Showing results by narrator "Eric Summerer" in All Categories

Here are four stories derived from the same universe as the Koban series. Listening to the series is not required to understand and enjoy these stand-alone tales. Australian Krall: A fully gene-enhanced Kobani woman finds herself trapped in total darkness and underground, pursued by hundreds of slavering, semi-sentient, maniacally aggressive, and hungry aliens. Walk with her on the dark side!

He's a Star Wars fan and a history geek. He doesn't believe in ghosts or the afterlife. He doesn't believe in psychic powers or tarot cards. He doesn't believe in the Headless Horseman.

Finding the remaining Catalysts should have been easy. Or, at least easier. With the first of five Catalysts safely under their protection, the Rogue Dragonics are one step closer to the Prophecy. One step closer to revealing The One who will free Solera from the Chancellor’s tyranny. But all leads have turned up dry or are suddenly silent. Dead. To make matters worse, Commander Callon McKafrey has gone missing - it’s been days since anyone has heard from him.

In an extreme case of identity theft, a computer genius who has recently become a quadriplegic when caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout uses an Internet game called "Cybersona" to take over the body of another player, a recently-fired science teacher, to get revenge on those responsible for his paralysis. In an effort to get his body back, the teacher takes over the body of the next player who signs on; that player turns out to be a 10-year-old boy.

Fifteen-year-old Devon Turner, a junior in high school, thinks he's picked up music from outer space on his satellite dish. He records the sound, takes it to an astronomer who shares it with a musicologist. Within 24 hours, the sound is being played on radio stations everywhere. The music has a powerful vibration that can be used to heal or to destroy. But where is the music coming from?

Seventeen-year-old Trevor can't catch a break. Just when he finds out that Janna, the girl of his dreams, is finally available, his mom tells him he's being shipped off to a boarding school because of his awful grades. A desperate call to his dad, who owns a rubber chicken factory in Las Vegas, gets him nowhere. His father is more interested in enlisting Trevor's aid writing what he sees as the perfect gag gift - a how-to manual about rubber chickens. That's Trevor's life for you. Everyone around him is totally and utterly insane.

Heaster Wharton is dead, and his passing might mean an end to hostilities between the Manders and the Coys. If the the elderly patriarch showed the kindness and foresight to split his land cleanly between his feuding descendants, then a truce could be arranged. But his final request is a strange one, delivered across the country to the straggling remnants of his tribe. Representatives from both families must visit a cave at the edge of his property in the hills of Kentucky.

What begins with a sense that Michael's deceased grandfather might be inhabiting his body soon escalates to "slipping" into to the river of the dead. When Michael slips, he relives moments of his grandfather's life and tries to help him find peace. But each time he ventures into the river it's harder to come out again. Michael will have to depend on an unlikely group of friends to keep him from slipping... permanently. A penetrating twist on the classic ghost story, full of humor and insight about family relationships.

Fifteen-year-old Jeff Jacobson had never heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, the infamous serial killer who brutally murdered seventeen people more than twenty years ago. But Jeff's life changes forever when the man he'd thought was his father hands him a government file telling him he was constructed in a laboratory only seven years ago, part of a top-secret government cloning experiment called 'Project CAIN.' There, he was created entirely from Jeffrey Dahmer's DNA.

The start of a mischievous new middle-grade series has trouble written all over it. Twelve-year-old Seamus Hinkle is a good kid with a perfect school record—until the day he accidently kills his substitute teacher with an apple. Seamus is immediately shipped off to a detention facility—only to discover that Kilter Academy is actually a school to mold future Troublemakers, where demerits are awarded as a prize for bad behavior and each student is tasked to pull various pranks on their teachers in order to excel.

What happens to a regular guy who dopes? Surprised to learn that pro athletes aren’t the only ones taking performance-enhancing substances, journalist Andrew Tilin goes in search of the average juicing Joe, hoping to find a few things out: Why would normal people take these substances? Where do folks get them? Does the stuff really work? But these controversial drugs often silence their users, and so his queries might have gone unanswered had Tilin not looked in the mirror and succumbed to curiosity....

In a far-distant future, the Uman Empire has conquered and colonized worlds. Once thought invincible, its reign is now fragile as alien subjects and enemies conspire against it. On holiday in the capital city, cop Jack Cato gets a glimpse of the Emperor-and realizes what he's looking at is a supposedly dead shape- shifter. His mortal enemy is still alive and once again on the run. And the fate of the Empire - and Cato's own honor - are at stake....

Over a generation ago, the Council ordered the systematic extermination of the magic wielding, Runic Race. In the face of the damning orders, a few Dragonics refused to participate and instead demanded justice. But their call to defiance came too late - no Runics survived. Now, those against the Council's oppressive reign have long since been outcast to the fringes of society - their numbers and determination dwindling.

From the author of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying comes...A confidential manual prepared as part of a survival kit for Americans living in Britain, showing how to get rich in England, how to rise quickly and easily to the top of British society, examining the blessings, foibles, and weaknesses of British life, and providing the reader with his just share of wealth, warmth, wisdom, and happiness.

Returning home after eight months overseas, Air Force lieutenant Rick Walsh learns that his girlfriend, Maia, has been kidnapped. Walsh's determination to find her leads him into a conspiracy that spans two universes, because Maia is from an alternate world - and she's not the only person who knows how to walk between the two.

We live in an incredible period in history. The computer revolution may be even more life-changing than the Industrial Revolution. We can do things with computers that could never be done before, and computers can do things for us that could never be done before. But our love of computers should not cloud our thinking about their limitations. The AI Delusion explains why we should not be intimidated into thinking that computers are infallible, that data-mining is knowledge discovery, and that black boxes should be trusted.

In the era of mass incarceration, over 600,000 people are released from federal or state prison each year, with many returning to chaotic living environments. In these circumstances, how do former prisoners navigate reentering society? In Homeward, sociologist Bruce Western examines the tumultuous first year after release from prison. Drawing from in-depth interviews with over 100 individuals, he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving change at an unprecedented pace, level, and intensity that is impacting businesses across industries, not to mention our everyday lives. We are rapidly blurring the physical and the digital, transforming the way we live and, in some sense, what it even means to be human. Whether we run a startup or multinational, a nonprofit or academic institution, a city or a whole country, we need to embrace this change to not just survive but thrive under these new realities.

The Backpack: How to Understand and Manage Yourself While Loving Others Along the Way tells the story of Jon, Sofia, and Buddy, whose pathways merge on a life-changing flight. Written by a senior consultant with the Flippen Group (a worldwide leader in self-awareness training), the book brings together an angry passenger, a wise flight attendant, and a down-home cowboy. Their chance meeting leads to the ride of their lives as they fully grasp the importance and meaning of their backpacks. As this engaging story reveals, self-awareness is like a backpack!

Van Sato's got labels. Tourettes, ADHD, SPD - words that have defined his existence since the time he was old enough to know what they meant. Now, Van wants to prove he's more than an acronym, a syndrome, a problem kid. He takes a summer job as a day camp counselor to prove he's capable of independence and moving on to the next phase in his life. Maybe, he might even make a friend while there. Someone who's got just as many or even more labels than him. Someone who understands what it's like.