Showing results by narrator "Chris Lutkin" in All Categories

Ex-Army Ranger sniper Rafe Hendrix leads the Secret Service detail of President Wyetta Johnson. Rafe and Wyetta became close when they served together in Afghanistan and he saved her life during a recon misadventure that cost her a leg. The President’s wife visits a DC private-school classroom, and Hendrix is on sniper duty when a suicide bomber heads toward the First Lady. Hendrix disobeys a direct order, and an unthinkable disaster unfolds. Though Hendrix may have saved the First Lady, he’s blamed for the carnage.

Bob Ryan has scored every baseball game he's attended, at every level, since the start of the 1977 season. It's a deeply personal tradition still going strong at more than 1,400 games and counting. The tattered scorebooks he's filled are worn from age, travel, and countless summer days, but their grids and scrawled symbols tell the stories of milestones, rivalries, rare historic achievements, and more. In Scoring Position captures the incomparable spirit of baseball, with its infinite possibilities and madcap anomalies.

Joined by Peter Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron, the American determined to fight the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot, adventurer Richard Hannay travels across war-torn Europe in search of the grotesque Stumm and the evil beauty of Hilda von Einem. This espionage novel set during the First World War features thrilling disguises, despicable plots, and some of the most devious spies in literature.

Whoosh! Squirrel takes off at full speed through the autumn leaves. But slam on the brakes because this year The Golden Nut Hunt race is a team event. Squirrel reluctantly enlists her friends and is not impressed. Will Squirrel's competitive spirit take over, or will she learn how to be a team player?

As war looms in Europe, Richard Hannay returns from Rhodesia to his home in London. His neighbor, an American freelance spy named Franklin Scudder, claims to know of an assassination plot to destabilize Europe. When Hannay finds Scudder dead in his flat, he is drawn into a fast-paced labyrinthine adventure that takes him from the hills of Scotland to an unassuming location by the sea.

Unlike other biographies, the Making of America series goes beyond individual narratives, linking influential figures to create an overarching story of America's growth that will deepen understanding of the country we live in today.

Much has been written about the anatomy of revolution from Edmund Burke to Crane Brinton Crane, Franz Fanon, and contemporary theorists of revolution found in the modern academy. Yet what is missing is a dissection of the revolutionary minds that destroyed the old for the creation of a more harmful new. Revolutionary Monsters presents a collective biography of five modern-day revolutionaries who came into power calling for the liberation of the people only to end up killing millions of people in the name of revolution.

As modern-day demonstrations of vintage baseball continue to spread, so do the gentlemanly discussions of how best to present the American pastime from its earliest days, from 1858 to 1869. From tally bells to no sliding, feeder pitching to base stealing, National Association rules to home field rules, there is a lot for today’s player to sort through. We hope this guide will help you understand some of baseball history, so you, too, can enjoy the game as it was played in the 19th century.

In "Beyond the Door", a man buys a cuckoo clock for his wife who has always wanted one. When he catches her cheating on him, the man throws his wife out of the house with her lover. Though he never really cared for the clock, he keeps winding it because he dislikes the silence. But the cuckoo clock, who preferred the wife's company, begins to plot against its owner.

In "The Crystal Crypt", Earth and Mars are poised on the verge of war. On the last spaceship to leave Mars for Earth, law enforcement officials are looking for three fugitives who somehow made a great Martian city disappear. Unable to find the perpetrators, the officials allow the ship to disembark for Earth. A businessman named Thacher strikes up a conversation with a young woman and two men who reveal a very interesting secret to him about the mysterious case.

Ten-year old Tony Rossi, an Earthman growing up on Betelgeuse, becomes aware that the natives, known as the "Pas-Udeti", are driving out the Earthmen colonists on nearby Orion. His father, a staunch believer in the superiority of Earthmen, describes Tony's native friends as "Beetles". A trip into town to meet his native friends leads to awkward encounters with a Pas-Udeti cab driver and a fellow bus passenger.

In "The Skull", a convict is offered his freedom if he agrees to travel back in time and kill someone. He learns that the assassination target was the founder of a religious sect that grew in strength and influence from its inception in 1960. Carrying his target's skull so he can identify the religious leader, the convict comes to learn a terrible secret about why he was chosen to find its owner.

In "Piper in the Woods", an army doctor is asked to treat a soldier from Asteroid Y-3 who claims he is a plant. This wouldn't be a problem, but the soldier is incapable of any physical activity, preferring to stand still and point himself towards the sun. When more soldiers return from Asteroid Y-3 also claiming to be plants, Dr. Harris travels there to investigate. While there, he learns about a mysterious indigenous people living in the woods called "Pipers", who might be able to shed some light on the subject.

In The Defenders, the Soviet and American survivors of a nuclear holocaust have created vast underground tunnels, so as to continue the war on the surface via remote control robots. When a robot from the surface is found not to be radioactive, a team of American scientists returns topside to investigate this anomaly. Expecting to see massive devastation, the scientists are unprepared for the shocking truth that awaits them.

In "The Gun", a group of space explorers are shot down above a deserted planet. While some of the crew work on repairing the ship, the remainder set out to investigate the planet. Otherwise unpopulated, they discover the huge gun that shot them down sitting atop a trove of cultural artifacts from a bygone civilization. What harm could come of dismantling the gun and taking a few of the artifacts home with them?

"Mr. Spaceship" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1953 in Imagination in January 1953, and later in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. It has since been republished several times, including in Beyond Lies the Wub in 1988. The story is set in the distant future, where humanity is at war with "Yuks", an alien life form which does not use mechanical spaceships nor constructions but instead relies on life forms to power their technology.

"The Eyes Have It" is a humorous, early short story by Philip K. Dick that first appeared in Science Fiction Stories in 1953. In it, a bus-riding reader of a discarded melodrama with an overactive imagination is persuaded by the hackneyed prose that the world has been taken over by aliens. Thus, when "eyes slowly roved around the room", the reader imagines disembodied eyeballs traveling of their own free will. A rare example of satire from the Dick canon.

First published in an 1843 edition of The Pioneer, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of Poe's best-known stories. In it, an unreliable narrator is increasingly troubled by the clouded eye of the old man he lives with. Similar to "The Black Cat", "The Tell-Tale Heart" focuses on the effects of mental instability, crime, and guilt.

First published in an 1844 literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1845, "The Purloined Letter" is the third and final story that features Poe's detective, C. Auguste Dupin. In it, Dupin is approached by the prefect of the police to help with a case that involves a stolen letter containing compromising information.

First published in an 1842 literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843, "The Pit and the Pendulum" takes place during the Spanish Inquisition and follows the plight of a prisoner in a cell that has a pit and a pendulum. Unlike many of Poe's short stories, "The Pit and the Pendulum" does not rely on any supernatural elements to inspire fear but instead uses the narrator's heightened sensory experiences to do so.