Showing results by narrator "Richard A. Smith" in All Categories

In good times and bad, in times of economic downturn and times of wartime peril, we as Americans have shown our mettle. There is something in the historical DNA of this people - a resilience, a power, a talent for innovation, a unique and empowering bravery - that has carried us forward as a nation and a people for nearly 250 years. This audio book is about this history, this inheritance, this people.

Clifford Odets’ masterpiece, starring Mark Ruffalo, Jane Kaczmarek, Richard Kind, and Ben Gazzara, brings to life the struggles of a working-class family aspiring to the promise of the American Dream. Even as they endure the country’s worst economic nightmare, three generations of an immigrant family are crowded into a Bronx tenement, fiercely determined to stay afloat, no matter what the cost.

This audiobook is written for great leaders, parents, coaches and mentors who want to become great teachers. The Seven Laws of Learning examines why people like Confucius, Nelson Mandela, Jesus, Winston Churchill, Evita Peron, Mahatma Gandhi and other extraordinary leaders were able to teach new ideas in ways that not only engaged people but persuaded them to use their free will to bring about personal and global change.

The race is on to claim the area between the Ohio River and Tennessee. What's left of the resistance is hiding out in the tangle of Central Kentucky hills - leaving the powerful, well-organized Kurian vampires the opportunity to fill the void. Major David Valentine knows a small group of fierce, freedom-loving allies who would be glad to settle the rich lands. But they're more than 300 miles away, with hostile aliens and vicious human slavers standing between. But even if by some miracle they make it, the Kurian Order isn't about to easily yield the blood-soaked Kentucky soil....

With Tyvian Reldamar feigning his death, the forces that still carry his banner are left to fight a vicious battle against the warlord Banric Sahand and the noble houses that flock to his side. Led by Myreon and Artus, this band of freedom fighters and angry rebels is faced with an enemy the likes of which they’ve never faced before: one who will do anything, no matter how brutal, to secure victory.

With Tyvian Reldamar feigning his death, the forces that still carry his banner are left to fight a vicious battle against the warlord Banric Sahand and the noble houses that flock to his side. Led by Myreon and Artus, this band of freedom fighters and angry rebels is faced with an enemy the likes of which they’ve never faced before: one who will do anything, no matter how brutal, to secure victory.

Lou Prophet loves to keep beautiful women company. But when the invitation comes from Miss Louisa Bonaventure, the Vengeance Queen, he finds himself intimate with hot lead instead of her warm female form. Louisa’s got him riding the brutal Mexican frontier chasing outlaws led by Tony Lazzaro, a notorious thief whose deadly weapon, Sugar Delphi, is a blind and blood-hungry pistolera.

Lou Prophet is in mixed company these days. He doesn’t mind being close to his pretty pistol-packing partner, Louisa Bonaventure. Known as the Vengeance Queen, she has his back — and dare he say it, part of his heart. But accompanying the vile outlaw Blanco Metalious back to Nugget Town to see him hang isn’t exactly Lou’s idea of a good time.

Forged in the fires of conflict, the Iron Kingdoms is a fantastic realm where the combined power of magic and technology thunders across a landscape shaped by war. Dominating the field of battle are rare individuals who have mastered both arcane and martial combat and who boldly lead mighty armies in the ongoing struggle to claim victory over these ancient lands. In the Undercity of Corvis, where mercenaries and criminals blur the lines between them, a ruthless crime lord has made a bold move to establish a stranglehold on Corvis’ underworld and make it his own.

The labyrinth of tunnels beneath Corvis is home to some of the city’s worst criminals, but now even these hardened thugs have reason to watch their step in the dark, shadowy undercity. Death moves in that darkness, leaving behind a trail of horribly mangled bodies. The identity of the killer is a mystery, although his calling cards - brutally savaged corpses and a distinct, repulsive odor - are constants at each bloody murder scene.

"Work Sets You Free" by David Barnett is an original short story featuring the protagonist of the forthcoming novel Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. Gideon is a young fisherman in Yorkshire, England, in an alternate 1890, who embarks on a journey to find Captain Lucian Trigger, the famed Hero of the Empire, to deal with a mystery plaguing his home village.

Jane Candia Coleman is a natural storyteller whose characters come from the lands between the southwestern valleys of Arizona and the Gila Mountains of New Mexico. The night Billy the Kid died is hauntingly depicted in "Corrido for Billy". "Lady Flo" is a memoir, based on historical fact, of the black wife of an Irish nobleman. "Moving On" depicts a young girl abandoned by her family who finds her way with an itinerant Jewish peddler. And "Are You Coming Back, Phin Montana?" is the winner of the 1995 Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction.

Shaw's forte was her ability to create interesting casts of characters through whom and between whom she was able to develop a suspenseful and unpredictable interplay. This story is a good example of her character driven Western fiction.

Two young men in the gold fields of California spend a last evening together as one of them, very sick, confronts his own imminent death. The tenderness between them may seem idealized, but you understand by listening to this story how premature death from accident and disease haunted the lives of far more westerners than death by violence.

Bill Ash, an escaped convict returns to find his father murdered.

A quick-draw tale from the wild west. T. T. Flynn has long been popular with listeners as a master of the Western story.

Haseloff's characters embody the fundamental values - honor, duty, courage, and family - that prevailed on the American frontier and were instilled in the young Haseloff by her own "heroes", her mother and her grandmother. Her stories, in a sense, dramatize how these values endure when challenged by the adversities and cruelties of frontier existence.

When Harry French left home he was just another kid looking to make his way. But when he comes back four years later, things are different. He's different. Or at least the town thinks so. Now nobody looks him in the eye. He isn't just Harry anymore, he's the Shifter, a gunfighter who brings trouble with him wherever he goes. And as hard as Harry tries, he finds that a reputation is a lot harder to put down than a gun.

Brother Shotgun is about an old buffalo hunter whose return to the plains after the Civil War keeps being delayed by the needs of a young woman who has taken in a number of orphans.

A short story gem in a Western setting...the search of a man for beauty, and how and where he found it.