Showing results by narrator "Kevin Pariseau" in All Categories

2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth's Moon - a history-making clandestine project - and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan's mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient - enough so to have built a lost civilization.

Caine Riordan, reluctant diplomatic and military intelligence operative, has just finished playing his part repulsing the Arat Kur's and Hkh'Rkh's joint invasion of Earth. But scant hours after the attackers surrender, the mysterious but potentially helpful Slaasriithi appeal to Caine to shepherd a diplomatic mission on a visit to their very alien worlds. The possible prize: a crucial alliance in a universe where the fledgling Consolidated Terran Republic has very few friends.

In the six months since the raid that destroyed the makeshift transmitter, the Lost Soldiers have scratched out a permanent base on the world of R’Bak. But life in an often surprising and very alien binary system has not become any easier. Major Mara “Bruce” Lee’s pregnancy becomes a powerful reminder of that: without special indigenous plants, she might lose both her unborn child and her life. And, in the process of securing enough of that rare compound, her friend and crew chief Elroy Frazier will have to risk life, limb, and mind.

Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.

Having spent the past three decades' worth of summers on Nantucket, the Warners are as much a part of the island as the crust of salt on the ferry. But this year is different: Tripp is no longer the father he was, and it becomes clear that nothing - not the beams that hold the house together, and not the values the family clings to - can survive the ravages of time. When tradition turns to tragedy, the creaky old house swirls with suspicion. There are just so many reasons to want someone gone.

We all make bad decisions. It's part of being human. The resulting mistakes can be valuable, the story goes, because we learn from them. But do we? Historian Zachary Shore says no, not always, and he has a long list of examples to prove his point.

In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine.

The Floating Opera and The End of the Road are John Barth's first two novels. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on human emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama.

In 1984, The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer told the story of Apples first decade alongside the histories of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Now, completely revised and expanded, Return to the Little Kingdom is the definitive biography of Apple and its founders from the very beginning. Moritz brings readers inside the childhood homes of Jobs and Wozniak and records how they dropped out of college and founded Apple in 1976.

The Battle of Gettysburg – the turning point of the American Civil War – would, in the words of one staff officer, stand “like Waterloo, conspicuous in the history of all ages."

World-renowned paleontologist Richard Leyster's universe changed forever the day a stranger named Griffin walked into his office with a remarkable job offer... and an ice cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus. For Leyster and a select group of scientific colleagues, an impossible fantasy has come true: the ability to study dinosaurs up close, in their own era and milieu. But tampering with time and paradox can have disastrous effects on the future and the past alike.

Beyond his on-stage magic, Houdini also made his mark as an airplane pioneer, movie star, and debunker of frauds. His renown extended from his childhood home in Appleton, Wisconsin to Europe to Sydney, Australia. Children will thrill as they read about his seemingly superhuman successes - including when Houdini, hanging by his ankles and wrapped in a straightjacket, managed to free himself in less than three minutes.

Givens examines the Book of Mormon first and foremost in terms of the claims that its narrators make for its historical genesis, its purpose as a sacred text, and its meaning for an audience which shifts over the course of the history it unfolds. The author traces five governing themes in particular - revelation, Christ, Zion, scripture, and covenant - and analyzes the Book's central doctrines and teachings. Givens also provides samples of a cast of characters that number in the hundreds, and analyzes representative passages.

Freshman year stinks for Vlad Tod. Bullies still harass him. The photographer from the school newspaper is tailing him. And failing his studies could be deadly. A trip to Siberia gives "study abroad" a whole new meaning as Vlad connects with other vampires and advances his mind-control abilities...

In The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, John V. Fleming shows how the impulses of the European Enlightenment - generally associated with great strides in the liberation of human thought from superstition and traditional religion - were challenged by tenacious religious ideas or channeled into the "darker" pursuits of the esoteric and the occult.

John Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction. Though many of the stories gathered here were published separately, there are several themes common to them all, giving them new meaning in the context of this collection.

A major new collection of modern commentary - from scholars, historians, and Civil War buffs - on the significant events of the Civil War, culled from The New York Times' popular Disunion online journal.

In her amazing diary, Anne Frank revealed the challenges and dreams common for any young girl. But Hitler brought her childhood to an end and forced her and her family into hiding. Who Was Anne Frank? looks closely at Anne’s life before the secret annex, what life was like in hiding, and the...

In their Noon Universe novels, they imagined twenty-second-century Earth as a space-faring communist utopia, devoted to guiding the progress of civilization on alien worlds. But as the authors became increasingly disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union, their Noon Universe stories grew darker and more complex as well. The Waves Extinguish the Wind provides the epic conclusion to the Noon Universe saga, as eighty-nine-year-old Maxim Kammerer looks back at his most earth-shattering investigation, which brought an entire era of human civilization to an end.

Ever-turbulent humanity has reached out to the stars and found itself challenged by several “exosapient” species whose motivations are as unusual as their physical forms. But no world is defined just by the characters who occupy center stage. Lost Signals digs deep into the lives - and struggles - of those beyond the spotlight by bringing together 20 new voices and new stories.