Showing results by narrator "L.J. Ganser" in All Categories

Nikola Tesla was a man forever misunderstood. From his boyhood in what is present-day Croatia, where his father, a Serbian Orthodox priest, dismissed his talents, to his tumultuous years in New York City, where his heated rivalry with Thomas Edison yielded triumphs and failures, Tesla was both demonized and lionized. Tesla captures the whirlwind years of the dawn of the electrical age, when his flair for showmanship kept him in the public eye.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Reminiscent of One Day meets Nicholas Sparks, That Part Was True is a bittersweet debut about falling in love and risking it all. When Eve Petworth writes to Jackson Cooper to praise a scene in one of his books, they discover a mutual love of cookery and food. As their letters criss-cross the ocean that lies between them, friendship and then romance blossom despite Jackson's colourful love life and Eve's tense relationship with her soon-to-be-married daughter.

A popular author of fiction and nonfiction works for children, Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen can often be found in schools sharing her beloved works with children all across the country. With its clever rhymes and cute-creepy storyline, Quackenstein Hatches a Family is the irresistible tale of a very special duck. Quackenstein has no family or friends to play with, until he finds an egg. But when it hatches, it’s not exactly what Quackenstein was expecting!

Wilson has spent his entire life under the radar. Few people know who he is, and even fewer know how to find him. Only two people even know his real occupation: carrying out confidential - and illegal - jobs for a very bad man. But one day he crosses the line, saving his friends and earning the hatred of a vengeful mob boss.

In the pulsepounding thriller White, Whitcomb unleashes a jawdropping account of terrorist plots, CIA executions, and a trail of clues that stretches all the way to the Oval Office.

Best-selling author Georgia Bragg delights young people with her quirky characters and unique subject matter. How They Croaked provides all the gory details of the awful ends of 19 awfully famous people. It details Ludwig Van Beethoven’s expansive finale, Henry VII’s explosive end, Albert Einstein’s great brain escape, and Marie Curie’s glowing demise.

John Blake and Miranda Sugarman dated in high school, but after graduation they went their separate ways: he stayed in New York City and became a private investigator while she moved to the midwest and settled down to a safe, respectable life as an eye doctor. Or so he thought -- until the day, ten years later, when he opened the Daily News and saw Miranda's photo staring out at him under the headline "STRIPPER MURDERED."

Bear wants to be a comedian. He dreams of performing onstage and making his friends laugh. The only problem is that Bear has stage fright. Performing in front of others makes his knees knock and his fur freeze. What’s a bear to do? Hopefully, with a little help from his friends, Bear can find a way to achieve his goal.

Deeply affected by a teenaged affair with a man nearly three times her age, Marcy Bunkleman subtly shapes the lives of everyone she meets. As she and the people closest to her tell their stories, an incredible picture emerges of secrets and lies, of knowledge and ignorance, and gradually of people longing to recapture those moments of effortless goodness in their lives. As Huddle gently strips away the layers of stories we tell ourselves and others, we find the strengths and weaknesses of people like ourselves.

Out in the mountains, Zack and his friend, Uta, discover what they think is a large fossilized dinosaur egg. This could make their fortune! Zack takes it home to keep it safe. Only the egg isn't fossilized - it's hatching! And there's an angry mother dinosaur out there, who wants her baby back. Includes a full lenght fascinating interview with the author, Paul Zindel.

When mutant rats escape from a Staten Island garbag e dump and terrorize the town’s citizens, it’s up to Sarah and her younger brother, Michael, to stop them from taking over New York City.

Pages magazine says this collection represents “the absolute best in short literary fiction.” This installment exhibits a fresh batch of immensely talented writers, all of whom exemplify the level of accomplishment that has kept this acclaimed series running strong since 1985. Comprising 20 stories, this rich and varied collection features everything from a fresh take on the classic Southern gothic to a velvet-smooth work of erotic suspense.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball - a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures - including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians - that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so.

The 19th addition of this annual anthology exhibits a collection of short fiction from award-winning Southern authors and rising stars including Edward P. Jones and Silas House. Each story’s derivation is explained in an illuminating note from the author following the rich and entertaining tales.

Rationing: It’s a word and idea that people often loathe and fear. Health care expert Henry Aaron has compared mentioning the possibility of rationing to "shouting an obscenity in church". Yet societies in fact ration food, water, medical care, and fuel all the time, with those who can pay the most getting the most. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has said, the results can be "thoroughly unequal and nasty". In Any Way You Slice It, Stan Cox shows that rationing is not just a quaint practice restricted to World War II memoirs and 1970s gas station lines. Instead, he persuasively argues that rationing is a vital concept for our fragile present.

Like lots of college grads, Daniel Seddiqui was having a hard time finding a job. But despite more than 40 rejections, he knew opportunities had to exist. So he set out on an extraordinary quest: 50 jobs in 50 states in 50 weeks. And not just any jobs; he chose professions that reflected the culture and economy of each state, working as everything from a cheesemaker in Wisconsin, a border patrol agent in Arizona, and a meatpacker in Kansas to a lobsterman in Maine, a surfing instructor in Hawaii, and more.

When Eli Manning found teammate Plaxico Burress in the end zone with just 35 seconds remaining in Super Bowl XLII, he completed what was perhaps the greatest game-winning drive and unlikely upset in Super Bowl history. But the drive, which also included a remarkable escape and pass completion to unheralded receiver David Tyree, was the culmination of years of promise and development.

In the New York Times best seller Becoming China’s Bitch, Peter Kiernan presents an unflinching manifesto in which he explores five factors that have sustained our national paralysis, then uncovers the 10 challenges that pose the greatest threat to the future of America. Presented from a fresh yet informative Centrist perspective, these ten impending catastrophes include our semi-conscious dependency on China, our lack of a centrally coordinated intelligence effort, and more.

Two years ago, Wilson left his old boss alive in exchange for a clean slate, keeping up his end of the bargain and staying off the grid. Then, thousands of miles from the city he once escaped, a man comes calling on Wilson with a gun in hand and a woman in his trunk. Wilson is pulled back into his old life as a grinder, working under the radar to quietly find out who is responsible for a dangerous mobster's missing nephews - and this time all bets are off.