Showing results by narrator "Kevin Collins" in All Categories

Eleven writers largely unknown outside Cuba depict a world that veers from a hyper-real Havana in decay, against a backdrop of oblivious drug-toting German tourists, to a fantasy land (or is it?) where vigilant Cubans bar the door to zombies masquerading as health inspectors. Sex and knife-fights, stutterers and addicts, losers and lost literary classics: welcome to a raw and genuine island universe closed to casual visitors.

Just after noon on a spring day in 2006, aspiring singer-songwriter Hilary Williams and her sister Holly - the granddaughters of country legend Hank Williams and daughters of country music star Hank Williams, Jr. - were driving through Mississippi down a rural stretch of Route 61 on their way to their grandfather’s funeral. Suddenly, the front wheel of the truck became caught in one of the many deep ruts and gravel lining the road, causing the vehicle and its passengers to flip over several times, crushing steel and breaking fragile bones as it crashed.

A nature audiobook unlike any other, Jordan Fisher Smith's startling account of fourteen years as a park ranger thoroughly dispels our idealized visions of life in the great outdoors. Instead of scout troops and placid birdwatchers, Smith's beat - a stretch of land that has been officially condemned to be flooded - brings him into contact with drug users tweaked out to the point of violence, obsessed miners, and other dangerous creatures. In unflinchingly honest prose, he reveals the unexpectedly dark underbelly of patrolling and protecting public lands.

On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas... and, unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.

Some mysteries don't solve themselves.... The trail seems never ending. Sadie Turnberry had played her cards close to her chest, but she's not the main target anymore. Another name whispers in the wind. A name with no background but a whole lotta legacy. Dick has caught a whiff of the endgame and now he can't let go, no matter who gets in his way. Accompanied by a fabled mercenary slash assassin-for-hire, Valentina Winters, Dick is about to bring the whole system crumbling down on itself.

I knew from the moment I first saw him he was the one. The only boy I could ever want. The only boy I could ever love. They say he's bad for me. But I know he's not. Until the day he rejects me. And breaks my heart. Completely. Everything changes in the blink of an eye. My entire life as I've known it is...gone. Secrets are revealed. Promises once made are irrevocably broken. There's no way my family can get back to what we once were. So when Nicholas Fairfield walks back into my life like he never left it, I'm furious.

I knew from the moment I first saw her she was the one. The only girl I could ever want. The only girl I could ever love. She is light. I am darkness. She is innocent. I've done too much. She is good. I am bad. She is my every dream. I should be her every nightmare. We come from different worlds. She's...perfect. And I'm...not. Somehow she wants me anyway.

Overcome with the loss of his boyfriend, Sydney, Gavin Winters has set fire to every reminder in their home. A neighbour has captured the blaze on video, turning this little-known TV actor into a household name. Gavin flees LA for New Jersey, where he hopes that 10-year-old Joan, the daughter of a close friend, can reconnect him with the memories of Sydney he is now in danger of losing forever. Joan was born with a rare ability to recall every single day of her life in perfect detail, and in return for sharing her memories of Sydney, Gavin will help her write a song.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth global anxiety about linkages between the environment and society at a fundamental structural level. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life provides an accessible exposition of the latest foundational knowledge on how natural and social systems science can inform planetary crises. Humanity has either tried to conquer or capitulate to natural order, whereas we should be seeking to understand latent structures and patterns that permeate all systems and develop an "earthly order," that is socially functional and sustainable.

In a world where magic, technology, and nature have merged, the few who can control Runes hold dominance over all of creation. All believe that Aleksi, a 16-year-old orphan, was blessed to be born with a Rune embedded in his palm, but that's only because they don't know the truth - Aleksi's Rune is so powerful it's killing him.

Forced to come to grips with his understanding of the past - and its implications for the present - Roberts deftly moves between "then" and "now," ignorance and understanding, in honest, confessional prose that places the reader front and center for a true story that, indeed, is far stranger than fiction. Obsessive in nature and elliptical in structure, Roberts' story ultimately inhabits the liminal space between truth and appearances, love and danger, the hunter and the hunted.

The last place you'd expect to find a team of criminals is at a prestigious Philadelphia prep school. But on a class trip to the US Mint - which prints a million new coins every 30 minutes - an overlooked security flaw becomes far too tempting for a small group of students to ignore. United by dire circumstances, these unlikely allies - the nerd, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student - band together to attempt the impossible: rob the US Mint.

Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army--and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever.

When a series of events bring Chad Hunter and hot Agency super spy Sirena back together again, the action gets ramped up immediately. Chad has been hired by the Defense Department to develop a new weapon system based on the Hypershot rail gun system, with a scheduled test looming from a remote site on a volcano in Ecuador. While attending a United Nations World Conference on International Telecommunications in Brazil, Chad runs into Sirena.

Four years after Chad Hunter and Frank Baldwin secured the most successful small arms weapon system in American history, the Hypershot, they are thrust back into a new adventure that propels them from Southeast Asia to Scandinavia and back to the wilderness.

Warfield hires Chad Hunter, a private weapons designer who had worked for the German company, to go to Germany to convince the company that Warfield is the perfect partner. To sweeten the deal, Hunter must first convince Frank Baldwin, a struggling optics engineer from Wyoming, who has developed the most advanced rifle scope ever conceived, that his scope would be the perfect match for this new German rifle.

Erin feels that she has reached a breaking point in her cancer treatment. Having gone through two exhausting programs of medication and facing a third, she decides to take a week off from doctors and hospitals and even her family, and to fly from her home in Washington D.C. to a retreat in California that is designed for cancer victims with no chance of survival. So when the plane encounters extreme turbulence and comes apart in midair, she accepts the reality. Only fate has other ideas, for she miraculously survives not only the explosion but also the fall from the sky.

Filled with strategies and powerful anecdotes about defining and setting goals and pushing for entrepreneurial success, The Everyday Entrepreneur reveals how readers can apply the ambitions of a go-getter in their own lives, position themselves ahead of the pack, examine how to calculate risk, and understand the mindset necessary to venture forward on their own.

Anthropologist Allison Pinckney is stunned when she inherits the key to a 17th-century pirate cipher that makes her the target of two brutal arms dealers. Now, to save those she loves, she must solve the cipher. With this perilous mission growing ever more dangerous, she reluctantly seeks help from ex-Green Beret Zack Tremaine, the one man she's been avoiding. Because if she gives into her long-buried feelings for him, it could cost them their lives.

What does the world get from God? What does the world lose when it loses reason? For centuries an aggressive secularism has fought to occupy the place once held by religion in Western society. Its intellectual leaders are ambitious. Their goal is to remove God from public discourse and then from memory. While they claimed that godlessness would bring about an era of peace, it brought history’s bloodiest century instead. Civic institutions founded on Judeo-Christian principles began to crumble apart from them.