Showing results by narrator "Marlin May" in All Categories

Two years ago, Matt lost his wife to an asleep-at-the-wheel truck driver for the corrupt Clawson Chicken Corporation, and most of his savings to a court battle with the aforementioned fowl magnate. Trusting that the ocean will heal his battered psyche, Matt heads out from Corpus Christi Bay in a vintage sloop, trying to out sail bad memories and find a path forward. As he winds his way east beyond the Gulf, he has adventures (and misadventures), meets a quirky cast of characters, and is dogged at every turn by reminders of the reach of the greedy chicken king, Colonel Clyde Clawson.

For most Americans in the 19th century, it wasn't what you ate, but how much you ate, that mattered. Late in the century, doctors wrote books like How To Be Plumb and the voluptuous woman was the ideal. The famed actress Lillian Russell, considered by many the epitome of beauty, weighed almost 200 pounds. Today, in contrast, Americans seem obsessed with calories, diets and slimness, and with eating healthful amounts of vitamins, minerals, fats, and proteins. What sparked this remarkable revolution in the way we eat.

In What Wars Leave Behind, J. Malcolm Garcia reveals the people and pain behind the statistics. He writes about impoverished families scraping by in Cairo’s city of the dead, ordinary Syrians pretending all is well as shells explode around them, and others caught in conflicts that rage long after the cameramen have packed up and gone away.

At a time when Americans are debating the future of public education, Johann N. Neem tells the inspiring story of how and why Americans built a robust public school system in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. It’s a story in which ordinary people in towns across the country worked together to form districts and build schoolhouses and reformers sought to expand tax support and give every child a liberal education. By the time of the Civil War, most northern states had made common schools free, and many southern states were heading in the same direction.

Jenny Smith, a young journalist, secures a career-making interview with a famous but reclusive author, AJ Kenton. Jenny's time with Mr. Kenton, however, is not spent with her asking questions but with his telling one last story. During three afternoons, Kenton describes a pivotal point in his life. As a 12-year-old, he went door to door in his neighborhood and sold packets of flower seeds. His goal was to earn a prize from the seed company's catalog. His memories reveal the hidden struggles of middle-class life in the early 1960s, a time that many people living today picture as ideal.

August Simms—explorer, soldier, world traveler—returns to Rhome, Texas to chase one last adventure. Hundreds of UFO sightings have been reported, seven years before the Wright brothers' initial flight, and August intends to solve the airship mystery. Instead, the past comes calling. A murder, a lynching, and the death of his wife 15 years earlier are inextricably tied to the present, and the adventure August finds will not be the one he expects.

At the time of the Millennium, three people struggle for survival in a small New Hampshire town as the world spins into chaos, not realizing that each harbors secrets that will eventually pit them against one another.

Three generations of men gather at their family homestead in New Jersey as Franklin Bowman faces impending death. With a plan in mind, Franklin summons his son George, who faces the uncertainties of retirement, and his grandson Jack, who faces the prospect of discovering himself after being fired from his job.