Showing results by narrator "Alex Boyles" in All Categories

What’s a 16-year-old boy to do when he learns that his stepmother and a local judge have murdered his father and now plan to kill him, too? Well, when it’s 1906, and you can play pretty good second base, you join a barn-storming baseball team making its way across Kansas. It also helps that the team is the Kansas City National Bloomer Girls. After all, who’d look for a runaway boy disguised as a girl on a women’s team that competes against town-ball teams of male players? Of course, it’ll take more than long hair, a Spalding glove, and a quick bat to stay alive.

A few hundred years into the future, a wave of space colonization follows a disastrous earlier attempt to inhabit nearby extrasolar planets. It is guided by a new computational method based on massive data-driven sociocultural and socio-epidemiological modeling and using novel biological computers, fed with data on Earth’s history of successes and failures.

He came off the frontier: a buffalo hunter, a gambler, a loner. In Abilene, he won a saloon at cards and earned the fear of a lawless town. From then on, Jake Kincaid would not be stopped. He began a rampage of ambition and deal-making that forever changed a land called Kansas and the Indian Territories. But along the way, the deeds and misdeeds of Jake Kincaid affected more than the frontier - they shaped the lives of his two sons. One who became a lawman. One who became an outlaw. Both destined to come face-to-face behind blazing guns....

Born a slave, Jim Beckwith forged his own path to freedom as a mountain man. But when a wealthy trading company owner offered to pay him to live among the Crow Indians, Beckwith accepted the deal - and discovered another way of life that changed him forever. Here in the Wind River Mountains, amidst blood feuds and blood brothers, he became Bloody Hand, a man sworn to take a hundred scalps - and destined to become the People’s greatest warrior - in a life-or-death struggle that shaped the fate of a nation.

The Osage Indians lost their ancestral freedom on a windswept reservation in Oklahoma. Now, in the Roaring Twenties, the land is spewing black gold; oil has been found, and every Osage owns a share of the rights. Soon Osage tribal members are being killed for their oil royalties while a corrupt sheriff turns his back on the murders, Special Agent Frank Gordon organizes and undercover operation while working openly with frontier legend US marshal Will Proctor.

The story of George Washington’s first crisis of the fledgling republic: In the war’s waning days, the American Revolution neared collapse when Washington’s senior officers were rumored to be on the edge of mutiny. A Crisis of Peace provides a fresh look at the end of the American Revolution while speaking to issues that concern us still: the fragility of civil-military relations, how even victorious wars end ambiguously, and what veterans and civilians owe each other.

Deadwood, Dakota Territory, was filled with luckless miners, diggers, and more than its share of lawlessness, and more often than not, there was nothing Marshal Fred Nolan and his two deputy marshals, Wentworth and Grubb, could do. So when a teen hustler, known as "Gitalong" because of his crippled leg, was hoorawed by a trio of Texas drovers, the law wasn’t called in. Besides, two strangers had come to Gitalong’s aid, confronting the drovers and forcing them to give Gitalong three silver dollars. While it was the most money he'd ever had, he knew it would only bring him trouble.

The extreme drought in the US Southwest has brought the issues of water use and management to the forefront of media attention. Historically, arguments over water rights have plagued this area since the days of John Wesley Powell, and disputes mark the relations between states, city-dwellers, farmers, and environmentalists to this day. Add to that the challenges of climate change, which is altering rainfall patterns the world over, and the imperative to rethink water-management policies becomes acute.

The Book of Revelation, the Maya, Nostradamus - humans have speculated about the end since, well, the beginning. In this book, we look at several “end of the world” scenarios - or at least, things that could make human life really difficult.

Our nearest planetary neighbor has been the subject of endless fascination and wide-ranging theories throughout history. Is there life on Mars? Was there ever life on Mars? What was the atmosphere like thousands or millions of years ago? From Percival Lowell, who built his own observatory so he could dedicate himself to studying the red planet, to NASA landing the car-sized Curiosity rover in 2012, this book traces Scientific American's coverage of the observation and exploration of Mars.

The nuclear bomb ushered in a new age. The rules of warfare had to change when one act might end civilization. In this audiobook, The Changing Face of War, we examine the technologies being developed or adapted for war and defense - and what these innovations mean for the way nations (and non-state antagonists) conduct military or security operations.

Landon Murphy and Jade Shu, stepsiblings turned wizard-like janitors, must step up after a disastrous encounter with the Locksmith—an immortal Auran who commands an army of Thingamajunks. With the Bureau of Educational Maintenance in disarray and their allies captured, Landon and Jade rally their friends from the School of Garbage and work to uncover vital clues hidden within the discarded trash of the magical landfill.

Thrust to the mercy of the Mississippi river, thirteen-year-old Rowdy floats safely away as he watches the smoke rise from his burning farmhouse. His father, dead. His brother, dead. Both gunned down in front of him by a murderous gang of bandits. Now alone in the world, his perilous journey of survival begins, challenging and shaping him into the young man his father would want him to become. Pulled from the waters, he is given a chance by a lone river Captain and his mate. Working the trade routes between St. Louis and New Orleans, he learns to navigate safe passage.

The theft of a friend’s priceless, family-legacy Christmas ornaments brings amateur detective and culinary expert, Sadie Hoffmiller, back on the case in a new standalone cozy mystery.

Here is a gripping analysis of the brutal landscape of the criminal justice system, as well as an ode to the richly complex interior lives of people struggling to become free. Dustin Feddon, a Catholic priest, and founder of Joseph House in Florida, tells it like it is, taking the listener with him on his journey, capturing the heart-wrenching realities of those incarcerated, yet bearing witness to the transcendent love manifest among those the state calls “the worst of the worst.

Logan's passion for racing burns brighter than ever, but his excitement turns to dismay when Slate reveals that the team is out of cars in racing condition. As they prepare for the National Tour event, internal strife and the mysterious disappearance of the team owner’s car put the future of Team Taylor at risk. Logan takes it upon himself to uncover the truth behind the disappearance. With the stakes higher than ever, can Logan lead his team to overcome their differences and succeed on the national stage?

Logan Reed's life is thrown into disarray when he's forced to relocate, losing not only his cherished sponsor but the familiar comforts of his old life. As he settles into a new town and a new school, Logan must confront his identity both on and off the track. Determined to race again, he faces the daunting task of finding a new sponsor and proving his worth. But unknown challenges loom, threatening his comeback and testing his resilience. Can Logan find his place in this new world and chase his dreams of racing glory?

With NASCAR in their sights, Logan and Team Taylor face their biggest challenge yet: improving their pit times to compete at the highest level. Slate’s solution for this is simple—practice, practice, practice. But amidst their intense training, a personal crisis strikes. Racing against time, Team Taylor must come together like never before to rise above the challenges and compete with the best. In this defining moment of speed and teamwork, will Logan and his team surpass their limits to achieve their dreams?

Do you have what it takes to run off and join the army, leaving your family behind? That’s what John Lincoln Clem, a nine-year-old boy living in Ohio, does as the American Civil War rages on. In 1861, Johnny sneaks onto a train filled with men from the 3rd Ohio Union Regiment, determined to fight for his country. Taken in by the older soldiers, Johnny becomes a drummer boy—not to mention the youngest person to serve in the war. Living a soldier’s life, Johnny experiences the brutalities of battle and the hunger and illness in between.

Landon Murphy never imagined he would spend his summer battling the animated trash monster known as the Megalajunk, and he is eager to continue studying from the wizard-like janitors at the School of Garbage. He’ll need to improve his skills with magical pushbrooms and plungers now that the Thingamajunks have gone rogue. When two Thingamajunks show up at Landon’s mother’s wedding, Landon is desperate to save his family. Using the lock he kept after defeating the Megalajunk, Landon accidentally triggers his own temporary transformation into the trash leviathan.