thoroughly biblical answer, based on years of careful study, presented in an engaging, reader-friendly style. His conclusions will surprise listeners and stretch their thinking about this important subject. Heaven will inspire listeners to long for heaven while they're living on earth.
©2004 Eternal Perspective Ministries (P)2004 Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
The Land of Stories: An Author's Odyssey
Summary
The fifth audiobook in Chris Colfer's number-one New York Times best-selling series, The Land of Stories! In the highly anticipated continuation of the Land of Stories series, Conner learns that the only place to fight the Masked Man's literary army is inside his own short stories. When the twins and their friends enter worlds crafted from Conner's imagination, the race begins to put an end to the Masked Man's reign of terror. Can the twins finally restore peace in the fairy tale world?
©2016 Chris Colfer (P)2016 Hachette Audio
The Music of What Happens
Summary
From the award-winning author of Openly Straight, a story about two teens falling in love over a summer that throws everything possible to keep them apart. Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Throw in a rickety, 1980s-era food truck called Coq Au Vinny. Add in prickly pears, cloud eggs, and a murky idea of what's considered locally sourced and organic. Place it all in Mesa, Arizona, in June, where the temp regularly hits 114. And top it off with a touch of undeniable chemistry between utter opposites. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk - to get the thing they want the most.
©2019 Bill Konigsberg (P)2019 Scholastic Inc.
Why We Get Sick
Summary
A scientist reveals the groundbreaking evidence linking many major diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimerâs disease, to a common root cause - insulin resistance - and shares an easy, effective plan to reverse and prevent it. We are sick. Around the world, we struggle with diseases that were once considered rare. Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimerâs disease, and diabetes affect millions each year; many people are also struggling with hypertension, weight gain, fatty liver, dementia, low testosterone, menstrual irregularities and infertility, and more. We treat the symptoms, not realizing that all of these diseases and disorders have something in common. Each of them is caused or made worse by a condition known as insulin resistance. And you might have it. Odds are you do - more than half of all adults in the United States are insulin resistant, with most other countries either worse or not far behind. In Why We Get Sick, internationally renowned scientist and pathophysiology Professor Benjamin Bikman explores why insulin resistance has become so prevalent and why it matters. Unless we recognize it and take steps to reverse the trend, major chronic diseases will be even more widespread. But reversing insulin resistance is possible, and Bikman offers an evidence-based plan to stop and prevent it, with helpful food lists, meal suggestions, easy exercise principles, and more. Full of surprising research and practical advice, Why We Get Sick will help you to take control of your health. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.Â
©2020 Benjamin Bikman (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Kayfabe: Stories You're Not Supposed to Hear from a Pro Wrestling Production Company Owner
Summary
"Sean's story, beginning as a renegade, outlaw company and evolving to redefining the shoot video genre, is extremely fascinating. Who knew that the man asking the questions was as fascinating as his subject matter?" - Justin Barrasso, Sports Illustrated "Kayfabe brings to life a world that once had its own version of âomertaâ in a fascinating, well written book that will intrigue long time fans, new fans, and just those who are hoping to take a peek behind the curtain of this unlikely cultural phenomenon." - Eric Bischoff, WCW President "I worked in a business full of liars, cheaters, workers, con artists and of course...politicians. I can name maybe 3 people over the years that I 100% trusted, or even believed for that matter. Sean Oliver is one of those men. In reading Kayfabe, you can believe that 100% of this masterpiece is accurate - yes, even the parts about me. The most stand-up guy perhaps ever associated with the business of Pro Wrestling. You want truth - you'll find it right here." - Vince Russo, Former WWE/WCW Head Writer If you thought the world of pro wrestling was wild, imagine what you havenât seen on TV and in the ring. Add to that the backdrop of building a renegade production company, negotiating with impossible wrestling talent, and hosting groundbreaking, shoot-style programming, and you have the story of Sean Oliver. Sean has seen industry-wide accolades for the company he co-founded and for which he serves as front man. But there are also the threats, stories of abuse, and moments of downright hilarity that you havenât known...until now. Watch the unpredictable and unconventional story through Seanâs eyes.
©2017 Sean Oliver (P)2017 Sean Oliver
Signs of Cupidity: A Fantasy Reverse Harem Story
Summary
You'd think that basically being in charge of love would be an epic job, right? Wrong. Sure, I can blow some Lust into people's faces and watch the show, but I can't actually participate. It gets old, trust me. Same goes for love. I can pass it out like sugar-free lollipops at a dentist's office, but I can't get any love for myself. It totally sucks.  I used to consider myself a hopeless romantic, so why wouldn't I choose to become a cupid? Sounds like a good idea, right? Wrong again. They don't call us stupid cupids for nothing. I'm stuck in this never-ending afterlife where I'm invisible, lonely, and bitter as hell. And yeah, I'm probably responsible for some terrible matchmaking out there. Sorry, not sorry.  All my bad cupid'ing might be why I was exiled from the human realm. You can do only so much before the cupid bosses get all huffy. Unfortunately, my bitterness carried over into the new realm, and then I attacked a fae prince with Love Arrows. Accidentally. Okay, not accidentally. But hey, he deserved it. What I didn't expect was for him to retaliate and hit my ass with some crazy magic mojo strong enough to push me into the physical realm. Whoa.   That's right. This cupid just got a real body. And you know what that means.... Now it's my turn to get some. Love, I mean. Get your head out of the gutter. Wink, wink bitches.   Author's note: This is a medium-burn reverse harem story. It includes explicit language and sexual situations. Intended for audiences 18 years and older. As this is a series, there will be a cliff-hanger.
©2018 Raven Kennedy (P)2018 Raven Kennedy
Smaller and Smaller Circles
Summary
This harrowing mystery, winner of the Philippine National Book Award, follows two Catholic priests on the hunt through Manila for a brutal serial killer. Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila's Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources, and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf. In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands. Father Gus Saenz is a respected forensic anthropologist, one of the few in the Philippines, and has been tapped by the director of the National Bureau of Investigations as a backup for police efforts. Together with his protégé, Father Jerome Lucero, a psychologist, Saenz dedicates himself to tracking down the monster preying on these impoverished boys. Smaller and Smaller Circles, widely regarded as the first Filipino crime novel, is a poetic masterpiece of literary noir, a sensitive depiction of a time and place and a fascinating story about the Catholic Church and its place in its devotees' lives.
©2015 F.H. Batacan (P)2015 Recorded Books
La Saison des Orages
Summary
Geralt de Riv, le Sorceleur, ne peut plus mener sa mission à bien. On lui a dérobé ses armes légendaires, l'empêchant d'exercer ses talents de tueur dans un monde qui a pourtant plus que jamais besoin de ses services. Alors qu'on lui demande d'assurer la sécurité du souverain pour ses noces, Geralt se trouve pris au cÅur d'une intrigue politique qui le dépasse. Un complot dangereux que le Sorceleur va devoir déjouer sans s'attirer l'ire des puissants, tout en cherchant à mettre la main sur son voleur et, surtout, ses précieuses épées...
©2015 Bragelonne (P)2021 Hardigan
The Mountain Between Us
Summary
On a stormy winter night, two strangers wait for a flight at the Salt Lake City airport. Ashley Knox is an attractive, successful writer, who is flying East for her much anticipated wedding. Dr. Ben Payne has just wrapped up a medical conference and is also eager to get back East for a slate of surgeries he has scheduled for the following day. When the last outgoing flight is cancelled due to a broken de-icer and a forthcoming storm, Ben finds a charter plane that can take him around the storm and drop him in Denver to catch a connection. And when the pilot says the single engine prop plane can fit one more, if barely, Ben offers the seat to Ashley, knowing that she needs to get back just as urgently. And then the unthinkable happens. The pilot has a heart attack mid-flight, and the plane crashes into the High Uintas Wilderness - one of the largest stretches of harsh and remote land in the United States. Ben, who has broken ribs and Ashley, who suffers a terrible leg fracture, along with the pilot's dog, are faced with an incredibly harrowing battle to survive. Fortunately, Ben is a medical professional and avid climber. With little hope for rescue, he must nurse Ashley back to health and figure out how they are going to get off the mountain, where the temperature hovers in the teens. Meanwhile, Ashley soon realizes that the very private Ben has some serious emotional wounds to heal as well. He explains to Ashley that he is separated from his beloved wife, but in a long standing tradition, he faithfully records messages for her on his voice recorder, reflecting on their love affair. As Ashley eavesdrops on Ben's tender words to his estranged wife she comes to fear that when it comes to her own love story, she's just settling. And what's more: she begins to realize that the man she is really attracted to, the man she may love, is Ben.
©2010 Charles Martin (P)2010 Random House
Silence Fallen
Summary
In the New York Times best-selling Mercy Thompson novels, the coyote shapeshifter has found her voice in the werewolf pack. But when Mercy's bond with the pack - and her mate - is broken, she'll learn what it truly means to be alone.... Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form Mercy escapes - only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in the heart of Europe. Unable to contact Adam and the rest of the pack, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the ancient city of Prague, old ghosts rise....
©2017 Patricia Briggs (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Flat Lake in Winter
Summary
Deep in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains sits a mansion, its image reflected perfectly on the still water of Flat Lake. Inside that estate are the savagely murdered bodies of a wealthy elderly couple. All evidence points to Jonathan - their mentally handicapped twenty-eight-year-old grandson - but Matt Fielder, his appointed defense lawyer, isn't convinced. While Fielder is pretty sure Jonathan committed the killings, Jonathan's childlike understanding of the world renders it nearly impossible for him to have done it out of greed or malice. Now Fielder must fight the prosecution's campaign for the death penalty, but as he scours Jonathan's past for anything that will help their case, he uncovers a cache of dark family secrets that turn the case in a shocking and unexpected new direction. When his first novel, Felony Murder, was published, Publishers Weekly called Klempner "a writer to watch." Now, Klempner is better than ever - that rare novelist with both an insider's knowledge of the world he writes about, and a talent for intelligent, compelling storytelling.
©2016 Joseph T. Klempner (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Camera Lies
Summary
Alfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle", a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious to Janet Leigh in Psycho. Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality. Detailing the fluidity of acting, Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.
©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Tantor
The Brain's Way of Healing
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of The Brain That Changes Itself presents astounding advances in the treatment of brain injury and illness. Now with a new afterword. Winner of the 2015 Gold Nautilus Award in Science & Cosmology In The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge described the most important breakthrough in our understanding of the brain in 400 years: the discovery that the brain can change its own structure and function in response to mental experience - what we call neuroplasticity. His revolutionary new book shows, for the first time, how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. It describes natural, noninvasive avenues into the brain provided by the forms of energy around us - light, sound, vibration, movement - which pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain's own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated years of chronic pain or recovered from debilitating strokes that had plateaued; children on the autistic spectrum or with learning disorders normalizing; symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and cerebral palsy radically improved; and other near-miracle recoveries. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia with simple approaches anyone can use. For centuries it was believed that the brain's complexity prevented recovery from damage or illness. The Brain's Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses stories to present exciting, cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brains' performance and health. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2015 Norman Doidge (P)2015 Penguin
Influence
Summary
Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say yes - and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His 35 years of rigorous, evidence-based research, along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior, has resulted in this highly acclaimed book. You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader - and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.
©1984, 1994, 2007 Robert Cialdini (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
We Begin at the End
Summary
With We Begin at the End, Chris Whitaker has crafted an extraordinary novel about people who deserve so much more than life serves them. At times devastating, with flashes of humor and hope throughout, it is ultimately an inspiring tale of how the human spirit prevails and how, in the end, love - in all its different guises - wins. There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but heâs still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, 30 years later, Vincent is being released. Duchess is a 13-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Her mother, Star, grew up with Walk and Vincent. Walk is in overdrive trying to protect them, but Vincent and Star seem bent on sliding deeper into self-destruction. Star always burned bright, but recently that light has dimmed, leaving Duchess to parent not only her mother but her five-year-old brother. At school the other kids make fun of Duchess - her clothes are torn, her hair a mess. But let them throw their sticks, because sheâll throw stones. Rules are for other people. Sheâs just trying to survive and keep her family together. A 40-something-year-old sheriff and a 13-year-old girl may not seem to have a lot in common. But they both have come to expect that people will disappoint you, loved ones will leave you, and if you open your heart it will be broken. So when trouble arrives with Vincent King, Walk and Duchess find they will be unable to do anything but usher it in, arms wide closed. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
©2021 Christopher Whitaker (P)2021 Macmillan Audio
Where Law Ends
Summary
New York Times best seller In the first and only inside account of the Mueller investigation, one of the special counselâs most trusted prosecutors breaks his silence on the teamâs history-making search for the truth, their painstaking deliberations and costly mistakes, and Trumpâs unprecedented efforts to stifle their report. âWeissmann delivers the kind of forceful, ringing indictment that Muellerâs report did not.â (The New York Times) In May 2017, Robert Mueller was tapped to?lead an?inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, coordination by foreign agents with Donald Trumpâs campaign, and obstruction of justice by the president.?Mueller assembled a âdream teamâ of top prosecutors, and for the next 22 months, the investigation was a black box and the subject of endless anticipation and speculation â until April 2019, when?the?special counselâs report was released. In Where Law Ends, legendary prosecutor Andrew Weissmann â a key player in the Special Counselâs Office â finally pulls back the curtain to reveal exactly what went on inside the investigation, including the heated debates, painful deliberations, and mistakes of the team â not to mention the external efforts by the president and Attorney General William Barr to manipulate the investigation to their political ends.?Weissmann puts the listener in the room as Muellerâs team made their most consequential decisions, such as whether to subpoena the president, whether to conduct a full financial investigation of Trump, and whether to explicitly recommend obstruction charges against him. Weissmann also details for the first time the debilitating effects that President Trump himself had on the investigation, through his dangling of pardons and his constant threats to shut down the inquiry and fire Mueller, which left?the team?racing against the clock and?essentially fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.?? In Where Law Ends, Weissmann conjures the camaraderie and esprit de corps of the investigative units led by the enigmatic Mueller, a distinguished public servant who is revealed here, in a way we have never seen him before, as a manager, a colleague, and a very human presence. Weissmann is as candid about the teamâs mistakes as he is about its successes, and is committed to accurately documenting the historic investigation for future generations to assess and learn from. Ultimately, Where Law Ends is a story about?a team of public servants, dedicated to the rule of law, tasked with investigating a president who did everything he could to stand in their way.Â
©2020 Andrew Weissmann (P)2020 Random House Audio
Feeling Good
Summary
The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other 'black holes' of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist David D. Burns, M.D. outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life. Now, in this updated edition, Dr. Burns adds an all-new Consumer's Guide To Antidepressant Drugs, as well as a new introduction to help answer your questions about the many options available for treating depression. Recognise what causes your mood swings. Nip negative feelings in the bud. Deal with guilt. Handle hostility and criticism. Overcome addiction to love and approval. Build self-esteem. Feel good everyday. Please visit www.feelinggood.com to access supplemental materials, the Feeling Good Podcasts, the Feeling Good Blog, and more! PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
©1980 David Burns (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
The Stranger
Summary
#1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense Harlan Coben delivers his most shocking thriller yet, proving that a well-placed lie can help build a wonderful life - and a secret has the same explosive power to destroy it. The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar or a parking lot or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world. Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life. Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne's deception and realizes that if he doesn't make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he's stumbled into will not only ruin lives - it will end them.
©2015 Harlan Coben (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Love Wins
Summary
The fascinating and very moving story of the lovers, lawyers, judges, and activists behind the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that led to one of the most important national civil rights victories in decades: the legalization of same-sex marriage. In June 2015, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law in all 50 states in a decision as groundbreaking as Roe v Wade and Brown v Board of Education. Through insider accounts and access to key players, this definitive account reveals the dramatic and previously unreported events behind Obergefell v Hodges and the lives at its center. This is a story of law and love - and a promise made to a dying man who wanted to know how he would be remembered. Twenty years ago Jim Obergefell and John Arthur fell in love in Cincinnati, Ohio, a place where gays were routinely picked up by police and fired from their jobs. In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had to provide married gay couples all the benefits offered to straight couples. Jim and John - who was dying from ALS - flew to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal. But back home, Ohio refused to recognize their union or even list Jim's name on John's death certificate. Then they met Al Gerhardstein, a courageous attorney who had spent nearly three decades advocating for civil rights and who now saw an opening for the cause that few others had before him. This forceful and deeply affecting narrative - part Erin Brockovich, part Milk, part Still Alice - chronicles how this grieving man and his lawyer, against overwhelming odds, introduced the most important gay rights case in US history. It is an urgent and unforgettable account that will inspire listeners for many years to come.
©2016 Debra Cenziper and James Obergefell (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Save the Cat!
Summary
Here's what started the phenomenon: This book has been a best seller for over 15 years and has been used by screenwriters around the world! Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny, and candid look inside the movie business. Save the Cat is just one of many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying. Others include these: The four elements of every winning logline The seven immutable laws of screenplay physics The 10 genres that every movie ever made can be categorized by - and why they're important to your script Why your hero must serve your idea Mastering the 15 beats Creating the perfect beast by using the board to map 40 scenes with conflict and emotional change How to get back on track with proven rules for script repair This ultimate insider's guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who's proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat.
©2005 Blake Snyder (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Swap
Summary
"No list of thrillers is complete without Robyn Harding," proclaims Real Simple. Now the USA Today best-selling author of The Party delivers a riveting tale about the toxic relationship between two couples after a night of sexual shenanigans, and the manipulative teenager with an explosive secret at the center of it all.
Low Morrison is not your average teen. You could blame her hippie parents or her looming height or her dreary, isolated hometown on an island in the Pacific Northwest. But whatever the reason, Low just doesn't fit in - and neither does Freya, a once-famous social media influencer who now owns the pottery studio in town.
After signing up for a class, Low quickly falls under Freya's spell. And Freya, buoyed by Low's adoration, is compelled to share her darkest secrets and deepest desires. Finally, both feel a sense of belonging...that is, until Jamie walks through the studio door. Desperate for a baby, she and her husband have moved to the island hoping that the healthy environment will result in a pregnancy. Freya and Jamie become fast friends, as do their husbands, leaving Low alone once again.
Then one night, after a boozy dinner party, Freya suggests swapping partners. It should have been a harmless fling between consenting adults, one night of debauchery that they would put behind them, but when one of the women becomes pregnant, Low finds the perfect opportunity to unleash her growing resentment.
Robyn Harding brings her acclaimed storytelling, lauded as "fast-paced, thrilling, gut-wrenching" by Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times best-selling author of Daisy Jones and the Six, to this dark and suspenseful thriller for fans of Megan Miranda and Lisa Jewell.Â
©2020 Robyn Harding (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
A Noise Downstairs
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of No Time for Goodbye returns with a haunting psychological thriller that blends the twists and turns of Gillian Flynn with the driving suspense of Harlan Coben, in which a man is troubled by odd sounds for which there is no rational explanation. College professor Paul Davis is a normal guy with a normal life. Until, driving along a deserted road late one night, he surprises a murderer disposing of a couple of bodies. Thatâs when Paulâs "normal" existence is turned upside down. After nearly losing his own life in that encounter, he finds himself battling PTSD, depression, and severe problems at work. His wife, Charlotte, desperate to cheer him up, brings home a vintage typewriter - complete with ink ribbons and heavy round keys - to encourage him to get started on that novel heâs always intended to write. However, the typewriter itself is a problem. Paul swears itâs possessed and types by itself at night. But only Paul can hear the noise coming from downstairs; Charlotte doesnât hear a thing. And she worries heâs going off the rails. Paul believes the typewriter is somehow connected to the murderer he discovered nearly a year ago. The killer had made his victims type apologies to him before ending their lives. Has another sick twist of fate entwined his life with the killer - could this be the same machine? Increasingly tormented but determined to discover the truth and confront his nightmare, Paul begins investigating the deaths himself. But that may not be the best thing to do. Maybe Paul should just take the typewriter back to where his wife found it. Maybe he should stop asking questions and simply walk away while he can....
©2018 NJSB Entertainment Inc. (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
The Heart of Everything That Is
Summary
The acclaimed New York Times best-selling biography of the legendary Sioux warrior Red Cloud: âa page-turner with remarkable immediacy...and the narrative sweep of a great Westernâ (The Boston Globe). Red Cloud was the only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army in a war, forcing the government to sue for peace on his terms. At the peak of Red Cloudâs powers the Sioux could claim control of one-fifth of the contiguous United States and the loyalty of thousands of fierce fighters. But the fog of history has left Red Cloud strangely obscured. Now, thanks to the rediscovery of a lost autobiography, and painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the 19th centuryâs most powerful and successful Indian warrior can finally be told. In The Heart of Everything That Is, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin restore Red Cloud to his rightful place in American history in a sweeping and dramatic narrative based on years of primary research. As they trace the events leading to Red Cloudâs War, they provide intimate portraits of the many lives Red Cloud touched - mountain men such as Jim Bridger; US generals like William Tecumseh Sherman, who were charged with annihilating the Sioux; fearless explorers, such as the dashing John Bozeman; and the memorable warriors whom Red Cloud groomed, like the legendary Crazy Horse. And at the center of the story is Red Cloud, fighting for the very existence of the Indian way of life. âUnabashed, unbiased, and disturbingly honest, leaving no razor-sharp arrowhead unturned, no rifle trigger unpulled....a compelling and fiery narrativeâ (USA Today), this is the definitive chronicle of the conflict between an expanding white civilization and the Plains Indians who stood in its way.Â
©2013 Bob Drury and Tom Clavin (P)2013 Simon & Schuster Audio
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies
Summary
In the perfect companion piece to his first book, Blake Snyder delivers even more insider information gleaned from a 20-year track record as one of Hollywood's most successful spec screenwriters. Designed for screenwriters, novelists, and movie fans, this book gives listeners key breakdowns of the 50 most instructional movies from the past 30 years. From M*A*S*H to Crash, Alien to Saw, and 10 to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Snyder reveals how screenwriters in the past tackled the same challenges faced by screenwriters today.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
438 Days
Summary
438 Days is the miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history - as told to journalist Jonathan Franklin in dozens of exclusive interviews.
On November 17, 2012, Salvador Alvarenga left the coast of Mexico for a two-day fishing trip. A vicious storm killed his engine, and the current dragged his boat out to sea. The storm picked up and blasted him west. When he washed ashore on January 29, 2014, he had arrived in the Marshall Islands, 9,000 miles away - equivalent to traveling from New York to Moscow round trip.
For 14 months, Alvarenga survived constant shark attacks. He learned to catch fish with his bare hands. He built a fish net from a pair of empty plastic bottles. Taking apart the outboard motor, he fashioned a huge fishhook. Using fish vertebrae as needles, he stitched together his own clothes.
He considered suicide on multiple occasions - including offering himself up to a pack of sharks. But Alvarenga never failed to invent an alternative reality. He imagined a method of survival that kept his body and mind intact long enough for the Pacific Ocean to toss him up on a remote, palm-studded island, where he was saved by a local couple living alone in their own Pacific Island paradise.
Based on dozens of hours of interviews with Alvarenga and interviews with his colleagues, search and rescue officials, the medical team that saved his life, and the remote islanders who nursed him back to health, this is an epic tale of survival, an all-true version of the fictional Life of Pi. 438 Days is a study of the resilience, will, ingenuity, and determination required for one man to survive 14 months lost at sea.
©2015 Jonathan Franklin (P)2015 Simon & Schuster
Mike Nichols
Summary
An instant New York Times best seller! A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges - some of the worst largely unknown until now - by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back. Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: While still in his 20s, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At 35, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends. Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: Born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he and his younger brother were sent to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized - an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless - and his father died when he was just 12, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed. The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols' transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe - the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem. Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.
©2021 Mark Harris (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Seabiscuit
Summary
Number-one New York Times best seller From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuitâs fortunes: Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon. âFascinating.... Vivid.... A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.â (The New York Times) âEngrossing.... Fast-moving.... More than just a horseâs tale, because the humans who owned, trained, and rode Seabiscuit are equally fascinating.... [Laura Hillenbrand] shows an extraordinary talent for describing a horse race so vividly that the reader feels like the rider.â (Sports Illustrated) âRemarkable.... Memorable.... Just as compelling today as it was in 1938.â (The Washington Post)
©2010 Laura Hillenbrand (P)2010 Random House Audio
The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Official Transcript
Summary
The classic account of one of the most infamous and entertaining trials in recent American history comes thrillingly to life in this multi-voiced presentation of the courtroom transcripts that inspired the Aaron Sorkin film, featuring a full cast of acclaimed narrators led by J.K. Simmons, Jeff Daniels, Chris Jackson, John Hawkes, Chris Chalk, Luke Kirby, Corey Stoll, Norbert Leo Butz, and George Newbern. In the fall of 1969, eight prominent anti-Vietnam War activists were put on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, was literally bound and gagged in court by order of the judge, Julius Hoffman, and his case was separated from that of the others. The activists, who included Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Tom Hayden, and their attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, insisted that the First Amendment was on trial. Their witnesses were a virtual whoâs who of the 1960s counterculture: Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Norman Mailer, among them. The defendants constantly interrupted to protest what they felt were unfair rulings by the judge. The trial became a circus, all the while receiving intense media coverage. The convictions that resulted were subsequently overturned on appeal, but the trial remained a political and cultural touchstone, a mirror of the deep divisions in the country. The Trial of the Chicago 7 consists of the highlights from trial testimony with a brief epilogue describing what later happened to the principal figures. The courtroomâs electrifying proceedings are recreated by an ensemble of acclaimed narrators giving voice to the trialâs unforgettable cast of characters. This dynamic audio program brilliantly captures the urgency and unpredictability of the courtroom setting, taking listeners back to a turning point in our nationâs history, the outsize personalities at the center of the struggle, and their powerful words that still resonate today. The cast also includes Michael Boatman, Jay O. Sanders, Holter Graham, Jonathan Todd Ross, Corey Brill, Gibson Frazier, Pete Simonelli, Vikas Adam, Angelo Di Loreto, Lisa Flanagan, Kathe Mazur, and Jacques Roy. The bookâs coauthor Mark L. Levine reads his Preface, and film director Aaron Sorkin reads his Foreword.
©1970, 2020 Mark L. Levine, George C. McNamee, and Daniel L. Greenberg Foreword ©2020 Aaron Sorkin. The complete trial transcript in the case of United States vs. Dellinger, et al., is in the public domain. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The British Are Coming
Summary
One of AudioFile Magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2019 One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of the Year for 2019 One of Amazon.com's Best Books of the Year for 2019 One of the New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year for 2019 One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year for 2019 "The winning combination of George Newbern's engaging narration and Rick Atkinson's vivid new work of history - the first in a planned trilogy about the American Revolution - brings to life what could have been a dry account of Revolutionary battles." (AudioFile Magazine) This program includes a bonus introduction, read by the author, and exclusive to the audiobook. For the book's maps and illustrations, visit the Revolution Trilogy website at revolutiontrilogy.com From the best-selling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution. Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now, he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy, he recounts the first 21 months of Americaâs violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the worldâs most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling. Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our countryâs creation drama.
©2019 Rick Atkinson (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
A Good Marriage
Summary
Coming soon from Amazon and Nicole Kidmanâs Blossom Films. A New York Times Summer Reads Selection A People Best Book of the Summer A Library Reads Pick A Book Riot Addictive New Thriller to Add to Your TBR Pile A Book of the Month Selection A Publishers Weekly Summer Reads Pick A Bookish Most-Anticipated Novel A Good Morning America "Binge This!" Pick Big Little Lies meets Presumed Innocent in this âirresistible domestic dramaâ (Washington Post) from the New York Times best-selling author of Reconstructing Amelia, in which a womanâs brutal murder reveals the perilous compromises some couples make - and the secrets they keep - in order to stay together. Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call. Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but theyâd be easier to swallow if Lizzie was there voluntarily. Until recently, sheâd been a happily underpaid federal prosecutor. That job and her brilliant, devoted husband, Sam - she had everything sheâd ever wanted. And then, suddenly, it all fell apart. No. Thatâs a lie. It wasnât sudden, was it? Long ago the cracks in Lizzieâs marriage had started to show. She was just good at averting her eyes. The last thing Lizzie needs right now is a call from an inmate at Rikers asking for help - even if Zach Grayson is an old friend. But Zach is desperate: His wife, Amanda, has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn brownstone. And Zachâs the primary suspect. As Lizzie is drawn into the dark heart of idyllic Park Slope, she learns that Zach and Amanda werenât what they seemed - and that their friends, a close-knit group of fellow parents at the exclusive Brooklyn Country Day school, might be protecting troubling secrets of their own. In the end, sheâs left wondering not only whether her own marriage can be saved, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place.
©2020 Kimberly McCreight (P)2020 HarperAudio
Americana
Summary
At 28, David Bell is the American dream come true. He has fought his way to the top, surviving office purges and scandals to become a high-powered television executive. David's world is made up of the images that flicker across America's screens, the fantasies that enthrall America's imagination. And then the dream - and the dream making - become a nightmare. At the height of his success, David sets out to rediscover reality. Camera in hand, he journeys across the country in a mad and moving attempt to capture a sense of his own and his country's past, present, and future.
©1971 Don DeLillo. All rights reserved (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Cottonmouth
Summary
A legendary gunfighter can never outrun the ghosts of his past. But he can outshoot them. Acclaimed author Sean Lynch's epic saga of Samuel Pritchard continues - with a vengeance.... CALLING ALL KILLERS 1874. After losing his innocence in the Civil War and risking his life as a Texas Ranger, Samuel Pritchard has finally settled into a peaceful life in his hometown of Atherton, Missouri. As marshall, he hopes to put his bloody past behind him. To see his sister marry his lifelong friend. To find a wife and raise a family. For the first time in his life, Pritchard isn't gunning for anyone - and no one is gunning for him. Or so he thinks. Strangers have arrived in Atherton. Hard-eyed men with guns. Someone has placed a bounty on Pritchard's head: $10,000 in gold, deposited anonymously in a Wells Fargo bank, payable to anyone who puts the legendary pistolero in a pine box.... This is the story of Samuel Pritchard. A small-town sheriff with a larger-than-life reputation, lightning-fast guns, and a long list of enemies whoâd love to see him dead.... "A riveting thriller that bristles with hard-boiled authenticity." --Bestselling author Mark Greaney on Thy Partner's Wife "Sean Lynch spins a tale that is fast, fun and realistic." --Bestselling author James O. Born on Like Hell
©2020 Sean Lynch (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Leading Without Authority
Summary
The number one New York Times best-selling author of Never Eat Alone redefines collaboration with a radical new workplace operating system in which leadership no longer demands an office, an official title, or even a physical workplace. "An actionable methodology for any team to thrive during the decade of exponential change ahead." (Peter H. Diamandis, founder of XPRIZE and Singularity University, best-selling co-author of Abundance, Bold, and The Future Is Faster Than You Think) In times of stress, we have a choice: we can retreat further into our isolated silos, or we can commit to "going higher together". When external pressures are mounting, and employees are working from far-flung locations across the globe, says best-selling author Keith Ferrazzi, we can no longer afford to waste time navigating the complex chains of command or bureaucratic bottlenecks present in most companies. But when we choose the bold new methodology of co-elevation as our operating model, we unlock the potential to boost productivity, deepen commitment and engagement, and create a level of trust, mutual accountability, and purpose that exceeds what could have been accomplished under the status quo. And you don't need any formal authority to do it. You simply have to marshal a commitment to a shared mission and care about the success and development of others as much as you care about your own. Regardless of your title, position, or where or how you work, the ability to lead without authority is an essential workplace competency. Here, Ferrazzi draws on over a decade of research and over 30 years helping CEOs and senior leaders drive innovation and build high-performing teams to show how we can all turn our colleagues and partners into teammates and truly reboot the way we work together.Â
©2020 Keith Ferrazzi and Noel Weyrich (P)2020 Random House Audio
How Baseball Happened
Summary
The fascinating, true origin story of baseball - how Americaâs first great sport developed and how it conquered a nation. Baseballâs true founders donât have plaques in Cooperstown. The founders were the hundreds of uncredited amateurs - ordinary people - who played without gloves, facemasks, or performance incentives in the middle decades of the 19th century. Unlike todayâs pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses, and fought against the South in the Civil War. But thatâs not the way the story has been told. The wrongness of baseball history can be staggering. You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didnât. You have read that baseballâs color line was uncrossed and unchallenged until Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. You may have heard Cooperstown, Hoboken, or New York City called the birthplace of baseball, but not Brooklyn. Yet Brooklyn was the home of baseballâs first fans, the first ballpark, the first statistics - and modern pitching. Baseball was originally supposed to be played, not watched. This changed when crowds began to show up at games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. We fans werenât invited to the party; we crashed it. Professionalism wasnât part of the plan either, but when an 1858 Brooklyn versus New York City series accidentally proved that people would pay to see a game, the writing was on the outfield wall. When the first professional league was formed in 1871, baseball was already a fully formed modern sport with championships, media coverage, and famous stars. Professional baseball invented an organization, but not the sport itself. Baseballâs amazing amateurs had already done that. Thomas W. Gilbertâs history is for baseball fans and anyone fascinating by origin stories and American culture.
©2020 Thomas W. Gilbert (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Summary
From Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder und Hausmarchen), Grimm's Fairy Tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. Though earlier editions included material deemed unpalatable to modern audiences, subsequent editions softened some of the violence and raciness of the original. Containing 62 stories, including "Briar Rose" ("Sleeping Beauty"), "Hansel and Grete", "Snow White", and "Rose Red", and "Ashputtel" ("Cinderella"), this collection was praised by W.H. Auden as among the founding works of Western culture.
Public Domain (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Goodnight Beautiful
Summary
Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award From "master of clever misdirection" (Kirkus Reviews) Aimee Molloy, author of the New York Times best seller The Perfect Mother, comes an irresistible psychological thriller featuring a newly married woman whose life is turned upside-down when her husband goes missing. Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are head over heels, and excited to say goodbye to New York city and start a life together in Sam's sleepy hometown upstate. Or, it turns out, a life where Annie spends most of her time alone while Sam, her therapist husband, works long hours in his downstairs office, tending to the egos of his (mostly female) clientele. Little does Sam know that through a vent in his ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs. The pharmacist's wife, contemplating a divorce. The well-known painter whose boyfriend doesnât satisfy her in bed. Who could resist listening? Everything is fine until the French girl in the green mini Cooper shows up, and Sam decides to go to work and not come home, throwing a wrench into Sam and Annie's happily ever after. Showcasing Molloyâs deft ability to subvert norms and culminating in the kind of stunning twist that is becoming her trademark, Goodnight Beautiful is a thrilling tale of domestic suspense that not only questions assumptions but defies expectations.
©2020 Aimee Molloy (P)2020 HarperAudio
The Assassination Complex
Summary
Major revelations about the US government's drone program - best-selling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept expose stunning new details about America's secret assassination policy. When the US government discusses drone strikes publicly, it offers assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to troops on the ground and are authorized only when an "imminent" threat is present and there is "near certainty" that the intended target will be killed. The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been trust, but don't verify. The online magazine The Intercept exploded this secrecy when it obtained a cache of secret slides that provide a window into the inner workings of the US military's kill/capture operations in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Whether through the use of drones, night raids, or new platforms yet to be employed, these documents show assassination to be central to US counterterrorism policy. The classified documents reveal that Washington's 14-year targeted killing campaign suffers from an overreliance on flawed signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. This campaign, carried out by two presidents through four presidential terms, has been deliberately obscured from the public and insulated from democratic debate. The Assassination Complex allows us to understand at last the circumstances under which the US government grants itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal. The book includes original contributions from Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 First Look Media Works, Inc. (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Batman and the Joker
Summary
This cultural analysis of visual and narrative elements within Batman comics provides an important exploration of the ways readers and creators negotiate gender, identity, and sexuality in popular culture. Thematic chapters investigate how artists, writers, and fans engage with, challenge, and interpret gendered and sexual representations by focusing on one of the most popular and heated fictional rivalries ever inked: that of Batman and the Joker. The monograph provides critical insights into ways queer reading practices can open new forms of understanding that have generally remained implicit and unexplored in mainstream comics studies. This accessible and interdisciplinary approach to the Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime engages diverse fields of scholarship such as comics studies, critical theory, cultural studies, gender studies, literature, psychoanalysis, media studies, and queer theory.
©2021 Chris Richardson (P)2021 Tantor
What Can I Do?
Summary
A call to action from Jane Fonda, one of the most inspiring activists of our time, urging us to wake up to the looming disaster of climate change and equipping us with the tools we need to join her in protest. "This is the last possible moment in history when changing course can mean saving lives and species on an unimaginable scale. It's too late for moderation." In the fall of 2019, frustrated with the obvious inaction of politicians and inspired by Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, and student climate strikers, Jane Fonda moved to Washington, DC, to lead weekly climate change demonstrations on Capitol Hill. On October 11, she launched Fire Drill Fridays and has since led thousands of people in nonviolent civil disobedience, risking arrest to protest for action. In What Can I Do?, Fonda weaves her deeply personal journey as an activist alongside conversations with and speeches by leading climate scientists and inspiring community organizers, and she dives deep into the issues, such as water, migration, and human rights, to emphasize what is at stake. Most significantly, Fonda equips us all with the tools we need to join her in protest so that everyone can work to combat the climate crisis. No stranger to protest, Fonda's life has been famously shaped by activism. And now she is once again galvanizing the public to take to the streets. Many are already aware of the looming disaster of climate change and realize that a moral responsibility rests on our shoulders. In 2019, we saw atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases hit the highest level ever recorded in human history, and our window of opportunity to act is quickly closing. We are facing a climate crisis, but we're also facing an empathy crisis and an inequality crisis; the surge of protests over police violence against Black Americans has once again highlighted the links between racism and environmental degradation in our country. It isn't only earth's life-support systems that are unraveling. So too is our social fabric. This is going to take an all-out war on drilling, fracking, deregulation, racism, misogyny, colonialism, and despair all at the same time. As Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA and Fonda's partner in developing Fire Drill Fridays, has declared, "Change is inevitable; by design, or by disaster." Together, we can commandeer change for the positive - but it will require collective actions taken by social movements on an unprecedented scale. The problems we face now require every one of us to join the fight. The fight for not only our immediate future, but for the future of generations to come. One hundred percent of the author's net proceeds from What Can I Do? will go to Greenpeace This audiobook program includes a PDF of photographs and graphs. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.Â
©2020 Jane Fonda (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Exercise of Power
Summary
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed number one best-selling memoir Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world. Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity, seemingly unwilling to accept the mantle of leadership or unable to govern itself effectively. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness, and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the use of military might or the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must encompass as well diplomacy, economics, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, ideology, and cyber. By analyzing specific challenges faced by the American government in the post-Cold War period - Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia, China, and others - Gates deconstructs the ways in which leaders have used the instruments of power available to them. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, firsthand knowledge, and insider stories, Gates argues that US national security in the future will require learning, and abiding by, the lessons of the past and recreating those capabilities that the misuse of power has cost the nation.
©2020 Robert M. Gates (P)2020 Random House Audio
QB
Summary
In the most candid and compelling sports memoir since Andre Agassi's riveting bestseller Open, former San Francisco 49er, Super Bowl champion, NFL MVP, and Hall of Famer Steve Young gives listeners an unprecedented and stunning inside look at what it takes to become a super-elite professional quarterback. Steve Young was not expected to become one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. A devout Mormon, he had a perfect GPA in school, studied Latin and calculus, and was blessed with a photographic memory. His mother pleaded that he not play football. But Young was determined to become the next Roger Staubach. QB tells the story of a boy with a gentle demeanor who overcame personal fears and his teammates' and coaches' indifference to reach the pinnacle of America's most violent game. Football was a test and a quest: listed eighth on the depth chart at Brigham Young University, Young was told he'd never play quarterback in college. He went on to endure intense media scrutiny as the highest-paid player in sports history before he ever stepped on the field as a professional. As a 49er, he went head-to-head with the legendary Joe Montana in what became the NFL's greatest quarterback controversy. But Young's biggest hurdles were invisible to the public: the physical pain that comes with being an ordinary-size man in a league of giants; the loneliness of playing sixteen seasons as a bachelor; and an undiagnosed case of separation anxiety that made him dread getting out of bed and caused him to vomit in locker room bathrooms before games. Through sheer grit, Young put on a helmet week after week, season after season, leading his team to a Super Bowl championship, endearing himself to both the city of San Francisco and football fans everywhere.
©2016 J. Steven Young. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
In Another Time
Summary
A sweeping historical novel that spans Germany, England, and the US and follows a young couple torn apart by circumstance leading up to World War II - and the family secret that may prove to be the means for survival. Love brought them together. But only time can save them.... Germany, 1931. Bookshop owner Max Beissinger meets Hanna Ginsberg, a budding concert violinist, and immediately, he feels a powerful chemistry between them. It isnât long before they fall in love and begin making plans for the future. As their love affair unfolds over the next five years, the climate drastically changes in Germany as Hitler comes to power. Their love is tested with the new landscape and the realities of war, not the least of which is that Hanna is Jewish and Max is not. But unbeknownst to Hanna is the fact that Max has a secret that causes him to leave for months at a time - a secret that Max is convinced will help him save Hanna if Germany becomes too dangerous for her because of her religion. In 1946, Hanna Ginsberg awakens in a field outside of Berlin. Disoriented and afraid, she has no memory of the past 10 years and no idea what has happened to Max. With no information as to Maxâs whereabouts - or if he is even still alive - she decides to move to London to live with her sister while she gets her bearings. Even without an orchestra to play in, she throws herself completely into her music to keep alive her lifelong dream of becoming a concert violinist. But the music also serves as a balm to heal her deeply wounded heart, and she eventually gets the opening for which she long hoped. Even so, as the days, months, and years pass, taking her from London to Paris to Vienna to America, she continues to be haunted by her forgotten past and the fate of the only man she has ever loved and cannot forget. Told in alternating viewpoints - Max in the years leading up to WWII and Hanna in the 10 years after - In Another Time is a beautiful novel about love and survival, passion and music, across time and continents.
©2019 Jillian Cantor (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Lethal Defense
Summary
A client savagely kills a man to protect a friend. A lawyer with secrets must prove it was justified. Attorney Nate Shepherd left a big firm to go out on his own. He sees nothing but opportunity when an out-of-town lawyer wants to hire him as local counsel on a high-profile murder case. Though his family worries that the case hits too close to home, Nate joins the defense team. When circumstances force him to take on a bigger role, Nate ignores his familyâs fears and throws himself into his clientâs defense. But as he digs deeper, every aspect of the case raises memories of a terrible event that Nate has tried his best to bury. Battling an aggressive prosecutor in court and a dogged reporter outside it, Nate fights to prove that his clientâs brutal, bloody slaying of an evil victim was right. But when Nateâs own story is exposed, it threatens his clientâs freedom...and Nateâs carefully constructed life. Can he fend off his own demons long enough to save his client? This is the first book in the gripping Nate Shepherd Legal Thriller series. If you like razor-sharp dialogue, iron-willed characters, and slippery moral quandaries, then youâll love this fierce courtroom drama.
©2020 Michael Stagg (P)2020 Podium Audio
Best. Movie. Year. Ever.
Summary
From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999 - arguably the most groundbreaking year in American cinematic history. In 1999, Hollywood as we know it exploded: Fight Club. The Matrix. Office Space. Election. The Blair Witch Project. The Sixth Sense. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. American Beauty. The Virgin Suicides. Boys Donât Cry. The Best Man. Three Kings. Magnolia. Those are just some of the landmark titles released in a dizzying movie year, one in which a group of daring filmmakers and performers pushed cinema to new limits - and took audiences along for the ride. Freed from the restraints of budget, technology (or even taste), they produced a slew of classics that took on every topic imaginable, from sex to violence to the end of the world. The result was a highly unruly, deeply influential set of films that would not only change filmmaking, but also give us our first glimpse of the coming 21st century. It was a watershed moment that also produced The Sopranos; Appleâs Airport; Wi-Fi; and Netflixâs unlimited DVD rentals. Best. Movie. Year. Ever. is the story of not just how these movies were made, but how they remade our own vision of the world. It features more than 130 new and exclusive interviews with such directors and actors as Reese Witherspoon, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Nia Long, Matthew Broderick, Taye Diggs, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek, Kirsten Dunst, the Blair Witch kids, the Office Space dudes, the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks, and dozens more. Itâs the definitive account of a culture-conquering movie year none of us saw coming...and that we may never see again.Â
©2019 Brian Raftery (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
Testimony of Two Men
Summary
A small-town doctor acquitted of murdering his pregnant wife faces new charges in this New York Times bestseller set in the early days of modern medicine. Hambledon, Pennsylvania, is still reeling from the sensational murder trial that shattered the peace of the bucolic hamlet less than a year ago. Dr. Jonathan Ferrier was accused of killing his beautiful young wife after she died following a botched abortion. The scion of a powerful old eastern family, Jonathan hired the best attorneys money could buy. When he was acquitted, many believed he had bought his freedom. Now, he has returned home to sell his practice and move on. But haunted by his wife's death, Jonathan still strives to heal the judgmental people of his divided town. Robert Morgan, a young, idealistic doctor, is determined to make up his own mind about the accused's innocence or guilt. Of one thing he is certain: Jonathan is a good doctor, perhaps even a great one. He is also a man who feels abandoned by God, his church, his family, and his friends. As Jonathan continues to be pilloried by the town, a new series of accusations are leveled at him. Is he a cold-blooded killer who murdered his wife and their unborn child? Or a man unjustly accused and wrongly maligned? Testimony of Two Men explores the evolution of modern medicine and the tireless physicians who are its unsung heroes. Author Taylor Caldwell's bestselling novel touches on faith, religion, and the then-new field of mental health as it tells a mesmerizing tale of desire, betrayal, and love that can destroy or redeem.
©1968 Reback & Reback (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Blind Ambition
Summary
This New York Times best seller is an insider's account of the fall of Richard Nixon, and has remained an indispensable source into Nixon's presidency. Blind Ambition is an autobiographical account of a young lawyer who accelerated to the top of the Federal power structure to become Counsel to the President at 30 years of age, only to discover that when reaching the top, he had touched the bottom. Most striking in this chronicle is its honesty. Dean spares no one, including himself. But, as Time noted, Dean survived, despite the opposition of powerful foe, because he had no false story to protect and he had an amazing ability to recall the truth.
©1979 John Dean (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Blind Conviction
Summary
A vicious attack leaves a woman near death. The evidence points to one man. Only Nate Shepherd stands in the way of a conviction. Attorney Nate Shepherd doesnât want to take on an attempted murder case. But when people he trusts ask him to get involved, Nate agrees to represent the hard-working farmer whoâs been accused of trying to kill his brotherâs fiancée. By the time Nate steps in, law enforcement has already gathered a mass of evidence to bury his client. With the help of a diligent associate, a dogged investigator, and a dangerous bail bondsman, Nate unearths a web of money and motives that only raises more questions. But while Nate digs deeper to prove his clientâs innocence, a zealous prosecutor steamrolls on toward a conviction, relentlessly building a case to put Nateâs client away for life. As Nate fights for his client, a family fractures, friends are endangered, and a farm-tough victim struggles to recover. And all the while, a hard truth gnaws at Nate: If his client didnât do it, then who did? Blind Conviction is the third book in the gripping Nate Shepherd Legal Thriller series. If you like razor-sharp dialogue, iron-willed characters, and slippery moral quandaries, then youâll love Michael Staggâs fierce courtroom drama.
©2020 Michael Stagg (P)2021 Podium Audio
Betaball
Summary
Moneyball meets The City Game in this compelling look at how the NBA champion Golden State Warriors embraced savvy business practices, next-gen science, and the corporate culture of Silicon Valley to not only produce one of the greatest basketball teams in history but also revolutionize the NBA. Discover the definitive inside account of how the Warriors, under the leadership of venture capitalist Joe Lacob and Hollywood producer Peter Guber, quickly became one of the most remarkable success stories ever, both in sports and in business. In just five years, they turned a declining franchise with no immediate hope into one of the greatest teams in basketball, a period that included the rise of All-Star point guard Stephen Curry and two NBA championships in the past three years. By operating in "beta" - always innovating, unafraid to embrace change, encouraging risk - the Warriors have become a model organization for American professional sports, instituting the best workplace principles found inside the world's most successful corporations and instilling a top-down organizational ethos that allows their employees to thrive, from the front office to the free-throw line. With in-depth access and meticulous reporting on and off the court, acclaimed journalist Erik Malinowski recounts a gripping tale of worlds colliding, a team's reinvention, ordinary people being pushed to extraordinary heights, and the Golden State Warriors' unending quest to remain the best.
©2017 Erik Malinowski (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
How We Got to Now
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes - from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth - How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life. In his trademark style, Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species - to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the industrial revolution; and how clean water made it possible to manufacture computer chips. Accompanied by a major six-part television series on PBS, How We Got to Now is the story of collaborative networks building the modern world, written in the provocative, informative, and engaging style that has earned Johnson fans around the globe.
©2014 Steven Johnson (P)2014 Penguin Audio
To Die in Vienna
Summary
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Heâs seen something that could get him killed. But what? Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year heâs been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie itâs just a job: he never asks whoâs paying him and why - until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this - or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past? As heâs forced into a lethal dance across Vienna, Freddie knows one thing for sure: his only hope for survival is keeping the truth from the other side, and making sure the secrets from his past stay hidden.
©2018 Kevin Wignall (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Mandibles
Summary
From Lionel Shriver, the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international best seller We Need to Talk About Kevin, comes a striking new novel about family, money, and global economic crisis. The year is 2029, and nothing is as it should be. The very essence of American life, the dollar, is under attack. In a coordinated move by the rest of the world's governments, the dollar loses all its value. The American president declares that the States will default on all its loans; prices skyrocket, currency becomes essentially worthless, and we watch one family struggle to survive through it all. The Mandibles can count on their inheritance no longer, and each member must come to terms with this in their own way - from the elegant expat author Nollie, in her middle age, returning to the US from Paris after many years abroad; to her precocious teenage nephew, Willing, who is the only one to actually understand the crisis; to the brilliant Georgetown economics professor Lowell, who watches his whole vision of the world disintegrate before his eyes. As ever, in her new novel Shriver draws larger than life characters who illuminate this complicated, ever-changing world. One of our sharpest observers of human nature, Shriver challenges us to think long and hard about the society we live in and what, ultimately, we hold most dear.
©2016 Lionel Shriver (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Duty
Summary
From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he'd long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
©2014 Robert M. Gates (P)2014 Random House Audio
American Shaolin
Summary
Bill Bryson meets Bruce Lee in this raucously funny story of one scrawny American's quest to become a kung fu master at China's legendary Shaolin Temple. Growing up a 90-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. Expecting to find an isolated citadel populated by supernatural ascetics that he had seen in countless badly dubbed chop-socky flicks, Matthew instead discovered a tacky tourist trap run by Communist party hacks. But the dedicated monks still trained in the rigorous age-old fighting forms - some even practicing the "iron kung fu" discipline, in which intensive training can make various body parts virtually indestructible-even the crotch. As Matthew grew in his knowledge of China and kung fu skill, he would come to represent the temple in challenge matches and international competitions, and ultimately the monks would accept their new American initiate as close to one of their own as any Westerner had ever become. Laced with humor and illuminated by cultural insight, American Shaolin is an unforgettable coming-of-age tale of one young man's journey into the ancient art of kung fu - and a funny and poignant portrait of a rapidly changing China.
©2018 Matthew Polly (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Boy's Life
Summary
In me are the memories of a boy's life, spent in that realm of enchantments. These are the things I want to tell you.... Robert McCammon delivers "a tour de force of storytelling" (BookPage) in his award-winning masterpiece, a novel of Southern boyhood, growing up in the 1960s, that reaches far beyond that evocative landscape to touch listeners universally. Boy's Life is a richly imagined, spellbinding portrait of the magical worldview of the young - and of innocence lost. Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for 11-year-old Cory Mackenson - a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake - and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him. From an ancient mystic who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown - for his father's sanity and his own life hang in the balance....
©2014 Robert R. McCammon (P)2014 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Swap
Summary
"No list of thrillers is complete without Robyn Harding", proclaims Real Simple. Now the USA Today best-selling author of The Party delivers a riveting tale about the toxic relationship between two couples after a night of sexual shenanigans and the manipulative teenager with an explosive secret at the center of it all. Low Morrison is not your average teen. You could blame her hippie parents or her looming height or her dreary, isolated hometown on an island in the Pacific Northwest. But whatever the reason, Low just doesnât fit in - and neither does Freya, a once-famous social media influencer who now owns the pottery studio in town. After signing up for a class, Low quickly falls under Freyaâs spell. And Freya, buoyed by Lowâs adoration, is compelled to share her darkest secrets and deepest desires. Finally, both feel a sense of belonging...that is, until Jamie walks through the studio door. Desperate for a baby, she and her husband have moved to the island hoping that the healthy environment will result in a pregnancy. Freya and Jamie become fast friends, as do their husbands, leaving Low alone once again. Then one night, after a boozy dinner party, Freya suggests swapping partners. It should have been a harmless fling between consenting adults, one night of debauchery that they would put behind them, but when one of the women becomes pregnant, Low finds the perfect opportunity to unleash her growing resentment. Robyn Harding brings her acclaimed storytelling, lauded as "fast-paced, thrilling, gut-wrenching" by Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times best-selling author of Daisy Jones and the Six, to this dark and suspenseful thriller for fans of Megan Miranda and Lisa Jewell.
©2020 Robyn Harding. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Vapors
Summary
One of "21 books we can't wait to read in 2020" --Thrillist A New York Times Book Review summer reading pick A Kirkus Reviews hottest summer read A Publishers Weekly summer reads staff pick The incredible true story of America's original - and forgotten - capital of vice Back in the days before Vegas was big, when the Mob was at its peak and neon lights were but a glimmer on the horizon, a little Southern town styled itself as a premier destination for the American leisure class. Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, Art Deco splendor, and America's original national park - as well as horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless backrooms and brothels, and some of the countryâs most bald-faced criminals. Gangsters, gamblers, and gamines: all once flocked to America's forgotten capital of vice, a place where small-town hustlers and bigtime high-rollers could make their fortunes, and hide from the law. The Vapors is the extraordinary story of three individuals - spanning the golden decades of Hot Springs, from the 1930s through the 1960s - and the lavish casino whose spectacular rise and fall would bring them together before blowing them apart. Hazel Hill was still a young girl when legendary mobster Owney Madden rolled into town in his convertible, fresh off a crime spree in New York. He quickly established himself as the gentleman Godfather of Hot Springs, cutting barroom deals and buying stakes in the clubs at which Hazel made her living - and drank away her sorrows. Owney's protégé was Dane Harris, the son of a Cherokee bootlegger who rose through the town's ranks to become Boss Gambler. It was his idea to build The Vapors, a pleasure palace more spectacular than any the town had ever seen, and an establishment to rival anything on the Vegas Strip or Broadway in sophistication and supercharged glamour. In this riveting work of forgotten history, native Arkansan David Hill plots the trajectory of everything from organized crime to America's fraught racial past, examining how a town synonymous with white gangsters supported a burgeoning black middle class. He reveals how the louche underbelly of the South was also home to veterans hospitals and baseball's spring training grounds, giving rise to everyone from Babe Ruth to President Bill Clinton. Infused with the sights and sounds of America's entertainment heyday - jazz orchestras and auctioneers, slot machines and suited comedians - The Vapors is an arresting glimpse into a bygone era of American vice.
©2020 David Hill (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Every Fifteen Minutes
Summary
Dr. Eric Parrish is the chief of the psychiatric unit at Havemeyer General Hospital outside of Philadelphia. Recently separated from his wife, Alice, he is doing his best as a single dad to his seven-year-old daughter, Hannah. His work seems to be going better than his homelife, however. His unit at the hospital has just been named number two in the country, and Eric has a devoted staff of doctors and nurses who are as caring as he is. But when he takes on a new patient, Eric's entire world begins to crumble. Seventeen-year-old Max has a terminally ill grandmother and is having trouble handling it. That, plus his OCD and violent thoughts about a girl he likes make him a high-risk patient. Max can't turn off the mental rituals he needs to perform every 15 minutes that keep him calm. With the pressure mounting, Max just might reach the breaking point. When the girl is found murdered, Max is nowhere to be found. Worried about Max, Eric goes looking for him and puts himself in danger of being seen as a person of interest himself. Next, one of his own staff turns on him in a trumped-up charge of sexual harassment. Is this chaos all random? Or is someone systematically trying to destroy Eric's life? Lisa Scottoline's visceral thriller brings you into the grip of a true sociopath and shows you how, in the quest to survive such ruthlessness, every minute counts.
©2015 Smart Blonde, LLC (P)2015 Macmillan Audio
The Secret Language of Cells
Summary
Your cells are talking about you. Right now, both your inner and outer worlds are abuzz with chatter among living cells of every possible kind - from those in your body and brain to those in the environment around you. From electrical alerts to chemical codes, the greatest secret of modern biology, hiding in plain sight, is that all of lifeâs activity boils down to one thing: conversation. While cells are commonly considered the building block of living things, it is actually the communication between cells that brings us to life, controlling our bodies and brains, determining whether we are healthy or sick, and directly influencing how we think, feel, and behave. In The Secret Language of Cells, doctor and neuroscientist Jon Lieff lets us listen in on these conversations, and reveals their significance for everything from mental health to cancer. He explains the surprising science of how very different cells - bacteria and brain cells, blood cells and viruses - all speak the same language. This overarching principle has been long overlooked because scientific journals use impenetrable jargon that makes it hard to be understood across disciplines, much less by the general public. Lieff presents a fascinating and accessible look into cellular communication science - a groundbreaking and comprehensive exploration of this biological phenomenon. In these pages, discover the intriguing lives of cells as they ask questions, get answers, give feedback, gather information, call for each other, and make complex decisions. During infections, immune T-cells tell brain cells that we should âfeel sickâ and lie down. Cancer cells warn their community about immune and microbe attacks. Gut cells talk with microbes to determine which are friends and which are enemies, and microbes talk with each other and with much more complicated human cells in ways that determine which medicines work and which will fail. With applications for immunity, chronic pain, weight loss, depression, cancer treatment, and virtually every aspect of health and biology, cellular communication is revolutionizing our understanding not just of disease, but of life itself. The Secret Language of Cells is required listening for anyone interested in following the conversation.
©2020 Jon Lieff. Published by arrangement with BenBella Books. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Players
Summary
For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business.
In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. Roger Staubach, for example, made only $25,000 in his first season as the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys and wound up selling commercial real estate in the summer. Today, when Fortune reports that every athlete on its Top 50 list makes more than $20 million per year, it's clear that a complete reversal of power occurred under our eyes.
Players is the first book to chronicle the astonishing business story behind modern sports - a true revolution that moved the athletes from the bottom of the financial pyramid to the top. It started in 1960, when a Cleveland lawyer named Mark McCormack convinced a golfer named Arnold Palmer to sign with him. Within a few years, McCormack raised Palmer's annual income off the course from $5,000 to $500,000 and forever changed the landscape of the sports industry.
Futterman introduces a wide-ranging cast of characters to tell the story of athletes, agents, TV executives, coaches, and owners who together created the dominating and multifaceted industry we know today. Players is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the creation and rise of the modern sports world and the people who fought to make it happen. From landmark moments such as the 1973 Wimbledon boycott and baseball pitcher Catfish Hunter's battle to become MLB's first free agent to the outsize influence of companies like IMG, Nike, and ESPN, this fascinating book details the wild evolution of sports into the extravaganza we experience today and the inevitable trade-offs those changes have wrought.
©2016 Matthew Futterman (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
The Woman in Our House
Summary
What happens when you open your home to the perfect stranger? Anna Klein is ready to return to work as a literary agent for the first time since having children. She and her husband, Josh, decide to hire a live-in nanny with some trepidation, but all their misgivings disappear as soon as they meet Oaklynn Durst. She has stellar references, a calm disposition, and a natural way with children. Not to mention their kids simply adore her. But not long after Oaklynn arrives, the children start to come down with the most puzzling illnesses and inexplicable injuries. When the maternal Oaklynn is there to comfort everyone, Anna canât help feeling a little eclipsed. And suspicious. Her husband and friends assure her that her anxieties are getting the best of her - Oaklynn is perfect. But Annaâs not so sure.... As she delves into Oaklynnâs past, she discovers too late that the woman who has been living in her house is not at all who she claims to be. But Oaklynnâs not the only one who has been lying. And when everyoneâs dark secrets are forced into the light, the consequences may just turn deadly.
©2019 Andrew James Hartley (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
True Intent
Summary
When a billionaire dies, an innocent woman is blamed. One lawyer must fight a wealthy family for justice. It seems straightforward to Attorney Nate Shepherd: a middle-aged billionaire dies while celebrating at a wedding reception. The grief-stricken family lashes out, though, blaming the billionaireâs date for his death. When the family brings all of its power to bear, the wheels of local justice threaten to overwhelm the woman. As Nate Shepherd steps in to defend her, he tries to deflect the misplaced anger thatâs directed at the woman for the tragedy. But as the investigation progresses, a tangled history unravels, including unexpected ties to Nateâs own life. And with each secret that is uncovered, the stakes rise until Nate finds himself fighting for the womanâs freedom in a trial for her life. Can Nate Shepherd protect an innocent client from a family trying to buy its own brand of justice? This is the second book in the gripping Nate Shepherd Legal Thriller series. If you like razor-sharp dialogue, iron-willed characters, and slippery moral quandaries, then youâll love this fierce courtroom drama.
©2020 Michael Stagg (P)2020 Podium Audio
Strike Me Down
Summary
In this âwhip-smart thriller featuring a brilliant female protagonist, a finely-tuned plot, and some truly spectacular writingâ (Cristina Alger, USA Today best-selling author) from the author of Leave No Trace, a high stakes crime triggers a womanâs complicated and potentially deadly search for the truth. Nora Trier catches thieves. As a forensic accountant, sheâs unearthed millions in every corner of the world. She prides herself on her independence, the most essential currency of accounting, until her firm is hired by Strike. An anti-corporate, feminist athletic empire, Strike is owned by Logan Russo, a brash and legendary kickboxer, and her marketing genius husband, Gregg Abbott. Theyâre about to host a major tournament with 20 million dollars in prize money, and the chance for the champion to become the new face of the company. But Gregg suspects his wife already has a new face in mind in the form of a young trainer. When the prize money goes missing days before the tournament begins, Gregg hires Noraâs firm to find both the thief and the money - but Nora has a secret connection to Strike. Her partner pressures her into taking the case anyway, hinting he has information that could change the course of the investigation in a shocking and deadly way. A tense and unpredictable thriller, Strike Me Down âcrackles with obsession, greed, lust, and plenty of ambition, and itâs loaded with more twists and turns than a spy novelâ (Kirkus Reviews).
©2020 Mindy Mejia (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Make Noise
Summary
Podcasting is the fastest-growing media platform in the world, with currently 650,000 podcasts out there, in 100 languages, and offering over 20 million episodes. And weâre only at the beginning. More and more podcasts appear every day, and more and more entrepreneurs, businesses, individuals, and distributors, like Spotify, are getting into this world. One person many people turn to for help launching their podcasts is Eric Nuzum, a veteran of NPR and Audible whoâs had a hand in creating and launching over 130 podcasts. And the reason is that Nuzum understands the essentials of what makes a podcast work and knows how to help creators shepherd their vision from rough idea to finished product. Make Noise brings all the wisdom, advice, practical information, and big-picture thinking that any individual or business needs to make a successful podcast. He identifies core principles - such as create empathetically, i.e., think like the audience listens, and stay focused on whatâs unique to you and what you have to say. He helps listeners come up with a âTen Word Descriptionâ that will guide them throughout the creative process and then gets into how-tos - how to develop character, story, voice; how to conduct an effective interview; how to be mindful of the limitations of audio (be more like Hemingway than Faulkner). He provides the rules of storytelling, advice on how to test-drive an idea, and, when itâs all ready, how to develop your audience.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Rumpelstiltskin
Summary
In Rumpelstiltskin, a miller's careless boast that his clever daughter can spin gold from straw is forced by the king to deliver on this claim. A little man arrives to help the miller's distraught daughter in exchange for her firstborn child. Later, when the daughter, now the queen, gives birth to her first child, the little man comes to collect. He agrees to release the queen from her promise if she can learn his name. According to researchers at Durham University and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, this story originated around 4,000 years ago.
Public Domain (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
The Like Switch
Summary
From a former FBI Special Agent specializing in behavior analysis and recruiting spies comes a handbook filled with his proven strategies on how to instantly read people and influence how they perceive you, so you can easily turn on the like switch. The Like Switch is packed with all the tools you need for turning strangers into friends, whether you are on a sales call, a first date, or a job interview. As a Special Agent for the FBI's National Security Division's Behavioral Analysis Program, Dr. Jack Schafer developed dynamic and breakthrough strategies for profiling terrorists and detecting deception. Now, Dr. Schafer has evolved his proven-on-the-battlefield tactics for the day-to-day, but no less critical battle of getting people to like you. In The Like Switch, he presents these techniques for how you can influence, attract, and win people over. Learn how to think and react like your favorite TV investigators from Criminal Minds or CSI as Dr. Schafer shows you how to improve your LQ (Likeability Quotient), "spot the lie" both in person and online, master nonverbal cues that influence how people perceive you, and turn up or turn down the intensity of a relationship. Dr. Schafer cracks the code on making great first impressions, building lasting relationships, and understanding others' behavior to learn what they really think about you. With tips and techniques that hold the key to taking control of your communications, interactions, and relationships, The Like Switch shows you how to read others and get people to like you for a moment or a lifetime. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
©2015 John Schafer, Ph.D. and Marvin Karlins, Ph.D. All rights reserved.; 2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Our Moment of Choice
Summary
This timely and compelling anthology is a rousing call to action for all of us to help transform the world into a just, peaceful, and thriving one - featuring creative and practical solutions to the many crises facing humanity today. Humanity is currently facing a series of interconnected emergencies that threaten our very survival - from climate change to economic inequality and beyond. And yet, at the same time, a global shift toward harnessing our collective power to create a life-affirming future is flourishing. Featuring chapters by 43 leading-edge contributors, such as Gregg Braden, Lynne McTaggart, Bruce Lipton, Jean Houston, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Ervin Laszlo, Joan Borysenko, Larry Dossey, and many more, Our Moment of Choice provides eye-opening and inspirational visions for a unified, peaceful, and thriving world. The time has come for all humanity to be united in purpose. This is our collective moment of choice, upon which our future depends.
©2020 Source of Synergy Foundation (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
City of Golden Shadow
Summary
Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth's most valuable resource - its children.
©1998 Tad Williams (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Truth and Lies
Summary
A fresh, insightful guide to reading body language in the post-digital age Whether you're at a job interview or a cocktail party, searching LinkedIn, or swiping right on a dating site, you want (no - need) to understand what people are really thinking, regardless of what they're saying. Understanding what others are trying to tell you with their posture, hand gestures, eye contact (or lack thereof), or incessant fiddling with their iPhone might all be even more important than what you're projecting yourself. Do they plan on making a deal with your company? Are they lying to you? Can you trust this person with your most intimate secrets? Knowing what others are thinking can tell you when to run with an opportunity and when not to waste your time, whether at work, in a crucial negotiation or on a promising first date. Best-selling authors Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson, principals at the communications company Truthplane, illustrate the essential points of body language with examples from everyday life, leavened with humor and insights that you can use to your advantage in virtually any situation.
©2018 Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson (P)2021 Tantor
Yondering
Summary
From one of the greatest storytellers of the American West comes a collection of short stories never before released as audio digital downloads! This audiobook collection includes "Death West Bound", "Old Doc Yak", "It's Your Move", "And Proudly Die", "Survival", "Show Me the Way to Go Home", "Thicker Than Blood", "The Admiral", "Shanghai, Not Without Gestures", "The Man Who Stole Shakespeare", "The Dancing Kate", "Off the Mangrove Coast", "Glorious Glorious", "By the Ruins of El Walarieh", "Where There's Fighting", "The Cross and the Candle", "A Friend of the General", "Author's Tea", "Dead End Drift", and "Let Me Forget".
©2004 Louis L'Amour (P)2018 Random House Audio
One Long River of Song
Summary
A playful and moving book of essays by a "born storyteller" (Seattle Times) who invites us into the miraculous and transcendent moments of the everyday When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of 60 after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted listeners who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon. At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that life affords, is a balm. His essays manage to find, again and again, exquisite beauty in the quotidian, whether it's the awe of a child the first time she hears a river, or a husband's whiskers that a grieving widow misses seeing in her sink every morning. Through Doyle's eyes, nothing is dull. David James Duncan sums up Doyle's sensibilities best in his introduction to the collection: "Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings." A life's work, One Long River of Song invites listeners to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.
©2019 David James Duncan and Brian Doyle (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company
Find You First
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Elevator Pitch and master of psychological suspense returns with a riveting thriller in which the possible heirs of a dying tech millionaire are mysteriously being eliminated, one by one. "Find You First starts with a bang and ends with an even bigger one.... Itâs the best book of his career.â (Stephen King) Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has more money than he can ever spend and everything he could dream of - except time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there is a 50 percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past.... Two decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there, he has kids - nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and the bad from him - maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse. As Miles begins to search for the children heâs never known, aspiring film documentarian Chloe Swanson embarks on a quest to find her biological father, armed with the knowledge that 22 years ago, her mother used a New York sperm bank to become pregnant. When Miles and Chloe eventually connect, their excitement at finding each other is overshadowed by a series of mysterious and terrifying events. One by one, Milesâ other potential heirs are vanishing - every trace of them wiped, like they never existed at all. Who is the vicious killer - another heir methodically erasing rivals? Or is something even more sinister going on? Itâs a deadly race against time....
©2021 Linwood Barclay (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
Awkward
Summary
In the vein of Quiet and The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth comes this illuminating look at what it means to be awkward - and how the same traits that make us socially anxious and cause embarrassing faux pas also provide the seeds for extraordinary success. As humans, we all need to belong. While modern social life can make even the best of us feel gawky, for roughly one in five of us, navigating its challenges is consistently overwhelming - an ongoing maze without an exit. Often unable to grasp social cues or master the skills and grace necessary for smooth interaction, we feel out of sync with those around us. Though individuals may recognize their awkward disposition, they rarely understand why they are like this - which makes it hard for them to know how to adjust their behavior. Psychologist and interpersonal relationship expert Ty Tashiro knows what it's like to be awkward. Growing up, he could do math in his head and memorize the earned run averages of every National League starting pitcher. But he couldn't pour liquids without spilling and habitually forgot to bring his glove to Little League games. In Awkward, he unpacks decades of research into human intelligence, neuroscience, personality, and sociology to help us better understand this widely shared trait. He explores its nature vs. nurture origins, considers how the awkward view the world, and delivers a welcome counterintuitive message: the same characteristics that make people socially clumsy can be harnessed to produce remarkable achievements. Interweaving the latest research with personal tales and real world examples, Awkward offers reassurance and provides valuable insights into how we can embrace our personal quirks and unique talents to harness our awesome potential - and more comfortably navigate our complex world.
©2017 Ty Tashiro (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Death Rattle
Summary
From acclaimed author Sean Lynch comes the epic saga of Samuel Pritchard, a young man coming of age in the Civil War, riding tall with the Texas Rangers, and becoming one of the greatest gunfighters of his time...
The Legend Begins
In 1863, a teenaged boy fled his home in Atherton, Missouri, to escape the power-hungry men who murdered his father and stole his familyâs land. He joined the Confederacy under an assumed name and led guerilla raids in the Civil War. Then came a decade as a Texas Ranger. Now, after ten blood-soaked years, he is finally coming home. Finally using his real name. And finally getting revenge against the cold-hearted devils who destroyed his family and his life...Â
This is the story of Samuel Pritchard. Now a small town sheriff with a long history of violence, a deep sense of honor, and wild streak of justice as dangerous as the guns that made him famous...
©2019 by Sean Lynch. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Endurance (Young Readers Edition)
Summary
Discover what it's like to spend a year in space in this awe-inspiring memoir from a real-life NASA astronaut who did just that! Prepare to blast off with astronaut Scott Kelly as he takes listeners on a journey through his year aboard the International Space Station and his life prior to becoming a true American hero. Discover the extreme challenges of long-term spaceflight, the pressures of living in close quarters with people from many countries, the extremely dangerous risk of colliding with space junk, and the unnerving feeling of not being able to help if tragedy strikes at home. Find out the story of Kelly's childhood, his struggles in school, and ultimately the inspiration that sparked his incredible career, and the training to become a test-pilot and then astronaut. This personal and fascinating story, newly adapted for young listeners from The New York Times best seller, will encourage aspiring astronauts and young listeners everywhere to believe in the impossible and reach for the stars "An engaging and high-flying read for nonfiction and space lovers alike." (School Library Journal) "Those who are intrigued by space travel will find this a fascinating book." (Booklist) "Recommend this to readers who are interested in current events and anyone who wants an in-depth look at a STEM-related career." (VOYA)
©2018 Scott Kelly (P)2018 Listening Library
My West Side Story
Summary
George Chakiris famously played the angry gang leader Bernardo in the film version of West Side Story (1961), for which he won an Oscar for best supporting actor. My West Side Story is an insider's look at how this theatrical and cinematic landmark evolved from a conversation in Jerome Robbins's Manhattan apartment between him, Arthur Laurents, and Leonard Bernstein to ten Oscars, three Golden Globes, two Tony Awards, and a Grammy. While also a memoir of Chakiris's long and distinguished career, the emphasis is on West Side Story. Here are profiles of the film's stars and directors, from Natalie Wood and "lovely" Richard Beymer, to the mercurial Jerome Robbins and "passionate" Rita Moreno, with whom Chakiris remains friends. "I know exactly where my gratitude belongs", Chakiris writes, "and I still marvel at how, unbeknownst to me at the time, the joyful path of my life was paved one night in 1949 when Jerome Robbins sat Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents down in his apartment and announced, 'I have an idea.'"
©2021 George Chakiris (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Sick Puppy
Summary
When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy, and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated. After watching Stoat blithely dump a trail of fast-food litter out the window, Twilly decides to teach him a lesson. Thus, Stoat's prized Range Rover becomes home to a horde of hungry dung beetles. Which could have been the end to it had Twilly not discovered that Stoat is one of Florida's cockiest and most powerful political fixers, whose latest project is the "malling" of a pristine Gulf Coast island. Now the real Hiaasen-variety fun begins.... Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts - these are only some of the denizens of Carl Hiaasen's outrageously funny new novel. Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea, Sick Puppy gleefully lives up to its title and gives us Hiaasen at his riotous and muckraking best.
©2000 Carl Hiaasen (P)2013 Random House Audio
Happy Hour in Hell
Summary
I've been told to go to Hell more times than I can count. But this time I'm actually going. My name's Bobby Dollar, sometimes known as Doloriel, and of course, Hell isn't a great place for someone like me - I'm an angel. They don't like my kind down there, not even the slightly fallen variety. But they have my girlfriend, who happens to be a beautiful demon named Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands. Why does an angel have a demon girlfriend? Well, certainly not because it helps my career. She's being held hostage by one of the nastiest, most powerful demons in all of the netherworld - Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. He already hates me, and he'd like nothing better than to get his hands on me and rip my immortal soul right out of my borrowed but oh-so-mortal body. But wait, it gets better! Not only do I have to sneak into Hell, make my way across thousands of miles of terror and suffering to reach Pan-demonium, capital of the fiery depths, but then I have to steal Caz right out from under Eligor's burning eyes and smuggle her out again, past demon soldiers, hellhounds, and all the murderous creatures imprisoned there for eternity. And even if I somehow manage to escape Hell, I'm also being stalked by an undead psychopath named Smyler who's been following me for weeks. Oh, and did I mention that he can't be killed? So if I somehow survive Hell, elude the Grand Duke and all his hideous minions, and make it back to the real world, I'll still be the most hunted soul in Creation. But at least I'll have Caz. Gotta have something to look forward to, right? So just pour me that damn drink, will you? I've got somewhere to go.
©2013 Tad Williams (P)2013 Penguin Audio
I'm Your Huckleberry
Summary
Instant New York Times Best Seller Legendary actor Val Kilmer shares the stories behind his most beloved roles, reminisces about his star-studded career and love life, and reveals the truth behind his recent health struggles in a remarkably candid autobiography. Val Kilmer has played so many iconic roles over his nearly four-decade film career. A table-dancing Cold War agent in Top Secret! A troublemaking science prodigy in Real Genius. A brash fighter pilot in Top Gun. A swashbuckling knight in Willow. A lovelorn bank robber in Heat. A charming master of disguise in The Saint. A wise-cracking gumshoe in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Of course, Batman, Jim Morrison, and the sharp-shooting Doc Holliday. But who is the real Val Kilmer? In this memoir - published ahead of the highly anticipated sequel Top Gun: Maverick, in which Kilmer returns to the big screen as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky - the actor steps out of character and reveals his true self. Kilmer reflects on his acclaimed career, recounts his high-profile romances, chronicles his spiritual journey, and reveals details of his recent throat cancer diagnosis and recovery - about which he has disclosed little until now. While containing plenty of tantalizing celebrity anecdotes, I'm Your Huckleberry - taken from the famous line Kilmer delivers as Holliday in Tombstone - is ultimately a deeply moving reflection on mortality and the mysteries of life.
©2020 Val Kilmer (P)2020 Simon & Schuster
Mountain of Black Glass
Summary
Mountain of Black Glass is the third volume of Tad Williams's highly acclaimed four-book series, Otherland. A truly unique reading experience combining elements of science fiction, fantasy, and techno-thriller, it is a rich epic tale in which virtual reality could prove the key to a whole new universe of possibilities for the entire human race - or become the exclusive domain of the rich and the ruthless as they seek a technological pathway to immortality.
©2000 Tad Williams (P)2015 Penguin Group US
Homegrown
Summary
The captivating inside story of the historic 2018 Boston Red Sox, as told through the assembly and ascendancy of their talented young core - the culmination of nearly a decade of reporting from one of the most respected baseball writers in the country. The 2018 season was a coronation for the Boston Red Sox. The best team in Major League Baseball - indeed, one of the best teams ever - the Sox won 108 regular season games and then romped through the postseason, going 11-3 against the three next-strongest teams baseball had to offer. As Boston Globe baseball reporter Alex Speier reveals, the Soxâ success wasnât a fluke - nor was it guaranteed. It was the result of careful, patient planning and shrewd decision-making that allowed Boston to develop a golden generation of prospects - and then build upon that talented core to assemble a juggernaut. Speier has covered the key players - Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Jackie Bradley Jr., and many others - since the beginning of their professional careers, as they rose through the minor leagues and ultimately became the heart of this historic championship squad. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and years of reporting, Homegrown is the definitive look at the construction of an extraordinary team. It is a story that offers startling insights for baseball fans of any team, and anyone looking for the secret to building a successful organization. Why do many highly touted prospects fail, while others rise out of obscurity to become transcendent? How can franchises help their young talent, in whom theyâve often invested tens of millions of dollars, reach their full potential? And how can management balance long-term aims with the constant pressure to win now? Part insiderâs account of one of the greatest baseball teams ever, part meditation on how to build a winner, Homegrown offers an illuminating look into how the best of the best are built.Â
©2019 Alex Speier (P)2019 HarperAudio
Five Presidents
Summary
A rare and fascinating portrait of the American presidency from the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Mrs. Kennedy and Me and Five Days in November. Secret Service agent Clint Hill brings history intimately and vividly to life as he reflects on his 17 years protecting the most powerful office in the nation. Hill walked alongside Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford, seeing them through a long, tumultuous era - the Cold War; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; the Vietnam War; Watergate; and the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard M. Nixon. Some of his stunning, never-before-revealed anecdotes include: Eisenhower's reaction to Russian prime minister Khrushchev's refusal to talk following the U-2 incident The torture of watching himself in the Zapruder film in a Secret Service training Johnson's virtual imprisonment in the White House during violent anti-Vietnam protests His decision to place White House files under protection after a midnight phone call about Watergate The challenges of protecting Ford after he pardoned Nixon With a unique insider's perspective, Hill sheds new light on the characters and personalities of these five presidents, revealing their humanity in the face of grave decisions.
©2016 Hill McCubbin, LLC. (P)2016 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
This Was Not the Plan
Summary
From the acclaimed author of The Darlings comes an incisive, hilarious, and tender exploration of fatherhood, love, and family life through the story of a widower who has to become the father he didn't know he could be. Charlie Goldwyn's life hasn't exactly gone according to plan. A widower at 34, he is left trying to raise a quirky five-year-old, Caleb, whose obsession with natural disasters and penchant for girls' clothing have made him a loner at his preschool. The only thing Charlie does have going for him is his job at a prestigious law firm where - after 10 long years of 12-hour days and working through weekends and a huge win on a settlement - he is finally a rising star on his way to becoming a partner. But after a Jerry Maguire moment at an office party, Charlie finds himself humiliatingly unemployed and stuck at home with Caleb for the summer as he desperately tries to win his job back. When a wedding forces Charlie to spend time with his own father - whom he hasn't spoken to in 35 years - he begins to realize that there's more to fatherhood than being able to provide financially for his son and vows to become the father he never had - and the father he never thought he was capable of being. An intimate, accessible, and ultimately moving novel, This Was Not the Plan is a touching story about loss and love, parenthood and friendship, and what true work-life balance means.
©2016 Bear One Holdings, LLC (P)2016 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Players Ball
Summary
"An engrossing microcosm of the internetâs Wild West years" (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com, resulting in an all-out war for control for what still powers the internet today: love and sex. In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com. Only five percent of Americans were using the internet at the time, and even fewer were looking online for love. He quickly bought the Sex.com domain too, betting the combination of love and sex would help propel the internet into the mainstream. Imagine Kremenâs surprise when he learned that someone named Stephen Michael Cohen had stolen the rights to Sex.com and was already making millions that Kremen would never see. Thus follows the wild true story of Kremenâs and Cohenâs decade-long battle for control. In The Players Ball, author and journalist David Kushner provides a front seat to these must-hear Wild West years online, when innovators and outlaws battled for power and money. This cat-and-mouse game between a genius and a con man changed the way people connect forever, and is key to understanding the rise and future of the online world. "Kushner delivers a fast-paced, raunchy tale of sex, drugs, and dial-up." (Publishers Weekly)
©2019 David Kushner (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
The Happiness of Pursuit
Summary
A remarkable book that will both guide and inspire, The Happiness of Pursuit reveals how anyone can bring meaning into their life by undertaking a quest. When he set out to visit all of the planetâs countries by age thirty-five, compulsive goal seeker Chris Guillebeau never imagined that his journeyâs biggest revelation would be how many people like himself exist â each pursuing a challenging quest. And, interestingly, these quests arenât just travel-oriented. On the contrary, theyâre as diverse as humanity itself. Some involve exploration; others the pursuit of athletic or artistic excellence; still others a battle against injustice or poverty or threats to the environment. Everywhere that Chris visited he found ordinary people working toward extraordinary goals, making daily down payments on their dream. These âquestersâ included a suburban mom pursuing a wildly ambitious culinary project, a DJ producing the worldâs largest symphony, a young widower completing the tasks his wife would never accomplish, and a teenager crossing an entire ocean alone - as well as a do-it-yourselfer tackling M.I.T.âs computer-science course, a nerd turning himself into real-life James Bond, and scores of others writing themselves into the record books. The more Chris spoke with these strivers, the more he began to appreciate the direct link between questing and long-term happiness -- how going after something in a methodical way enriches our lives -- and he was compelled to complete a comprehensive study of the phenomenon and extract the best advice. In The Happiness of Pursuit he draws on interviews with hundreds of questers, revealing their secret motivations, their selection criteria, the role played by friends and family, their tricks for solving logistics, and the importance of documentation.
©2014 Chris Guillebeau (P)2014 Random House Audio
Rules of War
Summary
Following the events of the âfast, hard-hitting, and impossible to put downâ (The Real Book Spy) Field of Valor, Logan West continues his mission to bring Americaâs traitorous vice president to justice, even as the clandestine group pulling all the strings makes one last deadly bid to regain their power. The vice president of the United States is missing, the director of the National Security Agency has been assassinated, and the mysterious organization orchestrating global instability is in tatters. While John Quick recovers from a gunshot wound that nearly killed him, Logan West is on the hunt to bring the vice president back to the United States to face justice for his treason. The final stakes have never been higher and Logan and his task force are left with little to no options. Will it be this warriorâs end? âPacked with action, intrigue, and a rising sense of hair-raising, high-stakes chaos,â (Ben Coes, New York Times best-selling author), Rules of War is an authentic, timely, and relentless thriller that will sink its teeth in you.
©2019 Matthew Betley (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Assassination of Fred Hampton
Summary
Uncovering a cold-blooded execution at the hands of a conspiring police force, this engaging account relentlessly pursues the murderers of Black Panther Fred Hampton. Documenting the entire 14-year process of bringing the killers to justice, this chronicle also depicts the 18-month court trial in detail. Revealing Hampton himself in a new light, this examination presents him as a dynamic community leader whose dedication to his people and to the truth inspired the young lawyers of the People's Law Office, solidifying their lifelong commitment to fighting corruption. Contending with FBI stonewalling and unlimited government resources bent on hiding a darker plot, this reconstruction relates an inspiring narrative of upholding morality in one manâs memory.
©2011 Jeffrey Haas (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Right Path
Summary
Joe Scarborough - former Republican congressman and the always insightful host of MSNBCâs Morning Joe - takes a nuanced and surprising look at the unexpected rise and self-inflicted fall of the Republican Party. Dominant in national politics for forty years under the influence of the conservative but pragmatic leadership of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, the GOP, Scarborough argues, is in a self-inflicted eclipse. The only way forward? Recover the principled realism of the giants who led the party to greatness. In the aftermath of Lyndon Johnsonâs 1964 landslide, the Republican Party appeared to be on the verge of permanent irrelevance. LBJâs Great Society was institutionalizing sweeping liberal reforms, and the United States had a thriving, prosperous economy. Yet in an instant everything changed, and the next four decades would witness an unprecedented era of Republican ascendancy. What happened? In The Right Path, Joe Scarborough looks back in time to discern how Republicans once dominated American public life. From Eisenhowerâs refusal to let âthe perfect be the enemy of the goodâ to Reaganâs charismatic but resolutely practical genius, Scarborough shows how principled pragmatism, combined with a commitment to core conservative values, led to victory after victory. Now, however, political incalcitrance is threatening to turn a once-mighty party into a permanent minority.
©2013 Joe Scarborough; 2013 Random House Audio
A Thousand Naked Strangers
Summary
A former paramedic's visceral, poignant, and mordantly funny account of a decade spent on Atlanta's mean streets saving lives and connecting with the drama and occasional beauty that lies inside catastrophe. In the aftermath of 9/11, Kevin Hazzard felt that something was missing from his life - his days were too safe, too routine. A failed salesman turned local reporter, he wanted to test himself, see how he might respond to pressure and danger. He signed up for emergency medical training and became, at age 26, a newly minted EMT running calls in the worst sections of Atlanta. His life entered a different realm - one of blood, violence, and amazing grace. Thoroughly intimidated at first and frequently terrified, he experienced on a nightly basis the adrenaline rush of walking into chaos. But in his downtime, Kevin reflected on how people's facades drop away when catastrophe strikes. As his hours on the job piled up, he realized he was beginning to see into the truth of things. There is no pretense five beats into a chest compression or in an alley next to a crack den or on a dimly lit highway where cars have collided. Eventually, what had at first seemed impossible happened: Kevin acquired mastery. And in the process he was able to discern the professional differences between his freewheeling peers, what marked each - as he termed them - as a "tourist", "true believer", or "killer". Combining indelible scenes that remind us of life's fragile beauty with laugh-out-loud moments that keep us smiling through the worst, A Thousand Naked Strangers is an absorbing listen about one man's journey of self-discovery - a trip that also teaches us about ourselves.
©2016 Kevin Hazzard (P)2016 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
An Evil Mind
Summary
From a top-ten Sunday Times (UK) best-selling author comes an intelligent, action-packed suspense novel featuring Robert Hunter, a criminal behavior psychologist turned LAPD detective who must race to identify the most brutal, clever, and elusive serial killer yet.... A freak accident in rural Wyoming leads the sheriff's department to arrest a man for a possible double homicide, but further investigations suggest a much more horrifying discovery - a serial killer who has been kidnapping, torturing, and mutilating victims all over the United States for at least 25 years. The suspect claims he is a pawn in a huge labyrinth of lies and deception - but can he be believed? The case is immediately handed over to the FBI, but this time they're forced to ask for outside help. Ex-criminal behavior psychologist and lead detective with the Ultra Violent Crime Unit of the LAPD Robert Hunter is asked to run a series of interviews with the apprehended man. These interviews begin to reveal terrifying secrets that no one could've foreseen, including the real identity of a killer so elusive that no one, not even the FBI, had any idea he existed - until now....
©2015 Chris Carter (P)2015 Simon & Schuster
Lost in Outer Space
Summary
This exciting second book in the Lost series tells the incredible true story of the doomed Apollo 13 moon mission that nearly ended in disaster. On April 11, 1970, the Apollo 13 space shuttle set off for the third intended American moon landing. Two days later and 200,000 miles from Earth, disaster struck when an oxygen tank exploded onboard the spacecraft, leaving three astronauts with only one goal: to make it home alive. From "Houston, we've had a problem" to the final tense moments at Mission Control, Lost in Outer Space takes listeners along on the unbelievable journey of Apollo 13 and inside the minds of its famous and heroic astronauts, including legendary Commander Jim Lovell. This is an up close and personal look at one of the most thrilling survival stories of all time.
©2017 Tod Olson (P)2017 Scholastic Inc.
Gone South
Summary
It was hell's season, and the air smelled of burning children.... With "one of the most arresting first sentences in contemporary writing" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Robert McCammon unfurls his visionary masterpiece of survival, redemption, and the astonishing transformations love can create. Gone South chronicles a desperate man's journey through a desperate land, in "a gothic picaresque that mixes gritty plot and black comedy...a smoothly constructed and satisfying story" (The Wall Street Journal). Flooded by memories, poisoned by Agent Orange, Dan Lambert kills a man in a moment of fear and fury - and changes his life forever. Pursued by police and bounty hunters, Dan flees south toward the Louisiana bayous. In the swamplands he meets Arden Halliday, a young woman who bears the vivid burdens of her own past and who is searching for a legendary faith healer called the Bright Girl. Looking for simple kindness in a world that rarely shows it, bound by a loyalty stronger than love, Dan and Arden set off on a journey of relentless suspense and impassioned discovery...over dark, twisting waterways into the mysterious depths of the human heart.
©1991 McCammon Corporation. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Claw & Warder: Season 1
Summary
Contains episodes one, two, and three of Claw & Warder. Seduction, Episode 1Â Leery Oriscoe is just a conflicted New York cop who got hit by the Hassidic bus - only the bus was driven by a werewolf. Thereâs bound to be a little crazy under his black hat. His life just got 10 times more complicated. His new half-vampire and half-succubus partner is smart, sexy as hell, and keeping a big secret from everyone. Oh, and their lieutenant? She's the ghost of a Van Helsing. Their case? Tracking down the entity responsible for leaving the drained body of a young man in Riverside Park. With a succubus for a partner, another as a witness, and yet another as the prime suspect, will Leery end up the victim of the next seduction? Arms Dealers, Episode 2Â She's an expert spellslinger. He's a grizzled detective with a wolfish side. Dru and Leery are a match for anything. Faced with a pair of armless bodies and an unlikely pair of criminal masterminds - a Norwegian wood troll and an Unseelie - Leery knows the right people to help sort it all out. There's only one hitch: the Zombie mafia. Full of danger and mystery, the case keeps everyone involved on edge. Leery even takes a break from drinking coffee. With the Zombie mafia's constant need for spare parts, is it any wonder the Locus of New York is full of arms dealers? Mitzvah, Episode 3 Everyone has a past, even Hassidic werewolves. Leery's past has a taste for blood and wants revenge. There's a killer running wild in the East Village, and according to the witness, it's Leery Oriscoe in wolf form. When Van Helsing puts him on a desk, Leery storms off, leaving Dru to prove his innocence. But to do it, she will need help from her mother, and that means a trip to Hell. It looks like Dru picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. After another body drops, Leery is in the clear, but the Rabbi that turned him becomes the prime suspect. To make things worse, the Zombie mafia's pet necromancer assassin is in town, and she's gunning for Leery.
©2021 Erik Henry Vick (P)2021 Podium Audio
Bloody Okinawa
Summary
A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle - the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign - the last of its kind. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, more than 184,000 US troops began landing on the only Japanese home soil invaded during the Pacific war. Just 350 miles from mainland Japan, Okinawa was to serve as a forward base for Japan's invasion in the fall of 1945. Nearly 140,000 Japanese and auxiliary soldiers fought with suicidal tenacity from hollowed-out, fortified hills and ridges. Under constant fire and in the rain and mud, the Americans battered the defenders with artillery, aerial bombing, naval gunfire, and every infantry tool. Waves of Japanese kamikaze and conventional warplanes sank 36 warships, damaged 368 others, and killed nearly 5,000 US seamen. When the slugfest ended after 82 days, more than 125,000 enemy soldiers lay dead - along with 7,500 US ground troops. Tragically, more than 100,000 Okinawa civilians perished while trapped between the armies. The brutal campaign persuaded US leaders to drop the atomic bomb instead of invading Japan. Utilizing accounts by US combatants and Japanese sources, author Joseph Wheelan endows this riveting story of the war's last great battle with a compelling human dimension.
©2020 Joseph Wheelan (P)2020 Hachette Books
Road to Jonestown
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Manson comes the comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre - the largest murder-suicide in American history. In the 1950s a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the Gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to Northern California. He became involved in electoral politics and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones' life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost 1,000 of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November 1978 when more than 900 people died - including almost 300 infants and children - after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink. Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones' Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones' orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.
©2017 Jeff Guinn (P)2017 Simon & Schuster
Field of Valor
Summary
Set in the aftermath of Betleyâs âmachine-gun paceâ (Booklist) Oath of Honor and the discovery of a deadly global conspiracy, the president requests Logan West to form a covert task force with the mission to dismantle a nameless enemy. With the full resources of the Justice Department, the intelligence community, and the military (not to mention presidential pardons pre-signed), Logan must battle a secret organization with the connections and funding to rival many first-world nations. The goal of this organization is both singular and sinister - to pit the United States against China in a bid to dismantle the worldâs security and economy. Back on US soil, Logan and his task force pursue the elusive foe from the woods of Northern Virginia to the banks of the Chesapeake Bay, from suburban Maryland across the urban sprawl of Washington, DC. The stakes have never been higher for Logan or America itself....
©2018 Matthew Betley (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio
One Perfect Lie
Summary
On paper, Chris Brennan looks perfect. He's applying for a job as a high school government teacher, he's ready to step in as an assistant baseball coach, and his references are impeccable. But everything about Chris Brennan is a lie. Susan Sematov is proud of her son, Raz, a high school pitcher so athletically talented that he's being recruited for a full-ride scholarship to a Division I college, with a future in major league baseball. But Raz's father died only a few months ago, leaving her son in a vulnerable place where any new father figure might influence him for good - or evil. Heather Larkin is a struggling single mother who lives for her son Justin's baseball games. But Justin is shy, and Heather fears he is being lured down a dark path by one of his teammates, a young man from an affluent family whose fun-loving manner might possibly conceal his violent plans. Mindy Kostis succumbs to the pressure of being a surgeon's wife by filling her days with social events and too many gin and tonics. But she doesn't know that her husband and her son, Evan, are keeping secrets from her - secrets that might destroy all of them. At the center of all of them is Chris Brennan. Why is he there? What does he want? And what is he willing to do to get it? Enthralling and suspenseful, One Perfect Lie is an emotional thriller and a suburban crime story that will have listeners riveted up to the shocking end, with killer twists and characters you won't soon forget.Â
©2017 Smart Blonde, LLC (P)2017 Macmillan Audio
Touch of Red
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Laura Griffin "delivers the goods" (Publishers Weekly) again with this gripping, "spellbinding" (Fresh Fiction) thriller full of twists and turns - the 12th in her best-selling Tracers series. When crime scene investigator Brooke Porter arrives at the home of a murdered woman, the only thing more shocking than the carnage is the evidence that someone escaped the scene. But where is this witness now? A thorough search of the area yields more questions than answers, and before Brooke even packs up her evidence kit, she's made it her goal to find the witness and get them out of harm's way. Homicide detective Sean Byrne has seen his share of bloody crime scenes, but this one is particularly disturbing, especially because Brooke Porter is smack in the middle of it. Sean has had his eye on the sexy CSI for months, and he's determined to help her with her current case - even if it means putting his attraction on hold so he and Brooke can track down a murderer. But as the investigation - and their relationship - heats up, Sean realizes that keeping his work and his personal life separate is more complicated than he ever imagined; especially when the killer sets his sights on Brooke. With Griffin's signature "fully fleshed characters, dry humor, and tight plotting" (Publishers Weekly), Touch of Red demonstrates why she is one of the most acclaimed and popular authors of sexy thrillers today.
©2017 Laura Griffin (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Promise of Stardust
Summary
Matt Beaulieu was two years old the first time he held Elle McClure in his arms, seventeen when he first kissed her under a sky filled with shooting stars, and thirty-three when they wed. Now in their late thirties, the deeply devoted couple has everything - except the baby they've always wanted. When a tragic accident leaves Elle brain-dead, Matt is devastated. Though he cannot bear losing her, he knows his wife, a thoughtful and adventurous scientist, feared only one thing - a slow death. Just before Matt agrees to remove Elle from life support, the doctors discover that she is pregnant. Now what was once a clear-cut decision becomes an impossible choice. Matt knows how much this child would have meant to Elle. While there is no certainty her body can sustain the pregnancy, he is sure Elle would want the baby to have a chance. Linney, Matt's mother, believes her son is blind with denial. She loves Elle, too, and insists that Elle would never want to be kept alive by artificial means, no matter what the situation. Divided by the love they share, driven by principle, Matt and Linney fight for what each believes is right, and the result is a disagreement that escalates into a controversial legal battle, ultimately going beyond one family and one single life. Told with sensitivity and compassion, The Promise of Stardust is an emotionally resonant and thought-provoking tale that raises profound questions about life and death, faith and medicine - and illuminates, with beauty and grace, the power of love to wound...and to heal.
©2013 Priscille Marcille Sibley (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers
Julian
Summary
The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidalâs finest historical novels. Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.
©1962, 1964 copyright renewed 1990, 1992 by Gore Vidal. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Lucky You
Summary
Grange, Florida, is famous for its miracles - the weeping fiberglass Madonna, the Road-Stain Jesus, the stigmata man. And now it has JoLayne Lucks, unlikely winner of the state lottery. Unfortunately, JoLayne's winning ticket isn't the only one. The other belongs to Bodean Gazzer and his raunchy sidekick, Chub, who believe they're entitled to the whole $28 million jackpot. And they need it quickly, to start their own underground militia before NATO troops invade America. But JoLayne Lucks has her own plans for the Lotto money - an Eden-like forest in Grange must be saved from strip-malling. When Bode and Chub brutally assault her and steal her ticket, JoLayne vows to track them down, take it back - and get revenge. The only one who can help is Tom Krome, a big-city investigative journalist now bitterly consigned to writing frothy features for a midsized central Florida newspaper. With a persuasive nudge from JoLayne, Krome is about to become part of a story that's bigger and more bizarre than anything he's ever covered. Chasing two heavily armed psychopaths down the coast of Florida is reckless enough, but Tom's got other problems - the murderous attention of a jealous judge; an actress wife who turns fugitive to avoid divorce court; an editor who speaks in tongues; and Tom's own growing fondness for the future millionairess with whom he's risking his neck. The pursuit takes them from the surreal streets of Grange to a buzzard-infested island deep in Florida Bay, where they finally catch up with the fledgling militia - Chub, Bode Gazzer, a newly recruited convenience-store clerk, and their baffled hostage, a Hooters waitress. The climax explodes with the hilarious mayhem that is Carl Hiaasen's hallmark. Lucky You is his funniest, most deliriously gripping novel yet.
©2013 Carl Hiaasen (P)2013 Random House Audio
Becoming a Venture Capitalist
Summary
A listener-friendly guide to the inner workings and behind-the-scenes action of Silicon Valley and venture capitalism. Investigative reporter Gary Rivlin gives an armchair tour of the world of venture capitalism, while providing vivid case studies illustrating how to get started in the field. He shows how once-small companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon used venture capitalism to transform into the icons they are today, and the VCs that made a fortune in the process. Listeners will learn what series funding is, the difference between an angel and super angel investor, and how to go about identifying ideas worthy of funding. Becoming a Venture Capitalist is not only an exclusive look into the world of legendary venture firms - as well as stories of their most interesting characters, including Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Zuckerberg - but a wonderful guide on how to break into a seemingly impenetrable world.Â
©2019 Gary Rivlin (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
On Her Trail
Summary
Before Barbara Walters, before Katie Couric, there was Nancy Dickerson. The first female member of the Washington TV news corps, Nancy was the only woman covering many of the most iconic events of the 1960s. She was the first reporter to speak to President Kennedy after his inauguration, and she was on the Mall with Martin Luther King, Jr., during the march on Washington; she had dinner with LBJ the night after Kennedy was assassinated and got late-night calls from President Nixon. Ambitious, beautiful, and smart, she dated senators and congressmen and got advice and accolades from Edward R. Murrow. She was one of President Johnson's favorite reporters, and he often greeted her on-camera with a familiar "Hello, Nancy". In the '60s, Nancy and her husband, Wyatt Dickerson, were Washington's golden couple, and the capital's power brokers coveted invitations to swank dinners at their estate on the Potomac. Growing up in the shadow of Nancy's fame, John Dickerson rarely saw his mother. This frank memoir - part remembrance, part discovery - describes a freewheeling childhood in which Nancy Dickerson was rarely around unless John was in trouble or she was throwing a party for the president and John was instructed to check the coats. By the time John was old enough to know what the news was, his mother was no longer in the national spotlight and he didn't see why she should be. He thought she was a liar and a phony. When he was 14, his parents divorced, and he moved in with his father. As an adult, John found himself in Washington, a reporter covering her old beat. A long-delayed connection between mother and son began, only to be cut short by Nancy's death in 1997. In her journals, letters, and yellowed newspaper clippings, John discovered the woman he never knew - an icon in television history whose achievement was the result of her relentless determination to reinvent herself and excel. On Her Trail is a fascinating picture of the early days of television and of Washington society at its most high powered, and charts a son's honest and wry search for the mother he came to admire and love.Â
©2006 John Dickerson (P)2018 Simon & Schuster
Oath of Honor
Summary
A breakneck, edge-of-your-seat thriller that moves from a resurgent Russian threat in the Aleutian Islands to North Korean spy ships to secret Sudanese prisons as former marines Logan West and John Quick, now members of an FBI special task force, uncover a global conspiracy that threatens America's position in the current international balance of power. Logan West and John Quick are sent to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to investigate the possible presence of a Russian black ops team on a mission to steal United States next-generation technology. The resulting violent confrontation triggers a global search for the stolen technology and threatens to pit the US against China in a looming shadow war and technology race. As Logan and John - joined by the chief of the CIA's Special Operations Group, Cole Matthews - battle their way through Spain and the Mediterranean and ultimately across Sudan, an imminent threat arises at home that FBI deputy director Mike Benson must face and determine if it is part of the deadly global conspiracy. Oath of Honor is an intense and gripping follow-up to former marine Matthew Betley's "brilliantly conceived" (Clive Cussler) Overwatch and solidifies his place among the greatest contemporary thriller writers.
©2017 Matthew Betley (P)2017 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Lost Letter
Summary
âA gorgeous and thrilling novel.... Perfect for book clubs and fans of The Nightingale.â (PopSugar) A historical novel of love and survival inspired by real resistance workers during World War II Austria and the mysterious love letter that connects generations of Jewish families. A heartbreaking, heartwarming story for fans of The Women in the Castle, Lilac Girls, and Sarah's Key. Author of the forthcoming In Another Time. Austria, 1938. Kristoff is a young apprentice to a master Jewish stamp engraver. When his teacher disappears during Kristallnacht, Kristoff is forced to engrave stamps for the Germans and simultaneously works alongside Elena, his beloved teacher's fiery daughter, and with the Austrian resistance to send underground messages and forge papers. As he falls for Elena amidst the brutal chaos of war, Kristoff must find a way to save her, and himself. Los Angeles, 1989. Katie Nelson is going through a divorce, and while cleaning out her house and life in the aftermath, she comes across the stamp collection of her father, who recently went into a nursing home. When an appraiser, Benjamin, discovers an unusual World War II-era Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter as he goes through her dad's collection, Katie and Benjamin are sent on a journey together that will uncover a story of passion and tragedy spanning decades and continents, behind the just fallen Berlin Wall. A romantic, poignant, and addictive novel, The Lost Letter reveals the lasting power of love.
©2017 Jillian Cantor (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Wonderland
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation has lain wherever people have been working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused. Johnson's storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he describes, full of surprising stops along the journey, from simple concepts to complex modern systems. He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows. Johnson compellingly argues that observers of technological and social trends should be looking for clues in novel amusements. You'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.
©2016 Steven Johnson (P)2016 Penguin Audio
River of Blue Fire
Summary
Otherland. In many ways it is humankind's most stunning achievement: a private, multidimensional universe built over two generations by the greatest minds of the 21st century. But this most exclusive of places is also one of the world's best kept secrets, created and controlled by an organization made up of the world's most powerful and ruthless individuals, a private cartel known - to those who know of their existence at all - as The Grail Brotherhood. Though their purpose in creating Otherland is still a mystery, it may not remain so for long. For they have exacted a terrible price from humanity in the process, and even their highly organized global conspiracy cannot hide the nature of their crimes forever. And now a small band of adventurers has penetrated the veil of secrecy that prevents the uninitiated from entering Otherland. But having broken into the amazing worlds within worlds that make up this universe, they are trapped, unable to escape back to their own flesh-and-blood bodies in the real world. And as dangers and circumstances split their party into small, widely scattered groups, their only hope of reuniting lies in returning again and again to the River that flows - in one form or another - through all the worlds. But the odds seem to be completely against them as they - and the one outsider with whom they might join forces - become hopelessly lost in realms where an Ice Age tribe's fears can only be quenched in blood - where insects are as large and deadly as dinosaurs - where they are caught in the war between a man made of straw and one made of tin - where cartoon ads take on a life of their own - where humans strive to survive in the aftermath of an alien invasion - and where one among their party is actually The Grail Brotherhood's most terrifying weapon - a sociopathic killer who has never failed and whose current mission is to make certain that not even one member of this little invasion force lives long enough to reveal the truth about Otherland to the people of Earth.
©1998 Tad Williams (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Impossible Odds
Summary
A harrowing and heart-wrenching memoir of humanitarian aid worker Jessica Buchanan's kidnapping by Somali land pirates, her three months in captivity, her rescue by the Navy SEALs, and her husband's extraordinary efforts to help bring her home. In 2006, 27-year-old Jessica Buchanan arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, with a teaching degree and long-held dreams of helping to educate African children. By 2009, she had met and married the man of her dreams, a native Swede named Erik Landemalm, who worked to coordinate humanitarian aid with local authorities in Africa. With dreams of starting a family, they moved from Nairobi to Somalia, and their future couldn't have seemed brighter.... But on October 25, 2011, Jessica and a male colleague were kidnapped at gunpoint and held for ransom by an organized band of Somali land pirates. For the next three months, Jessica was terrorized by more than two dozen gangsters. She was held outdoors in filthy conditions and kept on a starvation diet while her health steadily deteriorated. Negotiations for ransom dragged on, and as the ordeal stretched into its third month, the captors grew increasingly impatient. Every terrifying moment Jessica spent suffering in captivity was matched by that of her adoring husband working behind the scenes to deal with her captors. Finally, on January 25, 2012, President Barack Obama ordered a rescue operation by a team of 24 Navy SEALs. The team killed all nine kidnappers, with no harm to the hostages, who were quickly airlifted out on a military rescue helicopter. In riveting detail, Impossible Odds details Jessica and Erik's mutual journey during those torturous months. Together they relate the events prior to the kidnapping, the drama of Jessica's fight to stay alive, and Erik's efforts to bolster and support the hunt for her while he acted as liaison between their two families, the FBI, professional hostage negotiators, and the United States government.
©2013 Jessica Buchanan and Erik Landemalm (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
Parkland
Summary
Now a major motion picture! The exciting and definitive narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. In Parkland (originally titled Four Days in November), author Vincent Bugliosi "has definitively explained the murder that recalibrated modern America" (Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times Book Review). Releasing this fall, the movie - starring Paul Giamatti, Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver, and Billy Bob Thornton - follows a group of individuals making split-second decisions after this incomprehensible event: the doctors and nurses at Parkland Hospital, the chief of the Dallas Secret Service, the cameraman who captured what has become the most examined film in history, the FBI agents who had gunman Lee Harvey Oswald within their grasp, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson who had to take control of the country at a moment's notice. Based on Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History - Parkland is the story of that day.
©2013 Vincent Bugliosi (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
My Ex-Life
Summary
This program includes a bonus interview with the author. From Stephen McCauley comes a long-anticipated audiobook about love, life, and friendship David Hedgesâ life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parentsâ) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7. The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. Itâs been decades since theyâve spoken, and heâs relieved to hear sheâs recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him. Julie definitely doesnât have a problem with marijuana (sheâs given it up completely, so it doesnât matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb sheâs running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. Sheâd just like Davidâs help organizing college plans for her 17-year-old daughter. That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows sheâs smarter than most of the kids in her school, she canât figure out why sheâs making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices. When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off 30 years ago - theyâre still best friends who can finish each otherâs sentences. But thereâs one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix. In prose filled with hilarious and heartbreakingly accurate one-liners, Stephen McCauley has written an audiobook that examines how we define home, family, and love. Be prepared to laugh, shed a few tears, and have thoughts of your own ex-life triggered. (Throw pillows optional.)
©2018 Stephen McCauley (P)2018 Macmillan Audio
Man of the Year
Summary
A sinister, sophisticated debut thriller by âa remarkable new voice to watchâ (J.T. Ellison, New York Times best-selling author), Man of the Year has been lauded by Shelf Awareness as âan impressive slow burn that builds suspense and cracks the whip at the end...redolent with menace and ego". Dr. Robert Hart, Sag Harborâs just-named man of the year, is the envy of his friends and neighbors. His medical practice is thriving. He has a beautiful old house, a beautiful new wife, and a beautiful boat docked in the village marina. Even his wayward son, Jonah, is back on track, doing well at school, and finally worthy of his fatherâs attentions. So when Jonahâs troubled college roommate needs a place to stay for the summer, Hart and his wife generously offer him their guesthouse. A win-win: Jonah will have someone to hang with, and his father can bask in the warm glow of his own generosity. But when Robert suspects his new houseguest of getting a little too close to his wife, the good doctorâs veneer begins to crack, and all the little lies he tells start to mount. Before long, Robert is embroiled in a desperate downward spiral, threatening to destroy anyone who stands in his way. Itâs only the women in his life - his devoted office manager, his friends and neighbors, his wife - who can reveal the truth...if heâs willing to look. Biting and timely, Man of the Year races along at an electric pace, building to a wicked twist you wonât see coming.Â
©2019 Caroline Louise Walker (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
Sea of Death
Summary
Acclaimed author Tim Waggoner brings his first Eberron trilogy to a stunning conclusion. Diran, once a feared assassin, has turned his back on murder, seeking the life of a wandering priest. But in the seas of the Lhazaar Principalities, peace is rarely found, and even justice must be bought in blood. A new power has risen, hoping to conquer the east with an army of beast men, and only Diran and his companions can stop them. The concluding volume in the critically-acclaimed Blade of the Flame series that follows a former assassin trying to change his life and set the world to right.
©2008 Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Think
Summary
This fresh and exciting approach to science, skepticism, and critical thinking will enlighten and inspire listeners of all ages. With a mix of wit and wisdom, it challenges everyone to think like a scientist, embrace the skeptical life, and improve their critical thinking skills. Think shows you how to better navigate through the maze of biases and traps that are standard features of every human brain. These innate pitfalls threaten to trick us into seeing, hearing, thinking, remembering, and believing things that are not real or true. Guy Harrison's straightforward text will help you trim away the nonsense, deflect bad ideas, and keep both feet firmly planted in reality. With an upbeat and friendly tone, Harrison shows how it's in everyone's best interest to question everything. He brands skepticism as a constructive and optimistic attitude - a way of life that anyone can embrace. An antidote to nonsense and delusion, this accessible guide to critical thinking is the perfect audiobook for anyone seeking a jolt of inspiration.
©2013 Guy P. Harrison (P)2014 Tantor
Johnny Cash
Summary
Join Greg Laurie, pastor and bestselling author of Steve McQueen: The Salvation of an American Icon, as he takes you on a personal journey into the life and legend of Johnny Cash. At the peak of his career, Cash had done it all - living the ultimate rags-to-riches story of growing up on a cotton farm in the Deep South to becoming a Nashville and Hollywood sensation, singing alongside heroes like Elvis Presley and performing for several American presidents. But through all of this, Cash was troubled. By the time he released the iconic Man in Black album in 1971, the middle-aged icon was broken down, hollow-eyed, and wrung out. In his search for peace, Cash became embroiled in controversy. He was arrested five times in seven years. His drug- and alcohol-induced escapades led to car accidents and a forest fire that devastated 508 acres. His time was divided between Jesus and jail, gospel tunes and the âCocaine Blues.â But by the end of his life, Cash was speaking openly about his âunshakeable faith.â What caused the superstar to turn from his conflicting passions to embrace a life in Christ? Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon dives deep into the singerâs inner demons, triumphs, and gradual return to faith. Laurie interviews Cashâs family, friends, and business associates to reveal how the singerâs true success came through finding the only Person whose star was bigger than his own. Scriptures marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scriptures marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.Â
©2019 Greg Laurie (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Scriptures marked ESV are taken from the The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®. © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. Scriptures marked KJV are taken from the King James Version, public domain. Scriptures marked MSG are taken from The Message © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Scriptures marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible New International Version®. © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.â¢. Used by permission of Zondervan.
Captain America: Liberty's Torch
Summary
Captured by a vicious militia group called Liberty's Torch, Captain America is put on trial for the imagined crimes of America. Forced to defend himself in a hostile courtroom with no hope of a fair trial, the star-spangled Avenger faces his greatest challenge as his ideals are put to the acid test....
©2019 Marvel (P)2019 Marvel
A Passion for Leadership
Summary
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed number-one best-selling memoir Duty, a characteristically direct, informed, and urgent assessment of why big institutions are failing us and how smart, committed leadership can effect real improvement regardless of scale. Across the realms of civic and private enterprise alike, bureaucracies vitally impact our security, freedoms, and everyday life. With so much at stake, competence, efficiency, and fiscal prudence are essential, yet Americans know these institutions fall short. Many despair that they are too big and too hard to reform. Robert Gates disagrees. Having led change successfully at three monumental organizations - the CIA, Texas A&M University, and the Department of Defense - he offers us the ultimate insider's look at how major bureaus, organizations, and companies can be transformed, which is by turns heartening and inspiring and always instructive. With practical, nuanced advice on tailoring reform to the operative culture (we see how Gates worked within the system to increase diversity at Texas A&M); effecting change within committees; engaging the power of compromise ("in the real world of bureaucratic institutions, you almost never get all you want when you want it"); and listening and responding to your team, Gates brings the full weight of his wisdom, candor, and devotion to civic duty to inspire others to lead desperately needed change.
©2015 Robert M. Gates (P)2015 Random House Audio
Superman
Summary
How has the Big Blue Boy Scout stayed so popular for so long? How has he changed with the times, and what essential aspects of him have remained constant? This fascinating biography examines Superman as a cultural phenomenon through 75 years of action-packed adventures, from his early years as a social activist in circus tights to his growth into the internationally renowned demigod he is today. Written by NPR book critic, blogger, and resident comic-book expert Glen Weldon, this biography chronicles the ever-evolving Man of Steel and his world - not just the men and women behind the comics, movies, and shows, but his continually shifting origin story, burgeoning powers, and the colorful cast of trusted friends and deadly villains that surround him. Superman places every iteration of the Man of Steel into the character's greater, decades-long story: from Bud Collyer to Henry Cavill, World War II propagandist to peanut-butter pitchman, Super Pup to Super Friends, comic strip to Broadway musical, Lori Lemaris to Lois & Clark, it's all here. Affectionate and in-depth, this biography contains analyses of the hero's most beloved adventures, in and out of the comics - his most iconic Golden Age tales, goofiest Silver Age exploits, and the contemporary film, television, and comics stories that keep him alive today.
©2013 Glen Weldon (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Hansel and Gretel
Summary
In Hansel and Gretel, a famine has settled over the land. The children of a poor woodcutter are abandoned in the woods by their cruel stepmother who believes she and her husband will starve as a result of providing for the children. Days of wandering lead them to a beautiful cottage made of gingerbread and candy, which the children begin to eat. Lured inside by an old woman who promises hot baths, soft beds, and more delicious food, the children are captured and enslaved by what turns out to be a cannibalistic witch. The resourceful children must rely on their wits to make a daring escape.
Public Domain (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Think of a Number
Summary
An extraordinary fiction debut, Think of a Number is an exquisitely plotted novel of suspense that grows relentlessly darker and more frightening as its pace accelerates, forcing its deeply troubled characters to moments of startling self-revelation. Arriving in the mail over a period of weeks are taunting letters that end with a simple declaration: âThink of any numberâ¦picture itâ¦now see how well I know your secrets.â Amazingly, those who comply find that the letter writer has predicted their random choice exactly. For Dave Gurney, just retired as the NYPDâs top homicide investigator and forging a new life with his wife, Madeleine, in upstate New York, the letters are oddities that begin as a diverting puzzle but quickly ignite a massive serial murder investigation. What police are confronted with is a completely baffling killer, one who is fond of rhymes filled with threats and warnings, whose attention to detail is unprecedented, and who has an uncanny knack for disappearing into thin air. Even more disturbing, the scale of his ambition seems to widen as events unfold. Brought in as an investigative consultant, Dave Gurney soon accomplishes deductive breakthroughs that leave local police in awe. Yet, even as he matches wits with his seemingly clairvoyant opponent, Gurneyâs tragedy-marred past rises up to haunt him, his marriage approaches a dangerous precipice, and finally, a dark, cold fear builds that heâs met an adversary who canât be stopped. In the end, fighting to keep his bearings amid a whirlwind of menace and destruction, Gurney sees the truth of what heâs become â what we all become when guilty memories fester â and how his wife Madeleineâs clear-eyed advice may be the only answer that makes sense.
©2005 John Verdon (P)2010 Random House
The Inevitable
Summary
A New York Times Best Seller From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the 12 technological imperatives that will shape the next 30 years and transform our lives. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture - can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends - interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning - and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kellyâs bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading - what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place - as this new world emerges.Â
©2016 Kevin Kelly (P)2016 Penguin Audio
High
Summary
Just say know! With drug education for children more important than ever, this nonfiction book draws on the experiences of the New York Times best-selling father-and-son team of David and Nic Sheff to provide all the information teens and 'tweens need to know about drugs, alcohol, and addiction. From David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy, and Nic Sheff, author of Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines, comes the ultimate resource for learning about the realities of drugs and alcohol for middle-grade listeners. This book tells it as it is, with testimonials from peers who have been there and families who have lived through the addiction of a loved one, along with the cold, hard facts about what drugs and alcohol do to our bodies. From how to navigate peer pressure to outlets for stress to the potential consequences for experimenting, Nic and David Sheff lay out the facts so that middle grade readers can educate themselves. Number-one Amazon.com best seller in Children's Substance Abuse Books. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.Â
©2019 David Sheff and Nic Sheff (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
I Heard My Country Calling
Summary
James Webb, author of Fields of Fire, the classic novel of the Vietnam War - and a former U.S. Senator; Secretary of the Navy; recipient of the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart as a combat Marine; and a self-described "military brat" - has written an extraordinary memoir of his early years, "a love story - love of family, love of country, love of service" in his words. Webb's mother grew up in poverty-stricken Eastern Arkansas. His father and life-time hero was the first of many generations of Webbs, whose roots are in Appalachia, to finish high school. He flew bombers in World War II, cargo planes in the Berlin Airlift, graduated from college in middle age, and became an expert in the nation's most advanced weaponry. Webb's account of his childhood is a tremendous American saga as the family endures the constant moves and challenges of the rarely examined Post-World War II military, with his stern but emotionally invested father, loving and resolute mother, a granite-like grandmother who held the family together during his father's frequent deployments, and an assortment of invincible aunts, siblings, and cousins. His account of his four years at Annapolis are painfully honest but in the end triumphant. His description of Vietnam's most brutal battlefields breaks new literary ground. One of the most highly decorated combat Marines of that war, he is a respected expert on its history and conduct. Webb's novelist's eyes and ears invest this work with remarkable power, whether he is describing the resiliency that grew from constant relocations during his childhood, the longing for his absent father, his poignant goodbye to his parents as he leaves for Vietnam, his role as a 23-year-old lieutenant through months of constant combat, or his election to the Senate, where he was known for his expertise in national defense, foreign policy, and economic fairness. This is a life that could only happen in America.
©2014 James H. Webb, Jr. All rights reserved. (P)2014 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Love in the Afternoon
Summary
A woman with a legendary green thumb, a man living in an emotional desert, and a small boy unable to connect with others. Can the three of them, with a little help from the charmed town of Dove Pond (and a pesky ghost), turn a nightmare into a fairytale and forge their own happily ever after?  Young widow Sofia Rodriquez has just accepted the position of greenhouse manager for Ava Doveâs booming herbal tea business. Sofia is delighted to have found a job that will make use of her gardening skills and allow her to spend time with her son, Noah, who has been diagnosed with Aspergerâs. Adding to her joy is the charming farmhouse sheâs renting on the edge of Dove Pond.  The only cloud on Sofiaâs horizon is her next door neighbor, Jake, whose yard is a thorny jungle worthy of Sleeping Beauty. Soon enough, Sofia discovers that Jake himself is just as thorny and unpleasant as his yard.  After his fiancé left him, work-from-home IT whiz and game developer Jake Klaine has gone from Prince Charming to complete hermit. But Jake isnât really alone; heâs living with a ghost: a (formerly) hairy man named Doyle whoâs a fan of bad puns and who refuses to leave Jakeâs bathtub. This is nothing new for Jake, as heâs been talking to ghosts since he was a boy. He finds real people harder to deal with, like the kid next door who wonât stop bugging him about the new game heâs developing.  Sofia and Jake know all too well that life isnât a game. Theyâve both lost the person they loved most. But under the watchful eye of the ghostly Doyle and Sofiaâs new friend Ava, who has abilities of her own, Jake and Sofia decide to take a chance and let in an outsider. Soon they discover that, with a little magic, even the thorniest walls are no match for the innocent trust of a lonely child and the fierce determination of a woman wielding a razor-sharp pruner and a heart big enough to make even the most stubborn flower bloom.Â
©2019 Karen Hawkins. All rights reserved. (P)2019 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Forge of the Mindslayers
Summary
Living in the war-ravaged realm of Eberron, assassin-turned-priest Diran Bastiaan and his half-orc sidekick, Ghaji, make an unlikely pair. One looks like the stuff of nightmares, while the other is "a conduit through which the holy force of Good could work its will in the physical world." Together, they have traveled throughout the archipelagic Lhazaar Principalities sharing numerous wild adventures, but none were as dangerous as the one they currently face. When a gang of bloodthirsty pirates kidnaps Diran's former lover (a beautiful ex-mercenary killer named Makala), the priest of the Silver Flame and his half-breed wingman vow to get her - and countless other abductees - back no matter what the cost. But the seafaring raiders are no ordinary criminals; they're led by the infamous vampire Onkar, who in turn serves a being unfathomably more evil than himself....
©2007 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Farsighted
Summary
A groundbreaking book about making once-in-a-lifetime decisions, from the best-selling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From Plenty of books offer useful advice on how to get better at making quick-thinking, intuitive choices. But what about more consequential decisions, the ones that affect our lives for years or centuries to come? Our most powerful stories revolve around these kinds of decisions: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. Full of the beautifully crafted storytelling and novel insights that Steven Johnson's fans know to expect, Farsighted draws lessons from cognitive science, social psychology, military strategy, environmental planning, and great works of literature. Everyone thinks we are living in an age of short attention spans, but we've actually learned a lot about making long-term decisions over the past few decades. Johnson makes a compelling case for a smarter and more deliberative decision-making approach. He argues that we choose better when we break out of the myopia of single-scale thinking and develop methods for considering all the factors involved. There's no one-size-fits-all model for the important decisions that can alter the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. But Farsighted explains how we can approach these choices more effectively and how we can appreciate the subtle intelligence of choices that shaped our broader social history.
©2018 Steven Johnson (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Usual Cruelty
Summary
Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat. He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional. Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings - an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.
©2019 Alec Karakatsanis (P)2020 Tantor
Sea of Silver Light
Summary
A group of adventurers searching for a cure for comatose children find themselves trapped in a sequence of virtual worlds, the only opponents of a conspiracy of the rich to live forever in a dream. Now, they are forced to make an uneasy alliance with their only surviving former enemy against his treacherous sidekick Johnny Wulgaru, a serial killer with a chance to play God forever. Few science fiction sagas have achieved the level of critical acclaim - and best-selling popularity - as Tad Williams' Otherland novels. A brilliant blend of science fiction, fantasy, and technothriller, it is a rich, multilayered epic of future possibilities.
©2002 Tad Williams (P)2015 Penguin Audio
Evidence of the Affair
Summary
The repercussions of an illicit affair unfold in this short story by bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid. Dear stranger⦠A desperate young woman in Southern California sits down to write a letter to a man sheâs never met - a choice that will forever change both their lives. My heart goes out to you, David. Even though I do not know you⦠The correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer reveals, piece by piece, the painful details of a devastating affair between their spouses. With each commiserating scratch of the pen, they confess their fears and bare their souls. They share the bewilderment over how things went so wrong and come to wonder where to go from here. Told entirely through the letters of two comforting strangers and those of two illicit lovers, Evidence of the Affair explores the complex nature of the heart. And ultimately, for one woman, how liberating it can be when itâs broken.
©2018 Rabbit Reid, Inc. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Truth Detector
Summary
This paradigm shifting how-to guide effortlessly teaches you how to outwit liars and get them to reveal the truth from former FBI agent and author of the "practical and insightful" (William Ury, coauthor of Getting to Yes) best seller The Like Switch. Unlike many other books on lie detection and behavioral analysis, this revolutionary guide reveals the FBI-developed practice of elicitation, the field-tested technique for detecting deception and encouraging people to provide information they would otherwise keep secret. Now you can learn this astonishing method directly from the expert who created this technique and pioneered it for the FBI. Filled with easy-to-follow, accessible lessons reinforced by fascinating stories of how to put these skills put into action using natural human behaviors, The Truth Detector shows you all of the tips and techniques you need to gain someone's trust and get liars to reveal the truth.
©2020 John Schafer, Ph.D. and Marvin Karlins, Ph.D. All rights reserved (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Age of Radiance
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the 20th century. When Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller forged the science of radioactivity, they created a revolution that arced from the end of the 19th century, through the course of World War II and the Cold War of superpower brinksmanship, to our own 21st-century confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power and proliferation - a history of paradox, miracle, and nightmare. While nuclear science improves our everyday lives - from medicine to microwave technology - radiationâs invisible powers can trigger cancer and cellular mayhem. Writing with a biographerâs passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is tragic, triumphant, and above all, fascinating. From the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, through the birth of nuclear power in an abandoned Chicago football stadium, to the bomb builders of Los Alamos and the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove era, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Franklin Roosevelt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Harry Truman, Curtis LeMay, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others. He reveals how brilliant Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler transformed America from a nation that created lightbulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobelâs lifelong dream of global peace; and how, in our time, emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain run-amok nuclear reactors while wondering if they would live or die. Radiance defies our common-sense views of nature, with its staggering amounts of energy flowing from seemingly inert rock and matter pulsing in half-lives that transforms into other states over the course of decades or in the blink of an eye. Radiation is as scary a word as cancer, but itâs the power that keeps our planet warm, as well as the force behind earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and so organic to all life that even our own human bodies are radioactive. By tracing mankindâs complicated relationship with the dangerous energy it discovered and unleashed, Nelson reveals how atomic power and radiation are indivisible from our everyday lives. Brilliantly told and masterfully crafted, The Age of Radiance provides a new understanding of a misunderstood epoch in history and restores to prominence the forgotten heroes and heroines who have changed all of our lives for better and for worse. It confirms Craig Nelsonâs position as one of the most lively and skillful popular historians writing today.
©2014 Craig Nelson (P)2014 Simon & Schuster
Alibaba's World
Summary
In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest ecommerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over 10 years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of ecommerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?
In Alibaba's World, author Porter Erisman, one of Alibaba's first Western employees and its head of international marketing from 2000 to 2008, shows how Jack Ma, a Chinese schoolteacher who twice failed his college entrance exams, rose from obscurity to found Alibaba and lead it from struggling startup to the world's most dominant ecommerce player. He shares stories of weathering the dotcom crash, facing down eBay and Google, negotiating with the unpredictable Chinese government, and enduring the misguided advice of foreign experts, all to build the behemoth that's poised to sweep the ecommerce world today. And he analyzes Alibaba's role as a harbinger of the new global business landscape - with its focus on the East rather than the West, emerging markets over developed ones, and the nimble entrepreneur over the industry titan. As we face this near future, the story of Alibaba - and its inevitable descendants - is both essential and instructive.
©2015 Porter Erisman (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Cape May
Summary
A mesmerizing debut by Chip Cheek, Cape May explores the social and sexual mores of 1950s America through the eyes of a newly married couple from the genteel South corrupted by sophisticated New England urbanites. Late September 1957. Henry and Effie, very young newlyweds from Georgia, arrive in Cape May, New Jersey, for their honeymoon only to find the town is deserted. Feeling shy of each other and isolated, they decide to cut the trip short. But before they leave, they meet a glamorous set of people who sweep them up into their drama. Clara, a beautiful socialite who feels her youth slipping away; Max, a wealthy playboy and Claraâs lover; and Alma, Maxâs aloof and mysterious half-sister, to whom Henry is irresistibly drawn.   The empty beach town becomes their playground, and as they sneak into abandoned summer homes, go sailing, walk naked under the stars, make love, and drink a great deal of gin, Henry and Effie slip from innocence into betrayal, with irrevocable consequences.  Erotic and moving, this is an audiobook about marriage, love, and sexuality, and the lifelong repercussions that meeting a group of debauched cosmopolitans has on a new marriage.
©2019 Chip Cheek (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
Peaceful Neighbor
Summary
Fred Rogers was one of the most radical pacifists of contemporary history. We do not usually think of him as radical, partly because he wore colorful, soft sweaters made by his mother. Nor do we usually imagine him as a pacifist; that adjective seems way too political to describe the host of a childrenâs program known for its focus on feelings. We have restricted Fred Rogers to the realm of entertainment, children, and feelings, and weâve ripped him out of his political and religious context. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and although he rarely shared his religious convictions on his program, he fervently believed in a God who accepts us as we are and who desires a world marked by peace and wholeness. With this progressive spirituality as his inspiration, Rogers used his childrenâs program as a platform for sharing countercultural beliefs about caring nonviolently for one another, animals, and the earth. To critics who dared call him ânamby-pambyâ, Rogers said, âOnly people who take the time to see our work can begin to understand the depth of it.â This is the invitation of Peaceful Neighbor, to see and understand Rogersâ convictions and their expression through his program. Mister Rogersâ Neighborhood, it turns out, is far from sappy, sentimental, and shallow; itâs a sharp political response to a civil and political society poised to kill.
©2019 Michael G. Long (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
The Woman Inside
Summary
An impossible-to-pause domestic thriller about secrets and revenge, told from the perspectives of a husband and wife who are the most perfect, and the most dangerous, match for each other. Rebecca didnât know love was possible until she met Paul, a successful, charismatic, married man with a past as dark as her own. Their pain drew them together with an irresistible magnetism; they sensed they were each otherâs ideal (and perhaps only) match. But 20 years later, Paul and Rebecca are drowning as the damage and secrets that ignited their love begin to consume their marriage. Paul is cheating on Rebecca, and his affair gets messy fast. His mistress is stalking them with growing audacity when Rebecca discovers Paulâs elaborate plan to build a new life without her. Though Rebecca is spiraling into an opiate addiction, it doesnât stop her from coming up with a devious plot of her own, and this one could end absolutely everything. What follows is an unpredictable and stylish game of cat and mouse - a shocking tale of unfaithfulness and unreliability that will keep you racing until the final twist and make you wonder how well you really know your spouse. Narrated by Erin Bennett, Mark Deakins, George Newbern, Nicol Zanarella, Mike Chamberlain, and Will Damron.
©2019 E. G. Scott (P)2019 Penguin Audio
The Everything American Government Book
Summary
If the confusion following the last presidential election is any indication, the average citizen knows precious little about the democratic system and the laws that affect their daily lives. The Everything American Government Book unravels the complexities of our democracy and provides listeners with the knowledge necessary to make the right decisions and take an active role in the management of their country. From the roots of American government and the challenges that have helped shape it over the years to its current structure and systems, this thoroughly researched work is ideal for anyone brushing up on civics, as well as students of all ages. Listeners learn about: The personalities and events that gave rise to our current system The real significance of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution The functions of each branch of government and how they work together Private sectorâs influence on public policy and decision-making Ways to get involved and make a difference Specially designed to inform and empower the average citizen during this critical election year, The Everything American Government Book provides the keys to understanding the ins and outs of the most powerful democracy in the world. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2004 Nick Ragone (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
JFK Jr., George & Me
Summary
As John Kennedy Jr.'s creative director for George magazine, Matt Berman had a wonderfully collaborative and fun-loving relationship with America's favorite son - his story is told here with unprecedented candor and wit. The Kennedys - their poise, the family secrets, and their grace in the face of unimaginable tragedies - have captured the imagination and interest of the public for more than fifty years. Now colleague and friend of JFK Jr. Matt Berman offers us a unique look at John's life as both a professional and "regular guy." When talented creative executive Matt Berman took a meeting with John Kennedy Jr. in 1995, he was immediately hired to serve as George's creative director, thus beginning an unforgettable journey, both personal and professional. We follow Matt through his first days at the magazine as he navigated the choppy waters of what would be the most-talked-about magazine launch in history, helmed by a supremely confident and charming John. Wry and instantly likable, Matt shares not only his own personal story of his relationship with John but also valuable life and work lessons that he learned while working alongside him behind the scenes at George. But most importantly, through Matt's recollections, we see a John Kennedy that the public never got to know. Matt paints a vivid portrait of JFK Jr. that only a select few have ever seen, offering a touching and honest tribute to John's legacy.
©2014 Matt Berman (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Drop of Hope
Summary
Introducing an extraordinary new voice who reveals how powerful an act of kindness, a hint of magic, and a little hope can be. "This story has renewed my faith in humanity." (Kirby Larson, Newbery Honor-winning author of Hattie Big Sky) A well. A wish. And a little drop of hope. Times are tough. Jobs are scarce, and miracles are in short supply. But something strange is happening in If Only, Ohio. An old well has suddenly, impossibly, begun to grant wishes. And three sixth graders are the only ones who know why. Ernest Wilmette believes a good deed makes magic happen. Ryan Hardy thinks they should just mind their own business. Lizzy MacComber believes in facts, not fairy tales. Of course, you don't have to believe in wishes to make one. As more wishes are made, the well's true secret gets harder and harder to keep. Ernest, Ryan, and Lizzy know they can't fix the world. But in their own little corner of it, they can give everyone a little hope...one wish at a time.
©2019 Keith Calbrese (P)2019 Scholastic Inc.
Buried Memories
Summary
1985, Gun Barrel City, Texas: Police searching for missing Fire Department captain Jimmy Don Beets dug inside a wishing well in the neatly tended garden of Beets's wife, 48-year-old Betty Lou Beets. Not only did they find his body, but they also found the body of Betty Lou's fourth husband, Doyle Wayne Barker. It wasn't long before investigators unearthed the terrible truth. As Betty Lou's sordid past emerged, so did her chilling trail of marital violence. She shot her second husband, Billy York Lane, in the back. She tried to run over her third husband, Ronnie Threlkeld, with a car. Both survived to tell their horrific stories. But Barker and Beets, spouses four and five, weren't so lucky. After a sensational trial, Betty Lou Beets was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Fifteen years later, on February 24, 2000, she again drew national attention by becoming the second woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War.
©2001 Irene Pence (P)2014 Tantor
Things That Matter
Summary
From Americaâs preeminent columnist, named by the Financial Times the most influential commentator in the nation, a must-have collection of Charles Krauthammerâs essential, timeless writings. A brilliant stylist known for an uncompromising honesty that challenged conventional wisdom at every turn, Krauthammer dazzled readers for decades with his keen insight into politics and government. His weekly column was a must-read in Washington and across the country. Donât miss the best of Krauthammerâs intelligence, erudition, and wit collected in one volume. Listeners will find here not only the countryâs leading conservative thinker offering a pasÂsionate defense of limited government, but also a highly independent mind whose views - on feminism, evolution and the death penalty, for example - defy ideological convention. Things That Matter also features several of KrauthamÂmerâs major path-breaking essays - on bioethÂics, on Jewish destiny and on Americaâs role as the worldâs superpower - that have proÂfoundly influenced the nationâs thoughts and policies. And finally, the collection presents a trove of always penetrating, often bemused reflections on everything from border collies to Halleyâs Comet, from Woody Allen to WinÂston Churchill, from the punishing pleasures of speed chess to the elegance of the perfectly thrown outfield assist. With a special, highly autobiographical introduction, in which Krauthammer reflects on the events that shaped his career and political philosophy, this indispensable chronicle takes the listener on a fascinating journey through the fashions and follies, the tragedies and triumphs, of the last three decades of American life.
©2013 Charles Krauthammer (P)2013 Random House Audio
I Am Death
Summary
In top 10 Sunday Times (UK) best-selling author Chris Carter's electrifying follow-up to his "chilling" (Daily Mail) thriller An Evil Mind, the LAPD's Ultra Violent Crimes Unit lead detective, Robert Hunter, races to stop a serial killer whose past secrets rival those of Hunter himself. Seven days after being abducted, the body of a 20-year-old woman is found on a grassy area by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star. The autopsy reveals that she has been tortured and murdered in a bizarre way, but the surprises don't end there. The killer likes to play, and he left something behind for the cops to find. Detective Robert Hunter is assigned to the case, but almost immediately a second body turns up. Detective Hunter quickly realizes that he is chasing a monster - a predator whose past hides a terrible secret, whose desire to hurt people and thirst for murder can never be quenched - for he is death. Fast paced, action packed, and filled with suspense, I Am Death is perfect for fans of Jeffery Deaver, Thomas Harris, and Chelsea Cain.
©2015 Chris Carter. First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd. A CBS Company. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster Audio UK. All rights reserved.
The Golden Passport
Summary
A riveting and timely intellectual history of one of our most important capitalist institutions, Harvard Business School, from the best-selling author of The Firm. With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey & Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner workings of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School. Harvard University occupies a unique place in the public's imagination, but HBS has arguably eclipsed its parent in terms of its influence on modern society. A Harvard degree guarantees respect. An HBS degree is, as the New York Times proclaimed in 1978, "the golden passport to life in the upper class." Those holding Harvard MBAs are near-guaranteed entrance into Western capitalism's most powerful realm - the corner office. Most people have a vague knowledge of the power of the HBS network, but few understand the dynamics that have made HBS an indestructible and powerful force for almost a century. As McDonald explores these dynamics, he also reveals how, despite HBS' enormous success, it has failed with respect to the stated goal of its founders: "the multiplication of men who will handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways." While HBS graduates tend to be very good at whatever they do, that is rarely the doing of good. In addition to teasing out the essence of this exclusive if not necessarily "secret" club, McDonald explores two important questions: Has the school failed at reaching the goals it set for itself? And is HBS therefore complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism? At a time of pronounced economic disparity and political unrest, this hard-hitting yet fair portrait offers a much-needed look at an institution that has a profound influence on the shape of our society and all our lives.
©2017 Duff McDonald (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Two If by Sea
Summary
From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Deep End of the Ocean, an epic story of courage and devotion that spans three continents and the entire map of the human heart. Just hours after his wife and her entire family perish in the Christmas Eve tsunami in Brisbane, American expat and former police officer Frank Mercy goes out to join his volunteer rescue unit and pulls a little boy from a submerged car, saving the child's life with only seconds to spare. In that moment, Frank's own life is transformed. Not quite knowing why, Frank sidesteps the law when, instead of turning Ian over to the Red Cross, he takes the boy home to the Midwestern farm where he grew up. Not long into their journey, Frank begins to believe that Ian has an extraordinary, impossible telepathic gift; but his only wish is to protect the deeply frightened child. As Frank struggles to start over, training horses as his father and grandfather did before him, he meets Claudia, a champion equestrian and someone with whom he can share his life - and his fears for Ian. Both of them know that it will be impossible to keep Ian's gift a secret forever. Already, ominous coincidences have put Frank's police instincts on high alert, as strangers trespass the quiet life at the family farm. The fight to keep Ian safe from a sinister group who want him back takes listeners from the ravaged shores of Brisbane to the middle of America to a quaint English village. Even as Frank and Claudia dare to hope for new love, it becomes clear that they can never let Ian go, no matter what the cost. A suspenseful novel on a grand scale, Two If by Sea is about the best and worst in people and the possibility of heroism and even magic in ordinary life.
©2016 Jacquelyn Mitchard (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Disciples
Summary
The author of the critically acclaimed best seller Wild Bill Donovan tells the story of four OSS warriors of World War II. All four later led the CIA. They are the most famous and controversial directors the CIA has ever had - Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Disciples is the story of these dynamic agents and their daring espionage and sabotage in wartime Europe under OSS Director Bill Donovan. Allen Dulles ran the OSS' most successful spy operation against the Axis. Bill Casey organized dangerous missions to penetrate Nazi Germany. Bill Colby led OSS commando raids behind the lines in occupied France and Norway. Richard Helms mounted risky intelligence programs against the Russians in the ruin of Berlin after the German surrender. Four very different men, they later led (or misled) the successor CIA. Dulles launched the calamitous operation to land CIA-trained, anti-Castro guerrillas at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. Helms was convicted of lying to Congress over the CIA's role in the coup that ousted Chile's president. Colby would become a pariah for releasing to Congress what became known as the "Family Jewels" report on CIA misdeeds during the 1950s, '60s and early '70s. Casey would nearly bring down the CIA - and Ronald Reagan's presidency - from a scheme that secretly supplied Nicaragua's contras with money raked off from the sale of arms to Iran for American hostages in Beirut. Mining thousands of once-secret World War II documents and interviewing scores of family members and CIA colleagues, Waller has written a brilliant successor to Wild Bill Donovan.
©2015 Douglas Waller (P)2015 Simon & Schuster
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
Summary
A debut short story collection in the tradition of writers like Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, and George Saunders - strange, imaginative, and refreshingly original - now on audio as part of Eccoâs Art of the Story Series, and with a new introduction from the author. Kevin Wilsonâs characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. âGrand Stand-Inâ is narrated by an employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider - a company that supplies âstand-insâ for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in âBlowing Up on the Spotâ, a story singled out by Ann Patchett for Ploughshares, a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted. Southern gothic at its best, laced with humor and pathos, these wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.
©2009 Kevin Wilson (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Last Kiss Goodnight
Summary
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Gena Showalter ignites a thrilling new paranormal series with this breathtaking tale of a warrior enslaved by desire, and the woman who frees his soul. The Sweetest Temptation... Black ops agent Solomon Judah awakens caged and bound in a twisted zoo where otherworlders are the main attraction. Vika Lukas, the ownerâs daughter, is tasked with Soloâs care and feeding. The monster inside him yearns to kill her on sight, even though she holds the key to his escape. But the human side of him realizes the beautiful deaf girl is more than she seem - sheâs his. The ultimate price.... Vika endures the captivesâ taunts and loathing, hoping to keep them alive even if she canât free them. Only, Solo is different - he protects her. But as hostility turns to forbidden romance, his feelings for her will be used against him...and heâll be put to a killer test.
©2012 Gena Showalter (P)2013 Simon & Schuster Audio
Cracking the Code to a Successful Interview
Summary
Featured on CBS and WBZ Radio, Evan Pellett is the keynote guest speaker on Nightside with Dan Rea. You may have heard Evan as the radio expert on interviewing across the United States. Cracking the Code to a Successful Interview is a groundbreaking new scientific, proactive, cutting-edge, hands-on, proven approach to job interviews by an award-winning, highly decorated recruiter. This REAPRICH eight-step interview method will give you a proactive way to take control of your interview. You will learn the secret, never-before-published "questions behind the questions". These are the questions that every manager unconsciously needs answered in order to hire you. Evan Pellett is a number-one-ranked recruiter with numerous awards. He has coached salespeople, new graduates, Harvard scientists, CEOs, engineers, consultants, teachers, nurses, and doctors, to name a few. Get hired and win!
©2016 Evan Pellett (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Dirty Streets of Heaven
Summary
Bobby Dollar is an angel - a real one. He knows a lot about sin, and not just in his professional capacity as an advocate for souls caught between Heaven and Hell. Bobbyâs wrestling with a few deadly sins of his own - pride, anger, even lust. But his problems arenât all his fault. Bobby canât entirely trust his heavenly superiors, and heâs not too sure about any of his fellow earthbound angels either, especially the new kid that Heaven has dropped into their midst, a trainee angel who asks too many questions. And he sure as hell doesnât trust the achingly gorgeous Countess of Cold Hands, a mysterious she-demon who seems to be the only one willing to tell him the truth. When the souls of the recently departed start disappearing, catching both Heaven and Hell by surprise, things get bad very quickly for Bobby D. End-of-the-world bad. Beast of Revelations bad. Caught between the angry forces of Hell, the dangerous strategies of his own side, and a monstrous undead avenger that wants to rip his head off and suck out his soul, Bobbyâs going to need all the friends he can get - in Heaven, on Earth, or anywhere else he can find them. Youâve never met an angel like Bobby Dollar. And youâve never read anything like The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Brace yourself - the afterlife is weirder than you ever believed.
©2012 Tad Williams (P)2012 Penguin Audiobooks
About Grace
Summary
When Anthony Doerr's The Shell Collector was published in 2002, the Los Angeles Times called his stories "as close to faultless as any writer - young or vastly experienced - could wish for." He won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Discover Prize, Princeton's Hodder Fellowship, and two O. Henrys and shared the Young Lions Award. Now he has written one of the most beautiful, wise, and compelling first novels of recent times. David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before they happen - a man carrying a hatbox will be hit by a bus; Winkler will fall in love with a woman in a supermarket. When David dreams that his infant daughter will drown in a flood as he tries to save her, he comes undone. He travels thousands of miles, fleeing family, home, and the future itself, to deny the dream. On a Caribbean island, destitute, alone, and unsure if his child has survived or his wife can forgive him, David is sheltered by a couple with a daughter of their own. Ultimately it is she who will pull him back into the world, to search for the people he left behind. Doerr's characters are full of grief and longing but also replete with grace. His compassion for human frailty is extraordinarily moving. In luminous prose he writes about the power and beauty of nature and about the tiny miracles that transform our lives. About Grace is heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished.
©2004 Anthony Doerr. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Making of a Miracle
Summary
On the 40th anniversary of the historic "Miracle on Ice", Mike Eruzione - the captain of the 1980 US Menâs Olympic Hockey Team, who scored of the winning goal - recounts his amazing career on ice, the legendary upset against the Soviets, and winning the gold medal. It is the greatest American underdog sports story ever told: how a team of college kids and unsigned amateurs, under the tutelage of legendary coach - and legendary taskmaster - Herb Brooks, beat the elite Soviet hockey team on their way to winning the gold medal at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. No one believed the scrappy Americans had a real shot at winning. Despite being undefeated, the US - the youngest team in the competition - were facing off against the four-time defending gold medalist Russians. But the Americansâ irrepressible optimism, skill, and fearless attitude helped them outplay the seasoned Soviet team and deliver their iconic win. As captain, Mike Eruzione led his team on the ice on that Friday, February 22, 1980. But beating the USSR was only one of the numerous challenges Mike has faced in his life. In this inspiring memoir, he recounts the obstacles he has overcome, from his blue-collar upbringing in Winthrop, Massachusetts, to his battle to make the Boston University squad; his challenges in the minor leagues and international tournaments to his selection to the US team and their run for gold. He also talks about the aftermath of that stupendous win that inspired and united the nation at a time of crisis in its history. Eruzione has lived a hockey life full of unexpected twists and surprising turns. Al Michaelsâ famous call in 1980 - "do you believe in miracles? Yes!" - could have been about Mike himself. Filled with vivid portraits - from his hard-working, irrepressible father to the irascible Herb Brooks to the Russian hall of famers Tretiak, Kharlamov, Makarov, and Fetisov - this lively, fascinating look back is destined to become a sports classic and is a must for hockey fans, especially those who witnessed that miraculous day. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Mike Eruzione and Neal Boudette (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Address Unknown
Summary
A rediscovered classic and international best seller that recounts the gripping tale of a friendship destroyed at the hands of Nazi Germany In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin, his friend and former business partner who has returned to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power. Originally published in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an international sensation. Credited with exposing the dangers of Nazism to American readers early on, it is also a scathing indictment of fascist movements around the world and a harrowing exposé of the power of the pen as a weapon. A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship - and society - poisoned by extremism, Address Unknown remains hauntingly and painfully relevant today.
©1938 Kathrine Kressmann Taylor (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
Say Nothing
Summary
Named a Best Book of 2017 by Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews Winner of the 2018 Library of Virginia Peopleâs Choice Award Judge Scott Sampson doesnât brag about having a perfect life, but the evidence is clear: A prestigious job. A loving marriage. A pair of healthy children. Then a phone call begins every parentâs most chilling nightmare. Scottâs six-year-old twins, Sam and Emma, have been taken. The judge must rule exactly as instructed in a drug case he is about to hear. If he refuses, the consequences for the children will be dire. For Scott and his wife, Alison, the kidnapperâs call is only the beginning of a twisting, gut-churning ordeal of blackmail, deceit, and terror. Through it all, they will stop at nothing to get their children back, no matter the cost to themselves...or to each other. âOutstanding - starts with a bang and gets tenser and tenser. Say Nothing shows Parks is a quality writer at the top of his form.â (Lee Child) âTerrific book. Truly terrific. Tension throughout and tears at the end.â (Sue Grafton) âThe work of an author who continues to raise his sights and refine his immense talent.â (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
©2017 Brad Parks (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Black and Blue
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Gena Showalter's pulse-pounding paranormal series continues with an electrifying story about the ultimate warrior and his prize: a beautiful woman he will do anything to possess. He is every woman's fantasy... Corbin Blue is a man of many talents. One of the most powerful otherworlders ever born, he is wealthy, a professional football star, and a legend in the bedroom. But only a select few know he is also a black ops agent...and there is no better killer. When he and his crew are attacked and separated, he's forced to turn to his boss's daughter for help - a woman with even more secrets than Blue. She becomes his only obsession... Evangeline Black has always been wary, guarded. No man has ever breached her walls. Until Blue. He has never been denied something he wants, and now he's decided he wants her. As he sweeps her into his double life of seduction, intrigue, and danger, he helps her see beyond the darkness of her past. But as an enemy closes in, Blue will have to let Evie go to keep her safe - even though he'd rather die than live without her...
©2013 Gena Showalter (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
Alright, Alright, Alright
Summary
The definitive oral history of the cult classic Dazed and Confused, featuring behind-the-scenes stories from the cast, crew, and Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater. The production includes an exclusive conversation between Melissa Maerz and Richard Linklater at the end of the audiobook. Dazed and Confused not only heralded the arrival of filmmaker Richard Linklater, it introduced a cast of unknowns who would become the next generation of movie stars. Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaugheyâs famous phrase - alright, alright, alright - ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976. To some, that might not even sound like a movie. But to a few studio executives, it sounded enough like the next American Graffiti to justify the risk. Dazed and Confused underperformed at the box office and seemed destined to disappear. Then something weird happened: Linklater turned out to be right. This wasnât the kind of movie everybody liked, but it was the kind of movie certain people loved, with an intensity that felt personal. No matter what their high school experience was like, they thought Dazed and Confused was about them. Alright, Alright, Alright is the story of how this iconic film came together and why it worked. Combining behind-the-scenes photos and insights from nearly the entire cast, including Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, and many others, and with full access to Linklaterâs Dazed archives, it offers an inside look at how a budding filmmaker and a cast of newcomers made a period piece that would feel timeless for decades to come. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Melissa Maerz (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
4th & Goal
Summary
This is a true story. As a kid growing up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood in New York City, Joe Moglia dreamed of someday becoming the head coach of a college football team - not of becoming a corporate titan. But sometimes, life gets in the way of our dreams. By the time Joe was in his early 30s, he had risen through the high school and college football ranks to become the defensive coordinator at Dartmouth. His dream was very much within reach. Problem was, Joe wasn't making enough money to support his growing family. Faced with the hard choice between chasing his lifelong dream and supporting his wife and four young kids, Joe did the honorable thing: He walked away from football and went to Wall Street to try to find a job that would foot the bills at home. Joe had no training in finance. He had no MBA. His resume reflected his coaching accomplishments and his teaching jobs. And yet, somehow, through grit and determination, he was able to land an entry-level position at Merrill Lynch. Fast forward 25 years later. Joe had reached the business world's mountaintop. He was the CEO of TD Ameritrade, one of the country's most successful financial firms. He was recognized as one of the most respected corporate chiefs in America. But over all those years, Joe never shook his passion for coaching football. In 2008, he made a fateful and stunning decision: He voluntarily walked away from his high-paying corporate job to do the one thing he'd left undone in his life. He decided to pursue his original passion for becoming a college football head coach. Getting hired as a college coach proved incredibly difficult. College athletic directors told him it was an impossible feat. He'd been out of football for nearly three decades. Undaunted, and at age 60, Joe became an unpaid intern with the University of Nebraska's football team in 2009 and 2010. In 2011, he was named the head coach of the Omaha Nighthawks of the United Football League, a professional league teetering on the brink of financial collapse. It was a risky proposition, but one he felt he needed to take to prove to his naysayers that he could coach a college team. Failure would mean the death of a dream that refused to die. As told by Forbes writer, Monte Burke, 4th & Goal is a detailed account of Joe Moglia's amazing and uplifting life story, his quest for his ultimate dream and its stunning conclusion. It's a tale of overcoming adversity...of never giving up...of never losing sight of one's true goals in life. It is a story, quite literally, of a dream deferred, but never forgotten.
©2012 Monte Burke (P)2012 Hachette Audio
Head Wounds
Summary
Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Dona Ana County Sheriffâs Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut. The murders show all the signs of a signature hit, but national and state crime databases reveal no similar profiles. Digging into the victimsâ backgrounds, Clayton discovers that six months prior the couple had walked out of a nearby casino with $200,000 of a high-stakes gamblerâs money. He also learns the crime had been hushed up by an undercover federal DEA agent, who resurfaces and recruits Clayton for a dangerous mission to seize the Mexican drug lord responsible for the killings. Thrust into the nightmare world of borderland drug wars and corrupt cops, Clayton duels with a cunning assassin poised to kill him and his family in a ferocious climax to the Kevin Kerney series that is sure to stun.
©2020 Michael McGarrity (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC
God's Pocket
Summary
Young Leon Hubbard was arrogant and near psychotic. So when he was killed on a South Philadelphia construction site, everyone who knew him wanted to bury the bad news with the body. All, that is, except two - Leon's mother and the local columnist for the common man. Now back in print, God's Pocket is the powerful first novel from the National Book Award-winning author of Paris Trout.
©1995 Pete Dexter (P)2014 Simon & Schuster Audio
The Voter File
Summary
"Pepper comes through again with this clever tale of how cyber sabotage of elections, coupled with highly concentrated ownership of traditional media operations, can undermine American democracy." (President Bill Clinton) A twisty, one-step-ahead-of-the-headlines political thriller featuring a rogue reporter who investigates election meddling of epic proportions written by the ultimate insider. Investigative reporter Jack Sharpe is down to his last chance. Fired from his high-profile gig with a national news channel, his only lead is a phone full of messages from a grad student named Tori Justice, who swears she's observed an impossible result in a local election. Sharpe is sure she's mistaken...but what if she isn't? Sharpe learns that the most important tool in any election is the voter file: the database that keeps track of all voters in a district, and shapes a campaign's game plan for victory. If one person were to gain control of an entire party's voter file, they could manipulate the outcome of virtually every election in America. Sharpe discovers this has happened - and that the person behind the hack is determined to turn American politics upside down. The more he digs, the more Sharpe is forced to question the values - and viability - of the country he loves and a president he admired. And soon it becomes clear that not just his career is in jeopardy...so is his life.
©2020 David Pepper (P)2020 Penguin Audio
Six Billion Shoppers
Summary
From innovative e-commerce expert and former Alibaba vice president Porter Erisman comes an insightful, practical audiobook guide to e-commerce in emerging markets - and how to profit from their explosive boom. From China to India to Nigeria, e-commerce is entering a golden era in countries that were long left out of the e-commerce gold rush experienced in the West. If the story of the first 20 years of e-commerce's growth was set in developed markets, the story of the next 20 years will be set in emerging ones. The rise of e-commerce in emerging markets is being driven by three major trends: widespread Internet adoption, a rising middle class, and, most importantly, innovative new business models that serve the needs of local customers better than the models used by Western e-commerce giants. Six Billion Shoppers takes listeners on an exciting and colorful journey around the world to visit the next e-commerce mega markets and explore how a new e-commerce boom is opening opportunities for entrepreneurs and global brands alike. Traveling through Nigeria, China, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, Porter Erisman addresses e-commerce across these new markets and what it means for Western brands. He argues that e-commerce in developing countries is revolutionary and will play a much larger role in emerging markets than in the West. With e-commerce in emerging markets entering a rapid period of expansion, Six Billion Shoppers explains how to seize the massive opportunity created by emerging market consumers and provides practical advice on how listeners can ride this new business trend.
©2017 Porter Erisman (P)2017 Macmillan Audio
Moonglow
Summary
Following on the heels of his New York Times best-selling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure - and the forces that work to destroy us. In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother's home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon's grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis of the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain in the ongoing magic act that is the art of Michael Chabon. Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies. A gripping, poignant, tragicomic, scrupulously researched and wholly imaginary transcript of a life that spanned the dark heart of the 20th century, Moonglow is also a tour de force of speculative history in which Chabon attempts to reconstruct the mysterious origins and fate of Chabon Scientific Co., an authentic mail-order novelty company whose ads for scale models of human skeletons, combustion engines, and space rockets were once fixtures in the back pages of Esquire, Popular Mechanics, and Boy's Life. Along the way Chabon devises and reveals, in bits and pieces whose hallucinatory intensity is matched only by their comic vigor and the radiant moonglow of his prose, a secret history of his own imagination. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York's Wallkill Prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the American Century, Moonglow collapses an era into a single life and a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most daring, his most moving, his most Chabonesque.
©2016 Michael Chabon (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
Summary
Including stories first published in Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post, this best-selling collection follows the romantic escapades of Max Shulman's famed collegiate Don Juan. Like most undergraduates, Dobie Gillis is a bit scattered - sometimes he's as quick as a whip, other times dull as a doorstop, and his major keeps changing from chemistry to law to journalism. But no matter what subject he should be studying, Dobie always has a girl on his mind.
©2016 Max Shulman (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Presidio
Summary
Set in the 1970s in the vast and arid landscape of the Texas panhandle, this darkly comic and stunningly mature literary debut tells the story of a car thief and his brother who set out to recover some stolen money and inadvertently kidnap a Mennonite girl who has her own reasons for being on the run. Troy Falconer returns home, after years of working as a solitary car thief, to help his younger brother, Harlan, search for his wife, who has run away with the little money he had. When they steal a station wagon for the journey, the brothers accidentally kidnap Martha Zacharias, a Mennonite girl asleep in the back of the car. Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home, so together these unlikely road companions attempt to escape across the Mexican border, pursued by the police and Marthaâs vengeful father. The story is told partly through Troyâs journal, in which he chronicles his encounters with con artists, down-and-outers, and roadside philosophers, people looking for fast money, human connection, or a home long since vanished. The journal details a breakdown that has left Troy unable to function in conventional society; he is reduced to haunting motels, stealing from men roughly his size, living with their possessions in order to have none of his own, and all but disappearing into their identities. With an addictive plot about a kidnapped child, gorgeously written scenes that probe the soul of the American West, and an austere landscape as real as any character, Presidio packs a powerful punch of anomie, dark humor, pathos, and suspense.
©2018 Randy Kennedy (P)2018 Simon & Schuster
Thieves of Blood
Summary
Diran used to make his living as an assassin - one of the best money could buy. But after a life-altering spiritual experience, he's turned his back on killing. All he wants is peace. But in a shoddy port city, his past catches up to him, and killing may be the only way to bring peace to a city on the verge of destruction.
©2006 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Voice of Our Shadow
Summary
A lonely expatriate encounters a mysterious American couple Even as a child, Joseph Lennox was happy to live in his older brother Rossâs shadow. Sadistic and charming, Ross was blossoming into a teenage rebel when one day, down by the train tracks, Joe inadvertently shoves him onto the third rail. After that fatal afternoon, Joe tried to blend into the shadows, fleeing to Austria as soon as he graduated college. Now he lives in Vienna, enjoying the cozy dullness of empty cafés and old movie theaters, doing his best to forget the day he watched his brother die. But death is not through with Joe Lennox. India and Paul Tate are the first Americans he has befriended since settling in Vienna, and it isnât long before their budding friendship takes a strange turn, exposing a dark passion that Joe thought he left behind long ago, beside his brotherâs electrocuted body and the hot third rail.
©1983 Jonathan Carroll (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Patient H.M.
Summary
âOliver Sacks meets Stephen Kingâ* in this propulsive, haunting journey into the life of the most studied human research subject of all time, the amnesic known as Patient H.M. For listeners of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes a story that has much to teach us about our relentless pursuit of knowledge. Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner Named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post , New York Post, NPR, The Economist, New York, Wired, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage In 1953, a 27-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison - who suffered from severe epilepsy - received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henryâs seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next 60 years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us much of what we know about memory today. Patient H.M. is, at times, a deeply personal journey. Dittrichâs grandfather was the brilliant, morally complex surgeon who operated on Molaison - and thousands of other patients. The authorâs investigation into the dark roots of modern memory science ultimately forces him to confront unsettling secrets in his own family history and to reveal the tragedy that fueled his grandfatherâs relentless experimentation - experimentation that would revolutionize our understanding of ourselves. Dittrich uses the case of Patient H.M. as a starting point for a kaleidoscopic journey, one that moves from the first recorded brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the cutting-edge laboratories of MIT. He takes listeners inside the old asylums and operating theaters where psychosurgeons, as they called themselves, conducted their human experiments, and behind the scenes of a bitter custody battle over the ownership of the most important brain in the world. Patient H.M. combines the best of biography, memoir, and science journalism to create a haunting, endlessly fascinating story, one that reveals the wondrous and devastating things that can happen when hubris, ambition, and human imperfection collide. âAn exciting, artful blend of family and medical history.â (The New York Times) * Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
©2016 Luke Dittrich (P)2016 Random House Audio
Days That I'll Remember
Summary
Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and remained friends with him and Yoko Ono until John's death, in 1980. He has kept in touch with Yoko since that time, and is one of the few writers who understands her profoundly positive influence on Lennon. This deeply personal book recounts the course of these friendships over the decades and provides an intimate look at two of the most astonishing cultural figures of our time. And what Jonathan Cott has to say will be found nowhere else.
©2013 Jonathan Cott (P)2013 Tantor
Halcyon
Summary
From the author of Westlake Soul and The Forgotten GirlÂ
Halcyon is the answer for all Americans who want to escape, but paradise isn't what it seems...
A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario - a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure.
On the heels of tragedy, Martin Lovegrove moves his family to Halcyon. A couple of months, he tells himself, to retreat from the chaos and grind. He soon begins to suspect there is something beneath Halcyonâs perfect veneer and sets out to discover the truth - however terrible it might be - behind the island and its mysterious founder, Mother Moon.
Halcyon is Rio Youers' page-turning race against the clock in a world that eschews the limits of time.
©2018 Rio Youers (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with St. Martinâs Press.
The Liar's Child
Summary
In this intense and intimate family portrait that moves at a thrillerâs pace, a troubled woman faces a gripping moral dilemma after rescuing two abandoned children from a hurricane.  On the outskirts of North Carolinaâs Outer Banks sits the Paradise, an apartment complex where renters never stay long enough to call the place âhomeâ - and neighbors are seldom neighborly. Itâs ideal for Sara Lennox, who moved there to escape a complicated past - and even her name - and rebuild a new life for herself under the radar. But Sara cannot help but notice the family next door, especially 12-year-old Cassie and five-year-old Boon. She hears rumors and whispers of a recent tragedy slowly tearing them apart.   When a raging storm threatens and then slams the coastal community, Sara makes a quick, bold decision: Rescue Cassie and Boon from the storm and their broken home - without telling a soul. But this seemingly noble act is not without consequences. Some lethal.  Carla Buckley crafts a richly rewarding psychological portrait, combining a heart-wrenching family drama with high-stakes suspense, as the lives of three characters intertwine in an unforgettable story of fury, fate and redemption. Praise for The Liarâs Child âSurprising and rewarding.... Ms. Buckley does what only the best suspense writers can do: She makes you care about what happens to her characters, provoking your emotions as well as your curiosity.â (The Wall Street Journal) âBuckley has crafted a complex and compelling story. The nuances and dynamics at play in The Liarâs Child will take the most jaded reader on a heartfelt and emotional journey.â (Associated Press)   âA wonderfully complex and multilayered drama complete with the suspense that keeps the pages turning. Fans of Kate White and Diane Chamberlain will be asking if itâs possible for a child to leave the past behind long after the book ends.â (Booklist)
©2019 Carla Buckley (P)2019 Random House Audio
Strangers on a Bridge
Summary
Originally published in 1964, this is the "enthralling...truly remarkable" (The New York Times Book Review) insider account of the Cold War spy exchange that is now the subject of the major motion picture Bridge of Spies by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Hanks - with a new foreword by Jason Matthews, New York Times best-selling author of Red Sparrow and Palace of Treason. In the early morning of February 10, 1962, James B. Donovan began his walk toward the center of the Glienicke Bridge, the famous "Bridge of Spies" that then linked West Berlin to East. With him walked Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, master spy and for years the chief of Soviet espionage in the United States. Approaching them from the other side, under equally heavy guard, was Francis Gary Powers, the American U-2 spy plane pilot famously shot down by the Soviets, whose exchange for Abel Donovan had negotiated. These were the strangers on a bridge, men of East and West, representatives of two opposed worlds meeting in a moment of high drama. Abel was the most gifted, the most mysterious, the most effective spy in his time. His trial, which began in a Brooklyn United States District Court and ended in the Supreme Court of the United States, chillingly revealed the methods and successes of Soviet espionage. No one was better equipped to tell the whole absorbing history than James B. Donovan, who was appointed to defend one of his country's enemies and did so with scrupulous skill. In Strangers on a Bridge, the lead prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials offers a clear-eyed and fast-paced memoir that is part procedural drama, part dark character study, and plays like a noirish espionage thriller. From the first interview with Abel to the exchange on the bridge in Berlin, here is an important historical narrative that is "as fascinating as it is exciting" (The Houston Chronicle).
©2015 James Donovan. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
American Isis
Summary
The life and work of Sylvia Plath has taken on the proportions of myth. Educated at Smith, she had an epically conflict-filled relationship with her mother, Aurelia. She then married the poet Ted Hughes and plunged into the Sturm und Drang of married life in the full glare of the world of English and American letters. Her poems were fought over, rejected, accepted and, ultimately, embraced by readers everywhere. Dead at 30, she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven while her children slept. Her poetry collection entitled Ariel became a modern classic. Her novel The Bell Jar has a fixed place on student reading lists. American Isis is the first Plath biography benefiting from the new Ted Hughes archive at the British Library, which includes 41 letters between Plath and Hughes as well as a host of unpublished papers. The Sylvia Plath that Carl Rollyson brings to us in American Isis is no shrinking violet overshadowed by Ted Hughes; she is a modern-day Isis, a powerful force that embraced high and low culture to establish herself in the literary firmament.
©2013 Carl Rollyson (P)2013 Tantor
How to Think Like a Cat
Summary
The Cat is calm, observant, charismatic, independent, proud, and joyful; he knows how to strut and is impervious to judgement; he accepts himself as he is and adapts quickly; he knows to say nothing and to avoid conflicts, and yet he knows exactly what he wants and dares to ask for it. The Cat is free.
After observing his cat, Ziggy, for years, Stephane Garnier became convinced that cats have life down to an art form, so he set out to share Ziggy's je ne sais quoi with the world. Highlighting 40 trademark cat qualities that are (almost) entirely applicable to human daily living, Garnier provides insights that are delightfully useful as well as tips for living a day in the life of a cat - and a Q&A to test your cat quotient to see how much work you have to do learn the subtle art of living like a feline.
Whether at work, at home, or in your social life, you can learn from cats how to resist stress, remain independent, never lose your charisma, and quietly influence the world around you.
©2018 Stephane Garnier (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Overwatch
Summary
An electrifying new thriller series for listeners who love Vince Flynn and Brad Thor! Former marine officer Matthew Betley introduces fearless soldier Logan West in this action-packed, globe-trotting, edge-of-your-seat debut. Former Marine Force Reconnaissance officer Logan West emerges from a blackout after drinking away the worries of his ruined marriage and PTSD, an all too familiar scene for the recovering alcoholic. But he wakes to more than a killer hangover: A professional mercenary has been sent to capture him. After an embattled showdown, Logan impulsively answers the dead man's ringing phone, triggering a hasty rescue of Logan's estranged wife and a global race against the clock to track down an unknown organization searching for an Iraqi flag central to a planned attack in the Middle East - one that will draw the US into a major conflict with Iran. Logan and John Quick, Logan's former platoon sergeant who has also been targeted by these shadowy mercenaries, are contracted as "consultants" to assist the FBI as part of a special task force led by Logan's close friend. From the plains of the Midwest to the Alamo and mansions in Northern Mexico to the war-torn Al Anbar province, the battles build in scale and scope and pit an international team against mercenaries and former Special Forces operators employed by the world's largest private security contractor, whose owner has a shadowy personal vendetta of his own. Meanwhile Logan is battling his own demons, unable to shake the trauma of the ambush that his Force Recon unit suffered at an insurgent torture compound in Fallujah in 2004. Mixing thrilling, you-are-there fight scenes with high-stakes tactical maneuvers and complex, fully realized characters, Overwatch is up to the minute and impossible to pause.
©2016 Matthew Betley (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
A Place at the Table
Summary
Celebrating the healing power of food and the magic of New York City, A Place at the Table follows the lives of three seekers who come together in the understanding that when you embrace the thing that makes you different, you become whole. A Place at the Table tells the story of three unforgettable characters whose paths converge in a storied Manhattan café: Bobby, a young gay man from Georgia who has been ostracized by his family; Amelia, a wealthy Connecticut woman whose life is upended when a family secret comes to light; and Alice, an African-American chef from North Carolina whose heritage is the basis of a renowned cookbook but whose past is a mystery to those who know her. These characters are exiles - from homeland, from marriage, from family. While they all find companionship and careers through cooking, they hunger for the deeper nourishment of communion. As the narrative sweeps from a freed-slave settlement in 1920s North Carolina to Manhattan during the deadly AIDS epidemic of the 1980s to the well-heeled hamlet of contemporary Old Greenwich, Connecticut, Bobby, Amelia, and Alice are asked to sacrifice everything they ever knew or cared about to find authenticity and fulfillment. Susan Rebecca Whiteâs first two novels were hailed for the beauty of her writing, her wit, her compassion for her characters, and her sharp insights into their inner lives. A Place at the Table announces the maturity of her talents and reveals her wise and open heart.
©2013 Susan Rebecca White (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
In Case of Emergency
Summary
When her boyfriend goes missing and a woman turns up dead, Charlotte must connect the dots for herself before she becomes the suspect, or the next victim. Charlotte, a mid-30s Long Island woman, has felt so alone since her promising career in neuroscience imploded. But she has an online support group; she has Rachel, a friend who has seen her through the worst of it; and now she also has Peter, a mysterious new boyfriend who has asked that their budding romance remain a total secret. That is why she is too scared to report his disappearance to the authorities when he vanÂishes without a word. Weeks later, police contact her to make an ID on a body, and she fears the worst for her missing beau. Instead, she arrives at the morgue and feels a terrible relief when she sees a woman she has never met on the table in front of her. But relief is replaced by confusion, then terror, when Charlotte realizes she has become a person of interest. Why did Jane Doe have Charlotte listed as her emergency contact? Was it revenge or a warning? And where exactly does Peter factor into all this? As Charlotte becomes the prime murder suspect, she enters into a race against the clock to find out the truth about the dead woman and the connections they shared. But what she discovers is beyond anything she could have ever imagined.Â
©2020 E. G. Scott (P)2020 Penguin Audio
The Power of the Other
Summary
An expert on the psychology of leadership and the best-selling author of Integrity, Necessary Endings, and Boundaries for Leaders identifies the critical ingredient for personal and professional well-being. Most leadership coaching focuses on helping leaders build their skills and knowledge and close performance gaps. These are necessary but not sufficient. Using evidence from neuroscience and his work with leaders, Dr. Henry Cloud shows that the best performers draw on another vital resource: personal and professional relationships that fuel growth and help them surpass current limits. Popular wisdom suggests that we should not allow others to have power over us, but the reality is that they do, for better or for worse. Consider the boss who diminishes you through cutting remarks versus one who challenges you to get better. Or the colleague who always seeks the limelight versus the one who gives you the confidence to finish a difficult project. Or the spouse who is honest and supportive versus the one who resents your success. No matter how talented, intelligent, or experienced, the greatest leaders share one commonality: the power of the others in their lives. Combining engaging case studies, persuasive findings from cutting-edge brain research, and examples from his consulting practice, Dr. Cloud argues that whether you're a Navy SEAL or a corporate executive, outstanding performance depends on having the right kind of connections to fuel personal growth and minimize toxic associations and their effects. Presenting a dynamic model of the impact these different kinds of connections produce, Dr. Cloud shows listeners how to get more from themselves by drawing on the strength and expertise of others. You don't have a choice whether or not others have power in your life, but you can choose what kinds of relationships you want.
©2016 Dr. Henry Cloud (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Vaccines: Are They Worth a Shot?
Summary
The dangerous decline in vaccinations in many developed countries is at the heart of a lively debate that confirms how important the subject is today. Vaccinations are among mankindâs most important scientific discoveries, yet they continue to be viewed with suspicion by part of the public - the victims of disinformation campaigns, instrumentalization, and unfounded fears. There is, however, also an evolutionary explanation for these irrational beliefs, and countering the growing social opposition will be extremely difficult without grasping it. This audiobook, which sheds new light on the safety and importance of vaccinations, is intended both for parents and those listeners who want to understand the role of vaccinations in contemporary society, where the ease of access to knowledge is both a great opportunity and a great responsibility. The chapters follow a historical progression and conclude with a discussion of the most recent cognitive theories on how to overcome this opposition to vaccinations. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature. Based on a translation from the Italian language edition: Chi ha paura dei vaccini? by Andrea Grignolio, © 2016 by Codice edizioni, Torino (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing
Potatoes Are Cheaper
Summary
It's the middle of the Great Depression, and Morris Katz and his cousin, Albert, are broke. But that's all about to change when they head off to college on a mission from Morris' mother to find rich, unattractive Jewish girls to marry. The boys arrive on campus armed with a secret weapon: the poetry of Morris' cousin, Crip. Within a day Morris is courting Celeste Zimmerman, the frumpy heir to a movie theater franchise. But then an Irish Catholic beauty falls under the spell of Crip's verse and goes gaga over Morris. She thinks he's a Jewish Communist revolutionary poet, and who is he to tell her otherwise? But is it happiness Morris truly wants - or money? And what will Mama Katz say?
©2016 Max Shulman (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Black River
Summary
When Wes Carver returns to Black River, he carries two things in the cab of his truck: his wife's ashes and a letter from the prison parole board. The convict who held him hostage during a riot twenty years ago is being considered for release.Wes has been away from Black River ever since the riot. He grew up in this small Montana town, and, like his father before, he made his living as a corrections officer. A talented, natural fiddler, he found solace and joy in his music. But during that riot, Bobby Williams changed everything for Wes-undermining his faith and taking away his ability to play.How can a man who once embodied evil ever come to good? How can he pay for such crimes with anything but his life? As Wes considers his own choices and grieves for all he's lost, he must decide what he believes and whether he can let Williams walk away.
©2015 Sarah M. Hulse (P)2015 Tantor
Heart of Junk
Summary
A hilarious debut novel about an eclectic group of merchants at a Kansas antique mall who become implicated in the kidnapping of a local beauty pageant star. The city of Wichita, Kansas, is wracked with panic over the abduction of toddler pageant princess Lindy Bobo. However, the dealers at The Heart of America Antique Mall are too preoccupied by their own neurotic compulsions to take much notice. Postcards, perfume bottles, Barbies, vinyl records, kitschy neon beer signs - they collect and sell it all. Rather than focus on Lindy, this colorful cast of characters is consumed by another drama: the impending arrival of Mark and Grant from the famed antiques television show Pickinâ Fortunes, who are planning to film an episode at The Heart of America and secretly may be the last best hope of saving the mall from bankruptcy. Yet the mall and the missing beauty queen have more to do with each other than these vendors might think, and before long, the group sets in motion a series of events that lead to surprising revelations about Lindy's whereabouts. As the mall becomes implicated in her disappearance, will Mark and Grant be scared away from all of the drama or will they arrive in time to save The Heart of America from going under? Equally comical and suspenseful, Heart of Junk is also a biting commentary on our current Marie Kondo era. It examines why certain objects resonate with us so deeply, rebukes Kondo's philosophy of wholesale purging, and argues that "junk" can have great value - connecting us not only to our personal pasts but to our shared human history. As author Luke Geddes writes: "A collection was a record of a life lived, maybe not well or happily but at least with attention and passion. It was autobiography made whole."Â
©2020 Luke Geddes (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Clean Meat
Summary
Paul Shapiro gives you a front-row seat for the wild story of the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat - real meat - without the animals. From the entrepreneurial visionaries to the scientists' workshops to the big business boardrooms - Shapiro details that quest for clean meat and other animal products and examines the debate raging around it. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our species' desire for meat. But with a growing global population and demand for meat, eggs, dairy, leather, and more, raising such massive numbers of farm animals is woefully inefficient and takes an enormous toll on the planet, public health and certainly the animals themselves. But what if we could have our meat and eat it, too? The next great scientific revolution is underway - discovering new ways to create enough food for the world's ever-growing, ever-hungry population.
©2018 Paul Shapiro (P)2018 Simon & Schuster
Andy and Don
Summary
A lively and revealing biography of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts, celebrating the powerful real-life friendship behind one of America's most iconic television programs. Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if the sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Show, elevating a folksy sitcom into a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on. Andy and Don - fellow Southerners born into poverty and raised among scofflaws, bullies, and drunks - captured the hearts of Americans across the country as they rocked lazily on the front porch, meditating about the simple pleasure of a bottle of pop. But behind this sleepy, small-town charm, de Visé's exclusive reporting reveals explosions of violent temper, bouts of crippling neurosis, and all-too-human struggles with the temptations of fame. Andy and Don chronicles unspoken rivalries, passionate affairs, unrequited loves, and friendships lost and regained. Although Andy and Don ended their Mayberry partnership in 1965, they remained best friends for the next half century, with Andy visiting Don at his deathbed. Written by Don Knotts' brother-in-law and featuring extensive unpublished interviews with those closest to both men, Andy and Don is the definitive literary work on the legacy of The Andy Griffith Show and a provocative and an entertaining listen about two of America's most enduring stars.
©2015 Daniel de Vise (P)2015 Simon & Schuster
Tuesday Nights in 1980
Summary
An intoxicating and transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and their shared muse as they find their way - and ultimately collide - amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s. Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the '80s: a gritty, quickly gentrifying playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for The New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways; and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason - a small-town beauty and Raul's muse - and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they've lost. As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.
©2016 Molly Prentiss (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Sleeping Late On Judgement Day
Summary
Where does an angel go when heâs been to Hell and back? Renegade angel Bobby Dollar does not have an easy afterlife. After surviving the myriad gruesome dangers Hell oh-so-kindly offered him, Bobby has returned empty-handed â his demon girlfriend Casmira, the Countess of Cold Hands, is still in the clutches of Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. Some hell of a rescue. Forced to admit his failure, Bobby ends up back at his job as an angel advocate. That is, until Walter, an old angel friend whom Bobby never thought heâd see again, shows up at the local bar. The last time he saw Walter was in Hell, when Walter had tried to warn him about one of Bobbyâs angel superiors. But now Walter canât remember anything, and Bobby doesnât know whom to trust. Turns out that thereâs corruption hidden within the higher ranks of Heaven and Hell, but the only proof Bobby has is a single feather. Before he knows it, heâs in the High Hall of Heavenly Judgement â no longer a bastion for the moral high ground, if it ever was, but instead just another rigged system â on trial for his immortal soul⦠Sleeping Late on Judgement Day is the third installment of Tad Williamsâ urban fantasy Bobby Dollar series!
©2014 Tad Williams (P)2014 Penguin Group US
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
Summary
A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets - and of one's own nature - when he returns home. When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics. But it didn't get easier. Robert carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, "fronting" in Yale, and at home. Through an honest rendering of Robert's relationships - with his struggling mother, with his incarcerated father, with his teachers and friends and fellow drug dealers - The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace encompasses the most enduring conflicts in America: race, class, drugs, community, imprisonment, education, family, friendship, and love. It's about the collision of two fiercely insular worlds - the ivy-covered campus of Yale University and Newark, New Jersey, and the difficulty of going from one to the other and then back again. It's about poverty, the challenges of single motherhood, and the struggle to find male role models in a community where a man is more likely to go to prison than to college. It's about reaching one's greatest potential and taking responsibility for your family no matter the cost. It's about trying to live a decent life in America. But most all the story is about the tragic life of one singular brilliant young man. His end, a violent one, is heartbreaking and powerful and unforgettable.
©2014 Simon & Schuster Audio (P)2014 Jeff Hobbs
Seven at Sea
Summary
Erik and Emily skillfully reveal that it is possible to live big on a shoestring budget while giving their family an astonishing education in adventure, creativity, purpose, and grit. Working the night shift as a temp in a high-rise cubicle, Erik Orton knew something had to change. He felt the responsibility of providing for his wife and their five children, the youngest with Down syndrome, but craved a life that offered more than just surviving. Watching the sailboats on the Hudson River during his sunset dinner breaks, Erik dared to dream. What would it be like to leave the hustle of the city and instead spend a year on a sailboat, somewhere beautiful, as a family? Despite having no sailing experience, his wife Emily's phobia of deep water, and already stretching every dollar to pay rent and buy groceries, the family of seven turned their excuses into reasons and their fears into motivation. Sure, they would miss their friends, they could go broke, they could get injured or die. Worst of all, they could humiliate themselves by trying something audacious and failing. But the little time they still had together as a family, before their oldest daughter left for college, was drifting away. The Ortons cast off the life they knew to begin an uncertain journey of 5,000 miles between New York City and the Caribbean, ultimately arriving at a new place within themselves. A portrait of a captivating and resilient family and a celebration of the courage it takes to head for something over the horizon, this is a deeply compelling story, told alternately by Erik and Emily, for all those who dream of leaving routine in their wake.
©2019 Erik Orton and Emily Orton (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Locals
Summary
A rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times - fiction in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan. Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by. After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife, Karen, and their young daughter, Haley? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter. Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11, he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round "secure location" from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people's money. The collision of these two men's very different worlds - rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy - is the engine of Jonathan Dee's powerful new novel. Inspired by Hadi, Mark looks around for a surefire investment: the mid-decade housing boom. Over Karen's objections, and teaming up with his troubled brother, Gerry, Mark starts buying up local property with cheap debt. Then the town's first selectman dies suddenly and Hadi volunteers for office. He soon begins subtly transforming Howland in his image - with unexpected results for Mark and his extended family. Here are the dramas of 21st-century America - rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism - played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time.
©2017 Jonathan Dee (P)2017 Random House Audio
The Thin Green Line
Summary
The "Wealth Matters" columnist of The New York Times reveals the habits, worldviews, and practices that lead to true wealth - and why it's more important to be "wealthy" than "rich". For the better part of the past decade, Paul Sullivan has written about and lived among some of the wealthiest people in America. He has learned how they save, spend, and invest their money; how they work and rest; and how they use their wealth to give their children educational advantages but not strip them of motivation. He has also seen how they make horrendous mistakes. Firsthand, Sullivan knows why some people, even "rich" people, never find true wealth and why other people, even those who have far less, are much wealthier. Sullivan is part of the "The One Percent" today, but he came from far humbler roots, starting life in the bottom 25 percent. This personal audiobook shows how others can make better financial decisions - and come to terms with what money means to them. It lays out how they can avoid the pitfalls around saving, spending, and giving their money away and think differently about wealth to lead more secure and less stressful lives. An essential complement to all of the financial advice available, this unique guide is a welcome antidote to the idea that wealth is a number on a bank statement.
©2015 Paul Sullivan (P)2015 Simon & Schuster
The Gardener of Eden
Summary
A mysterious beachcomber appears one day on the coastal bluffs near the small town of Carverville, a place whose best days are long behind it. Who is he, and why has he returned after nearly 40 years? Carverville's prodigal son, James, serendipitously finds work at a gentrified motel, but his homecoming soon takes a sinister turn when he and a local teenager make a gruesome discovery on the beach. It forces him to reckon with the ghosts of his pastâ and the dangers of the present. Rumors, distrust, and conspiracies spread among the townsfolk, all of them seemingly trapped in their claustrophobic and isolated world. But is there something more sinister at work here than the mere fear of outsiders? In The Gardener of Eden, David Downie weaves an intricate and compelling narrative of redemption, revenge, justice, and loveâ and the price of secrecyâ as a community grapples with its tortured past and frightening future.
©2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC