Showing results by narrator "Kevin Collins" in All Categories

The Man Who Melted is a warning for the future. It is the Brave New World and 1984 for our time, for it gives us a glimpse into our own future - a future ruled by corporations that control deadly and powerful forms of mass manipulation. It is a prediction of what could happen... tomorrow. It examines how technology affects us and changes our morality, and it questions how we might remain human in an inhuman world. Will the future disenfranchise or empower the individual? Here you'll find new forms of sexuality, new perversions, new epiphanies, and an entirely new form of consciousness.

Meet Eric Nye: player, philosopher, drunk, sociopath. A ruthless young Chief Idea Officer at a New York City ad agency, Eric downsizes his department, guzzles only the finest Sancerre, pops pills, and chases women. Then one day he meets Intern, whose name he can’t remember. Will she be the cause of his downfall, or his unlikely awakening?

Jersey Leo is the quintessential outsider - an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell's Kitchen. Being neither black nor white, he has no group to call his own. His own mother abandoned him as a baby. And his father - a former boxing champ with his own secrets - disapproves of Jersey's work at a dive owned by one of New York's most notorious gangsters. So when he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine ("sugar pop moon") with his boss's money - a potentially fatal mistake - he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in.

A science-fiction novel about love and experimental music, technology and rain forests, humanity and the United States. Rock sensation Ryder fakes his own suicide and journeys to the rain forest. But San Francisco is not what he expected.

Rick Marin is possibly the world’s most sports-challenged dad -- a guy who couldn’t tell you what channel ESPN was on, thinks the “Final Four” is a quartet of apocalyptic superheroes and hasn’t set foot in a stadium since the last Pink Floyd concert. Until his 6-year-old son utters the four most powerful words in the English language: “Dad, will you coach?”

Chime, a young woman from Shambala, a magical oasis in the mountains of Tibet where the survivors of nuclear Armageddon live peacefully, ventures out into the surrounding devastation. A mysterious illness is spreading, and the young Chinese woman courageously ventures outside the valley to search for a cure.

James Patrick Kelly, the author of Planet of Whispers and the co-author, with John Kessel, of Freedom Beach has been nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards for his short fiction. This is a fable about a dissatisfied architect who travels "up-time" and changes shape to design a temple for a goddess.

Epic in scope, Macrolife opens in the year 2021. The Bulero family owns one of Earth's richest corporations. As the Buleros gather for a reunion at the family mansion, an industrial accident plunges the corporation into crisis, which eventually brings the world around them to the brink of disaster. Vilified, the Buleros flee to a space colony where young Richard Bulero gradually realizes that the only hope for humanity lies in macrolife - mobile, self-reproducing space habitats.

Freelance photographer and wildcat smuggler Dan Abatangelo blows into Vegas to hit the tables and taste the night life. In his path waits Shel Beaudry, a knockout redhead with a smile that says, "Gentlemen, start your engines." The attraction is instant - and soon the two are living the gypsy life on the West Coast, where Dan captains a distribution ring for premium Thai marijuana, His credo: "No guns, no gangsters, it's only money." But the trade is changing.

In a twisted game of life and death, dominance and destruction, humanity and colonizers - outside survivors struggle to find footing and reclaim what they've lost. Mary soon discovers she is the key - but will she be able to use her deadly gifts to defeat those who have created her?

The woman who broke Jack Palace's heart is suddenly back in his life and dragging him and his new girlfriend back into a world of violence, heartbreak, and revenge.

When honorable ex-con Jack attempts to repay an unstable criminal who saved his life, he finds himself and his new girlfriend caught in the middle of a mob war.

By building his own microscope, Antony van Leeuwenhoek advanced humanity's understanding of the oft-invisible world around us. Microbes are everywhere: in the soil and oceans, in snow, and inside our bodies. But in Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s time, people believed that what they saw with their own eyes was all that existed in the world. How did a simple tradesman - who didn’t go to college or speak English or Latin like all the other scientists - change everyone’s minds?

Silicon Valley scion Captain Don Donogue is dead under mysterious circumstances. In fact, he might’ve well have been murdered. Just ask Captain Don himself. He’s been sending messages about his suspicious death from beyond the grave. Yep, he’s been tweeting from the afterlife. Or so it seems.

Where's Your Buffalo? is a career management guide for any age and any career stage. It's a timely framework for finding, pursuing, and achieving employment that enables anyone to meet their professional and personal life goals. It's a practical path to help listeners choose a career, get the job they want, earn what they are worth, and do what they love (or at least genuinely like).

Some dream of prosperity, of living a calm and peaceful life. But not me. Having reached the pinnacles of success, I can't stop thinking about the past, about a time when any misstep could spell disaster, when I had to pay, work, and risk everything for even the slightest gain and each day was like walking a knife's edge. That's all in the past now. This peaceful, predictable, and privileged life isn't so bad. But it's boring!

It's Saturday night in Santa Barbara and it seems like everyone is headed to the same destination. The reason is simple: To celebrate the end of school. But for eleven different people the motives are bit more complicated - to be noticed, to hook up, to make friends, to numb the pain, to get over an ex, to say goodbye. As each character takes a turn and tells his/her story, the eleven individuals intersect, reconnect, and combine in ways that none of them ever saw coming.

In working-class Bay Ridge, Michael drives for a car service and gives lifts to his father, a former sanitation worker and current small-time bookie. He has a friend with a heroin habit, and a longtime girlfriend who expects they’ll get married one of these days. Michael spends most of his time on the familiar streets where he grew up, but now he’s crossing the bridge into Manhattan for some college classes—where he meets a seductive female classmate who seems to come from a whole different world.

The Network Imperative is a call to action for managers and executives to embrace network-based business models. The benefits are indisputable: companies that leverage digital platforms to co-create and share value with networks of employees, customers, and suppliers are fast outpacing the market. These companies, or network orchestrators, grow faster, scale with lower marginal cost, and generate the highest revenue multipliers.

It is the early months of the Arab Spring, 2011. But for three young men, two American and one Iraqi, their minds return again and again to 2006, to the bloodiest stretch of the Iraq War. Members of the same platoon, they were tasked with the often deadly job of repairing potholes in the roads of the Al Anbar Province: potholes that almost always concealed a home-made bomb. They have survived the war but now they must learn to live with themselves.