Showing results by narrator "Todd McLaren" in All Categories

These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries are selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic, oral qualities. Listen to these 10 unabridged classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, O. Henry, and Willa Cather.

When 57-year-old Ethan Zachary is ravaged by mysterious ball lightning, he starts growing progressively younger. As the condition begins to take hold, he realizes the end result will eventually kill him, ruining his plans to run for Congress - as well as his marriage. He does find a few compensations: his new youth and vigor attract a Cuban refugee reporter and a young lady lawyer, and his libido has been magically restored. Then a reclusive billionaire snatches "EZ" to use him as a medical guinea pig.

A famous naturalist seeks a near-extinct species of bird found only on the rarest of lands in "Audubon in Atlantis." A young American on a European holiday finds himself storming an enchanted German castle in "The Catcher in the Rhine." The philosopher Sokrates plays a key role in the Athenian victory over the Spartans in "The Daimon." Centaurs take a sea voyage aboard "The Horse of Bronze" to a land where they encounter a strange and frightening tribe of creatures known as man.

Hewitt Pearce is a 43-year-old blacksmith who lives alone in his family home, producing custom ironwork and safeguarding a small collection of art his late father left behind. When Jessica, a troubled young vagabond, shows up in his backwoods one morning, fleeing her demons, Hewitt's previously hermetic existence is suddenly challenged - more so when he learns that Emily, the love of his life whom he'd lost 20 years before, has been unexpectedly widowed.

The time is 1953. The world has changed. Richard Curtis Van Loan has been forced to hang up his mask. But The Phantom Detective is drawn out of retirement by the sudden murder of his longtime friend, publisher Frank Havens; and must then face the greatest challenge in his long career, as he finds himself pursued and hounded by a vicious, unseen assailant, ?The Phantom's Phantom.? The hot, sunny hills of Southern California present a very different problem from the cold, dark-edged streets of the Big Apple. As the bodies begin piling up, Van Loan is driven to the very limit of his resources. Who is The Phantom's Phantom?

In 2005, 15 workers were killed when BP's Texas City Refinery exploded. In 2006, corroded pipes owned by BP led to an oil spill in Alaska. Now, in 2010, 11 men drilling for BP were killed in the blowout of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. What's next? In In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race That Took It Down, Stanley Reed - a journalist who has covered BP for over a decade - and investigative reporter Alison Fitzgerald answer not only that question, but also examine why these disasters happen to BP so much more than other large oil companies.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is Washington's response to America's call for a new regulatory framework for the 21st century. In The New Financial Deal, author David Skeel offers an in-depth look at the new financial reforms and questions whether they will bring more effective regulation of contemporary finance or simply cement the partnership between government and the largest banks.

The CIA has learned that the Kremlin is about to launch a sophisticated propaganda operation aimed at discrediting and disrupting the United States and ultimately restoring Russia to great nation status. Intercepted intelligence suggests that the operation will hinge on a single, breaking news event in Eastern Europe, supported by a sustained campaign of disinformation and cyberattacks.

This grippingly intimate and heartbreaking book provides a portrait of the walking wounded who make up the base of the Trump movement. Desperate and angry, these are the Americans of the vanishing industrial heartland, depressed Appalachian coal country, and the no-man's land along the Southwestern border. These are coal miners, out-of-work construction workers, and small business owners who have watched their fortunes dwindle with each passing year.

Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina's The View from Lazy Point takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from the high Arctic south to Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again.

My name is Marten Mann. I work for the devil, or the prince of lies, as you people are so fond of calling him. Yes. You read that last line correctly. I am employed by the powers of evil as acquisitor ad infinitum. I did not seek out this job: I was chosen for the position. To put it in simpler terms, I am a broker of sorts - you know, the guy who finds out what it is that you want the most. I make it readily available to you for a price. I think we all know just how costly that one thing that you think you need so much can be.

This preacher man is giving her something to believe in. When country singer Dixie Pearl’s van breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, it feels like rock bottom. Sharp-tongued Dixie prides herself on her independence, but after recent health struggles, her dream of making it big has...

A Journey Through America introduces insightful commentary on our American democracy. Author Lawrence Kadish draws from over eighty-five years of lived experience, allowing him to celebrate our nation's strengths, reflect on our self-inflicted errors, and draw attention to the challenges of a nation that remains humanity's last hope.

Taking us beyond the confines of our own experiences, The Color of North traverses the kingdom of life to uncover the myriad ways that proteins shape us and all organisms on the planet. Inside every cell, a tight-knit community of millions of proteins skillfully contorts into unique shapes to give fireflies their ghostly glow, enable the octopus to see predators with its skin, and make humans fall in love.

As a pirate, Willow Jackson has stolen hundreds of ships, if not thousands, but this ship is the first with someone on board. Trigg Lorrz, brother of the ship's owner and son of the king of Lorr, a powerful alien race, is . . . her hostage? He also happens to be Willow's one-night stand from the night before, the hottest lay she's ever had, and pretty much the epitome of her type. But they're both about to become hostages of Jorvlen attackers, who have a grudge against them both.

Elite networks are informal social networks between politicians in power and top executives of politically connected firms where personal ties and long-term interactions build trust and loyalty between involved actors. Both groups draw benefits from these interactions; politicians stay in power, and corporate executives extract rents for their firms. Firms reward connected executives with higher salaries thus widening the dispersion of earnings in society. In Elite Networks, Vuk Vukovic offers a different perspective on the long-run origins of inequality.

Pete Forcelli was a highly respected federal agent in New York City, where he made an impact on violent crime by successfully targeting some of the city's most violent street gangs by using federal racketeering and continuing criminal enterprise statutes in conjunction with federal prosecutors. In early 2007, he was promoted to a supervisory position in Phoenix and quickly discovered that federal prosecutors were not charging criminals for violating federal firearms laws, even in instances where they knew guns were being trafficked to ultra-violent drug cartels.

Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy.