Showing results by narrator "Christopher Ragland" in All Categories

The steady career path is a thing of the past: disruption is here to stay. You need to be able to keep learning, growing, and reinventing yourself to stay valuable in the midst of this change. Those who succeed in this new world will be the ones who have skills that are always in demand and cannot be replaced. Superconductors is your treasure trove of exclusive interviews and hands-on self-development exercises to inspire you and push you into action.

For more than 50 years, NASA's Mission Control has been known for two things: perfect decision-making in extreme situations and producing generations of steely-eyed missile men and women who continue that tradition. A key to that legacy of brilliant performance is a particular brand of leadership, especially at the working level in Mission Control. Take the ultimate insider's look at the leadership values and culture that created the best team on this planet. Paul Sean Hill was responsible for NASA's Mission Operations support for manned space flight from 2007 to 2011.

Rumor has it that the abandoned house by the cemetery is haunted by the ghost of a witch. But rumors won’t stop carpenter Mike Kostner from rehabbing the place as a haunted house attraction. Soon he’ll learn that fresh wood and nails can’t keep decades of rumors down. There are noises in the walls, and fresh blood on the floor: secrets that would be better not to discover. And behind the rumors is a real ghost who will do whatever it takes to ensure the house reopens. She needs people to fill her house on Halloween. There’s a dark, horrible ritual to fulfill. Because while the witch may have been dead...she doesn’t intend to stay that way.

From the critically acclaimed screenwriter of Doctor Strange and author of Sea of Rust and Queen of the Dark Things comes a hair-raising collection of short fiction that illuminates the strange, humorous, fantastical and downright diabolical that tantalise and terrorise us: demons, monsters, zombie dinosaurs and Death itself.

1997. Seventeen-year-old Laura Bow has invented a rudimentary artificial intelligence and named it Organon. At first it's intended to be a sounding board for her teenage frustrations, a surrogate best friend; but as she grows older, Organon grows with her. As the world becomes a very different place, technology changes the way we live, love and die; massive corporations develop rival intelligences to Laura's, ones without safety barriers or morals; and Laura is forced to decide whether to share her creation with the world.

He has that thing that they'd all pay for but can't buy: onstage and off, the 19-year-old rock drummer Checker Secretti is electric. When he plays with his band, The Derailleurs, the natives of Astoria, Queens, clamour for a piece of him. But charisma comes at a price. A Salieri to Checker's Mozart, the fiercely envious fellow drummer Eaton Striker is eager to sow discord among the Derailleurs, that he might replace the exasperatingly popular goody-goody in the close-knit neighbourhood's affections.

Carolyn Stoddard is lost. Widowed at an early age, she's the lonely rich girl, drinking her life away as her friends grow up and move on. But Carolyn's life is about to change. Because Carolyn is about to be given a set of choices. And those choices will determine whether she is allowed to live or die. It's closing time at the Blue Whale, but for Carolyn Stoddard the night is far from over. It's time to face the music....Dreams that are becoming nightmares for them both.

Winner: Barry Award for Best Paperback Original. Finalist: Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. Mickey Prada's a nice kid. He works hard at a neighbourhood seafood market in Brooklyn, putting fish on ice. He's got a nice girlfriend. He even delayed college a year to help his sick dad. But Mickey's got a problem. A customer at the fish store, Angelo Santoro, keeps asking Mickey to place bets for him, and Angelo keeps losing.

Winner: Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. From the acclaimed noir novelist Jason Starr comes this savage portrait of a misanthropic man stuck in a New York nightmare. Written in caustic, streamlined prose, Twisted City is a chilling depiction of how quickly one's life can take a turn for the worst. Times are tough for David Miller, a journalist for a second-rate financial magazine who hates his boss, is tired of supporting his girlfriend's partying lifestyle, and recently lost his sister to cancer.

Once a rising VP at a topflight ad agency, Bill Moss now works as a cold caller at a telemarketing firm in the Times Square area. He's got a bad case of the urban blues, and when a pink slip rather than a promotion comes through, Bill snaps.... Now he's got a dead supervisor on his hands and problems no career counselor can help him with.

Metamorphosis: Three stories, each one involving a man who discovers that he has come to dwell, for an hour or for a lifetime, in a house and in a mind not quite his own. Each one opens doors onto rooms of illusion, radiance, regret, and dark enchantment. Welcome to the stories of three young writers, stories written in collaboration with James P. Blaylock. Welcome to the borderland of illusion and reality.

Grieving over his wife's death, Phil Ainsworth is further shaken by his sister's death and the arrival of his niece Betsy, a child who hears the voices of the dead and sees the forces closing in around the old house he has inherited from his mother.

A suddenly appearing curiosity shop owned by a small man who might, or might not, be the Man in the Moon; a pair of strange spectacles buried in a fishbowl full of marbles; an old window glazed with sea-green glass found beneath a suburban house; and two adventurous boys who but the spectacles and climb through the window into a land of goblins, ghosts and rope ladders that reach to the moon.

Lightborn, better known as 'shine', is a mind-altering technology that has revolutionised the modern world. It is the ultimate in education, self-improvement, and entertainment - beamed directly into the brain of anyone who can meet the asking price. But in the city of Los Sombres, renegade shine has attacked the adult population, resulting in social chaos and widespread insanity in everyone past the age of puberty. The only solution has been to turn off the Field and isolate the city.

Southern California - sunny days, blue skies, neighbours on flying bicycles ... ghostly submarines ... mermen off the Catalina coast ... and a vast underground sea stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Inland Empire where Chinese junks ply an illicit trade and enormous creatures from ages past still survive. It is a place of wonder... and dark conspiracies. A place rife with adventure - if one knows where to look for it. Two such seekers are the teenagers Jim Hastings and his friend, Giles Peach.

You know Lara King. The top billing of the showbiz pages, you've seen her every morning: over your breakfast, on your commute to work. You know everything about her; you've dissected her life. Her perfect relationship with film star Matthew Raine. Her beautiful six-year-old daughter, Ava. And so when a terrible incident shatters the family's carefully constructed facade, a media frenzy ensues. What happens when the perfect woman begins to unravel? When her whole life is really just a lie? One she will do anything she can to stop you from finding out?

In Samsboro, Kentucky, Kalyn Spence’s name is inseparable from the brutal murder her father committed when he was a teenager. Forced to return to town, Kalyn must attend school under a pseudonym...or face the lingering anger of Samsboro’s citizens, who refuse to forget the crime. Gus Peake has never had the luxury of redefining himself. A Samsboro native, he’s known either as the 'disabled kid' because of his cerebral palsy or as the kid whose dad was murdered. Gus just wants to be known as himself.

Carol Evers is a woman with a dark secret. She has died many times...but her many deaths are not final: they are comas, a waking slumber indistinguishable from death, each lasting days. Only two people know of Carol's eerie condition. One is her husband, Dwight, who married Carol for her fortune and - when she lapses into another coma - plots to seize it by proclaiming her dead and burying her...alive. The other is her lost love, the infamous outlaw James Moxie. When word of Carol's dreadful fate reaches him, Moxie rides the Trail again to save his beloved from an early grave.

Gary Foster's life is finally heading in the right direction. After years of trying, his wife, Beth, is pregnant, and he recently opened a business with his brother. But one phone call changes everything. After collapsing suddenly, Beth is rushed to the hospital. Tests reveal a devastating diagnosis: an inoperable brain tumour. Their only hope is an expensive experimental treatment available abroad, with a cost that's out of their reach. And Beth's time is running out.

Introduce your children to the wonderful world of Shakespearean comedies with these abridged stories, written especially for children. Filled with sound effects, music and fun, your children will come away with a newfound love for these classic stories!