Showing results by narrator "Gabriel Vaughan" in All Categories

Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls "seeking our true home." Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen.

Dying again is not enough. Now Rueben must go to another universe with his greatest enemy. Earth-Z is ground zero for the world destroying virus. Too bad Rueben lives on Earth-A.

Before the security fence divided them and suicide bombers and airstrikes destroyed their lives, Palestinian Jannah al-Jarbouni and Israeli Efron Oved were friends. After years of separation, Efron, now 22 and an Israeli soldier, finds Jannah being transported from an Israeli jail. He reaches out to win her trust, but with every fiber of Jannah's soul, down to the marrow aching in her bones, she has vowed that the Israelis will pay for killing her family.

To the untrained eye, Cleopatra Gallier appears to lead a charmed life in Honolulu's paradise. She is impossibly beautiful, clever, wealthy and...trained to kill. When she enters into a love affair with the much younger, irresistibly handsome rogue, Jake Regan, she finds herself colliding with an intricate terrorist plot. Her secret past, like Hawaii's smoldering volcano, is ready to erupt. In the four days leading up to Christmas, two stunning betrayals and a terrorist attack threaten to reduce her and the island she loves to ashes.

It’s July 1946, and after a decade of Depression and war, life in America is returning to normal. But for Charlotte and Mary Oswald, one tumultuous summer will unearth all their secrets and upend their world, once again. Charlotte Oswald’s life is dictated by rules. Where she can go. Whom she can speak to. How she can spend her long, dull summer days. It’s a small, closeted existence, but necessary to protect Charlotte, who has suffered from debilitating fits since childhood.

Did you know that a measles outbreak led to the assigning of phone numbers? How about the fact that pirates are the reason we don’t use the metric system in the United States? Or that there’s actually a reason why stepping on a Lego hurts so damn much? Now I Know: The Soviets Invaded Wisconsin?! is the ultimate challenge for even the biggest trivia buff. Based on the very popular newsletter, you are guaranteed to learn something new despite how much you already think you know.

In Scimitar’s Glory, the alien Tong won the Battle for Earth and took control of the orbital space around the planet. Humanity is now at their mercy, but not all Space Force warships have been defeated. Wolfe Koenig’s light cruiser, Excalibur, is on a mission to acquire technology that just might enable the ragged remnants of the Fleet to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - if he can find an alien race with that technology, if he can convince them to trade for it, and if the technology can be exploited fast enough.

Human-explored space lies between two alien races that are either openly aggressive or covertly hostile. 7th Fleet discovers that one of those races is moving to attack. In a moment of panic, the commanding admiral orders the fleet to attempt a risky jump through hyperspace. They miss hitting their target star’s gravity well and end up deep in unexplored space with a shockingly long trip home and not nearly enough food to last that long. With war now raging in their home systems, the officers of 7th Fleet must find a way to make it back, and they know that not all of them will.

The Fall brought mankind to its knees. After the world war, anarchy reigned across what was once the United States of America. For nine years, William has lived a quiet life in the West. Lamar Valley in Yellowstone is wild and beautiful, home to wolves, bison, and bears. In a log cabin on the shore of the Lamar River, William has raised his children. When Tarantula spreads further north, the tenuous peace between territories is threatened.

Is it worth losing your soul to save the world? In the sweeping conclusion of the Wrath trilogy, what is left of civilization after The Fall finds itself at war again. New America gathers its defense against the tsar's forces while four heroes embark on a journey more perilous than they ever imagined. Will mankind find a way to end the cycle of violence at last? To do so may cost William, Crystal, and Ryder everything...because evil never surrenders.

Forced to face the wrath of either heaven or hell, Olivia and Holden must choose a side before a war begins and tears their lives apart forever. They always felt an unseen force brought them together, but was it to prevent the end of their world or to ensure it? Their secrets threatened to destroy them. Their choices led them to this moment. The consequences cannot be avoided.

There are no holidays in the Abyss. Despite her friends' less-than-enthusiastic reception, Olivia is determined to have a wonderful Christmas - and if she has anything to say about it, Holden will, too. A brilliant idea for the perfect present to remind him of what is important at this time of year opens up more than she bargained for.

Olivia Martin's afterlife was more dangerous and confusing than her life ever was. She thought she was ready to come back, to forget about Holden and to let go of the rage consuming her. Fulfilling her destiny as a guardian was all that mattered - the past could stay hidden in the crevices of her mind. However, when guardians are murdered and the evidence points toward jinn, she has to do something. To save anyone's future, Olivia will have to confront the one person from her past she is terrified to see.

Every kindergarten soccer player gets a trophy. Many high schools name dozens of seniors as valedictorians - of the same class. Cars sport bumper stickers that read "USA - Number 1." Prizes proliferate in every corner of American society, and excellence is trumpeted with ratings that range from "Academy Award winner!" to "Best Neighborhood Pizza!" In Everyone’s a Winner, Joel Best - acclaimed author of Damned Lies and Statistics - shines a bright light on the increasing abundance of status in our society and considers what it all means.

This collection marks the return to print of John Lardner, one of America's press box giants, a classic stylist whose wry humor and tireless reporting helped elevate sportswriting to art. The brilliant W. C. Heinz called Lardner "the best of us." This book shows why. Lardner applied his singular touch not only to his era's icons - Joe Louis, Ted Williams, Satchel Paige - but to the scamps, eccentrics, hustlers, and con men in the shadow of sports.

My name is Colton Calloway. You've heard part of my story, but it turns out there's more. My little girl, Kylie, is all grown up. Seventeen, beautiful, and talented, just like her mother. And just like Nell, my daughter seems to have fallen for a bad boy, one with a lot of darkness and a lot of secrets.

After the bombs rain down, the entire world is an open wound; it is in those bleeding years that William Fox becomes a man. William flees with his family to Magnolia, a farm in Tennessee, while America descends into madness, anarchy, and death. With the aid of elite Special Forces units, Magnolia emerges as beacon of hope and stability. But evil is hungry and relentless. A new threat stalks the Earth. To save his people, and perhaps all of humanity, William must be more than a lethal soldier; he must become a hero.

While Olivia Martin observed life through her camera, the Abyss gazed back at her. She discovers mysterious men follow her around, people close to her are dying, and her dreams are no longer her own as she falls head over heels for a perfect stranger. A chance encounter leads to an obsession that could destroy everything she has ever known or loved. Olivia is about to find out there is a lot she doesn't know and sometimes what you don't know can kill you.

Twenty-five years ago, a group of ninth-graders produced a Saturday Night Live-style videotape to cheer up their ailing friend. The show's running time was only 90 minutes, but it had a lasting impact: Becca laughed her way through recovery, and the group - Jordana, Seth, Holly, and Lex - became her supporting cast for life. On the silver anniversary of Becca Night Live, the friends reunite over the Fourth of July to celebrate Becca's good health - but nothing goes as planned. The happy holiday-card facades everyone's been hiding behind quickly crumble.

In her moving and elegant new collection, New York Times best-selling author Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth's younger brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can.