Showing results by narrator "Graham Halstead" in All Categories

A high school boy arranges for his Pontiac Sunfire to take over his life. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

When Jessica, a young air force drone pilot in Nevada, is tasked with launching a missile against a suspected terrorist halfway across the world, she realizes that though women and children are in the crosshairs of her screen, she has no choice but to follow orders. Ethan, a young Wall Street quant, is involved in a more bloodless connection to war when he develops an algorithm that enables his company's clients to profit by exploiting the international instability caused by exactly this kind of antiterrorist strike.

Lundi matin. Je me réveille de mon somme et regarde l'heure de la voiture : 2 h 30. Veste en daim noire. Une fois émergé, je réalise que j'attends 2 amies comme si j'étais leur chauffeur. C'est à ce moment précis que je décide alors de rentrer chez moi. Je laisse Angela et ma veste préférée alors qu'elle a oublié son paquet de cigarettes dans ma voiture. Quid pro quo. Je me demande quand je vais pouvoir récupérer ma veste.

1931 - The body found in the gutter in France led the police inspector to the dead man’s beautiful daughter - and to her hot-tempered American husband. 1941 - A hardboiled private eye hired to keep a movie studio’s leading lady happy uncovers the truth behind the brutal slaying of a Hollywood starlet. 1951 - A desperate man pursuing his last chance at redemption finds himself with blood on his hands and the police on his trail...

Adrian is small for his age, even for an almost-thirteen-year-old. It doesn't help that he has albinism, which makes those he meets wonder if he's an angel or a devil. His father is a bowyer, and all Adrian wants to do is become apprenticed and go off to war as an archer. But that's not what his father wants for him. Since Adrian can write, his father wants him to be a scribe. That's just about the last thing Adrian wants. When the Scots invade England and Adrian's best friend Hugh runs off to find his father and fight in battles, Adrian soon follows, intent on finding Hugh and joining him in glorious warfare against the pagans invading England from the north.

A novelette about a nihilistic young man from New York City, Going Down South depicts an isolated and apathetic way of navigating life and romance in a way that will resonate with most Millennials. When Jared Steinfarb decides that his life in Brooklyn has grown too dissolute, he moves in with an old friend from college who is studying to be a minister in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he meets Sylvia, an earnest Christian girl from the Midwest — she becomes an opportunity for his depravity to reach new depths, as Jared finds that his lecherous nature has followed him down south.

Sydney Skate considers himself shockproof. For as long as he can remember, he's known that his fashionable Manhattan mother is secretly a lesbian, although he's never let on that he knows. He spends his summer days caring for snakes at the local pet shop before leaving for college at Cornell, shrugging off his father's demands that he skip college and join the exciting world of swimming pool sales for suburbanites.

Four future Navy officers, two women and two men, fall under the spell of charismatic leader James Drayton at Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. They form a secret society called the Great Lovers, named after a poem by Rupert Brooke. When Drayton dies in a suspicious explosion on an aircraft carrier, the Great Lovers become the chief suspects. The surviving members of the secret society must defend their friend and their own freedom in a court-martial for mutiny. Trial of Honor is a fast-paced naval thriller about honor, both personal and national.

In 1998, at the very moment that a publisher had approached Bruce Davidson about a book of his 1959 Brooklyn Gang photographs, former gang leader Bobby Powers unexpectedly telephoned the Davidsons. Over the next decade, Emily Davidson maintained an ongoing conversation with Powers in order to bring to light his struggle to overcome his drug-ridden and violent past and to inspire others with his example.

It is 1792 and unbeknownst to a group of voyageurs traveling from Montreal to Grand Portage, an intrepid squirrel, Jean Pierre Petit Le Rouge, sneaks onto their canoe. Le Rouge is soon discovered because he can't contain his excitement - mon dieu he is so enthusiastic. The smells! The vistas! The comradery! The voyageurs are not particularly happy to have him, especially because Le Rouge rides, but he does not paddle. He eats, but he does not cook. He doesn't even carry anything on portages - sometimes it is he who has to be carried.

In the humdrum town of Moormouth, Walter Mortinson's unusual inventions cause nothing but trouble. After one of his contraptions throws the town into chaos, Walter's mother demands he cut the nonsense and join the family mortuary business. Far off on Flaster Isle, famed inventor Horace Flasterborn plans to take Walter under his wing. When a letter arrives by unusual means offering Walter an apprenticeship, he and the moody one-eyed girl next door run away and journey through a strange landscape of fish-people, giantess miners, and hypnotized honeybees.

The following books are included...Children of the Streets and Memos from Purgatory.

Daniel Green makes crop circles. As a member of a secret organization, he travels across the country creating strange works of art that leave communities mystified. He's always been alone; in fact, he prefers it. But when a dying farmer hires him in a last-ditch effort to bring publicity to a small Vermont town, Daniel finds himself at odds with his heart. It isn't long before he gets drawn into a family struggling to stitch itself back together, and the consequences will change his life forever.

Eran Sharon knows nothing of his father except that he left when Eran was a baby. Now a senior in high school and living with his protective but tight-lipped mother, Eran is a passionate young man deeply interested in social justice and equality. When he learns that the Houston police have launched a program to increase traffic stops, Eran organizes a peaceful protest. But a heated moment at the protest goes viral, and a reporter connects the Sharon family to a tragedy fifteen years earlier - and asks if Eran is anything like his father, a supposed terrorist.

In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame - beautiful, sharp-tongued Daisy.

Leaving the border town behind, the group continues their trek to Alaska. They don't make it far before the Reclaimers attack. The losses are heavy and James is separated from the group and in a desperate game of cat and mouse with Jezz as she hounds him every step of the way. Connor, unwilling to continue without his brother, leaves in search of him as the rest go north.

The Wolf Pack has finally made progress in their trek north as they reunite with the rest of their group at the Canadian border. The small town of Coutts is fortified by the US Military with a seemingly impenetrable fence surrounding it. It's truly secure, and they can have some semblance of a life again. Things change when they realize there's a secret buried in Coutts, something they may not be prepared to face. Not only do things begin to destabilize within, but the Reclaimers return, bringing with them a vengeance and a plan to bring the group to its knees.

America is at a crossroads. We are alienated from civic engagement, and our democracy is in doubt. Yet there is a new energy in the air. Young people are again taking up the role they've often held: as leaders of change, demanding a better future, wielding their votes to uphold democracy and lead the country forward. Enter Generation Citizen, an organization dedicated to empowering youth through revitalizing civics education across America.

In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman describes how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times' meanings. And in a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.

David Weir explores the conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence - the excess of artifice - and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences.