Showing results by narrator "Chris Ciulla" in All Categories

The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football. As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who reorganized the athletic program and...

A perfect storm materializes when Patrick Bouchard, an underwater welder working in the shipyards of San Pedro, California, loses his only child, Gabriel, to cancer. Driven by grief and rage, he sets out on a quest to make those he feels responsible pay, specifically, Standard Pharmaceutical, the megacorporation owning the HMO that denied radical treatment to his stage-four terminal son. That wasn't right, and someone had to be held accountable.

A young married couple hires a middle-aged widow during the wife, Nora's, difficult pregnancy; they don't realize the dominating force she will become in their small family. Signora A - maid, nanny, and confidante - becomes the glue in their household and, over time, the steady and loving presence whose benign influence allows them to negotiate the complexities of married life. The delicate fabric of the young family comes undone when Signora A is diagnosed with lung cancer.

When a local man intentionally drowns himself, a murder that has been submerged for 20 years surfaces, capturing screenwriter Ray Boon's imagination. Ray is compelled by the little voice in his head to find the reason for the apparent suicide. His search begins with a day-old newspaper story about a skeleton found in a Gloucester, Massachusetts, quarry and ends with the identification of the victim of a 20-year-old murder and, possibly, her killer.

When Matt tried to kill Barry with his car, the two brothers went their separate ways. Barry moved to Atlanta and Matt stayed in the family home in Aiken Mill, Virginia. One day Barry is notified that Matt disappeared. Since he lost his job and his girl, he returns home and is shocked by the damage someone did to his house. Even more perplexing is the word Lebo painted in Matt's room in cow's blood.

Long ago, the first reign of Grigori Geist nearly destroyed the Earth. Returned from exile, Geist is secretly rebuilding his kingdom beneath Antarctica, assembling his robotic Vaucan race to war against mankind. Only one obstacle remains: the war hero known as Brian Renney. Yet Brian is losing a battle against his fears. Scars of heart and mind linger from his days in Vietnam, fueling his failures as husband and father.

Total surrender to God: the surprising key to experiencing the sense of peace and purpose you crave. There is a gnawing feeling inside all of us that says we could be better. If we would just be more organized or work a little harder, we’d finally have the rich and fulfilling life we want. But...

Told against the backdrop of the American landscape of the late '80s to the mid-'90s, Growing Up Dead is the story of Peter Conners's journey from straight-laced suburban kid to touring Deadhead. Peter discovered the Grateful Dead in 1985, at the age of 15, through friends who exchanged bootleg tapes of live Grateful Dead concerts. A teenager living in the suburbs of Rochester, New York, he became exposed to an entirely new way of life, and friends who were enjoying more freedom and less parental guidance.

A newly minted graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1890, Dr. Thomas Parks heads to the big timber country of Puget Sound to practice trauma medicine. An hour after stepping off the boat, he's nearly crushed to death by a less-than-sure-footed mule and finds himself a patient rather than a physician. As he convalesces, he discovers that his host, a venerable physician friend of his father's, is running an elaborate medical scam, selling worthless concoctions nationwide, with enormous sales.

Ex-Dallas Cowboy Rick Bannion has been through the revolving prison door for drug trafficking and now hunts bail-jumpers. His old friend Jack Brendy has just been busted by the Feds for smuggling cocaine, and when Brendy's wife approaches him seeking a favor, Rick jumps at the chance to help. The favor? - keep the government's sleazy informer off the stand. Unfortunately, when things go wrong, Rick finds himself in the crosshairs of the Feds.

Shunned by his community...locked up for trying to help an innocent girl...ambushed by rivals and left for dead in the Detroit River, Joe Bernstein has a few scores to settle, and a bold plan to seize control of the Motor City in its booming 1920s heyday. With his faithful "agent", Abie; his brilliant but fragile brother, Max; and an out-of-control enforcer named Grabowski (not to mention a couple of carnivorous creatures known as "the babies"), Bernstein gives rise to the infamous Purple Gang....

When former Navy pilot Maarkean Ocaitchi learns his sister faces execution for treason, he must choose: remain loyal to the Alliance he once served, or save the only family he has left. Partnering with criminals and revolutionaries, he orchestrates a daring prison break that ignites rebellion across the galaxy. As colonial worlds unite against oppression, Maarkean transforms from reluctant smuggler to revolutionary leader. In a democracy that exists only in name, sometimes the greatest patriots must become outlaws.

The zombie apocalypse isn't coming—it's already here. When David Blake survives an outbreak that kills his fiancée, he's recruited by AEGIS, a secret military unit that's been fighting "walkers" since 1872. Now he must help stop humanity's extinction as governments fall and billions turn. Called "the best zombie book since World War Z," this military thriller launches a completed trilogy that delivers tactical action, genuine emotion, and a terrifyingly plausible vision of the end.

After robbing some banks, Torn Slater knows he should lay low. But when a beautiful widow asks for his help, he can't say no. Her reckless son has gone looking for trouble in Mexico - and found it in a woman called La Señorita. This power-mad femme fatale combines the torture methods of the Spanish Inquisition with the heart-ripping rituals of the Aztecs to get whatever she wants. And she wants the widow's son. Slater would be lying if he said taking down La Señorita would be easy. But dead men don't lie....

The birth of South Sudan was celebrated the world round. But the celebration would not last: South Sudan's freedom-fighters soon plunged their new nation back into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their American backers. Drawing on extraordinary personal stories of identity, liberation, and survival, this narrative tells an epic story of paradise won and then lost. Zach Vertin's firsthand accounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, bring listeners on an extraordinary journey into the rise and fall of the world's newest state.

After surviving an ambush and a firefight on a glacier, Danny and the other mech operators discover that the aliens have sent out a distress signal, seeking extraterrestrial reinforcements. Realizing that they need to prepare for another potential attack, the operators take refuge in a military base where they learn that the Mech Command plans to conduct operations in space in the near future. Armed with this intel, the operators return to Washington, DC where Danny begins to gather evidence about the activities of the head of the Mech Command, Jonas Vidmark.

Racing against spooks and space pirates, freighter captain Mike Starrunner embarks on a do-or-die mission to prevent interstellar war. After the failure of the Fleet's containment operations, the disruptive gene-mod known as the Transcendence is about to fall into the hands of criminals who'll use it to conquer the Cluster. Mike and his crew are the only ones with a chance of catching them in time. Out on their own without backup, they chase the Travelers to a dead planet where a shocking discovery awaits.

In this novel, award-winning author Dale Peck recounts the childhood of his father, Dale Peck Sr. Raised in poverty with seven brothers and sisters in suburban Long Island, terrorized by an abusive mother, Dale Sr.’s life changes when his alcoholic father dumps him at his uncle’s dairy farm in upstate New York. There, he begins to thrive, finding real love and connection with his Uncle Wallace and Aunt Bess. But ultimately, he is unable to outrun the chaos and violence of his old life.

In The Coming of Democracy, Mark R. Cheathem examines the evolution of presidential campaigning from 1824 to 1840. Drawing on period newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and public and private correspondence, The Coming of Democracy is the first book-length treatment to reveal how presidents and presidential candidates used both old and new forms of cultural politics to woo voters and win elections in the Jacksonian era.

Today more than ever, everyone must be her or his own healer, and this is especially true in the management of anxiety and depression. In the first major conceptual leap in mental health care in 40 years, Mind Easing's three-layered healing plan harmonizes wellness approaches, therapy, and when needed, medicine into a safe and effective plan tailored to the needs and wishes of the individual.