Showing results by narrator "Marlin May" in All Categories

It's December in Tennant Park, Colorado, and that can only mean one thing: The annual production of "A Christmas Carol" is just around the corner. The cast is abuzz, full of community-theatre veterans and fresh-faced newcomers. All in this small mountain town is merry and bright. That is, until Teena, one of the actors, makes a chilling discovery on opening night: Someone is going to murder Scrooge—or rather, the actor playing Scrooge—right on stage, in front of the entire audience.

“I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I think I died today”. So begins the complex and mysterious journey of Gavin Goode and his family. What happened to Gavin and why? What secrets will emerge along the way? This is a story of despair and hope, dreams and reality, uncertainty and faith, humor, secrecy, forgiveness and beginnings.

The story of Jackie Robinson valiantly breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947 is one that most Americans know. But less recognized is the fact that some seventy years earlier, following the Civil War, baseball was tenuously biracial and had the potential for a truly open game. How, then, did the game become so firmly segregated that it required a trailblazer like Robinson? The answer, Ryan A. Swanson suggests, has everything to do with the politics of “reconciliation” and a wish to avoid the issues of race that an integrated game necessarily raised.

Joe Skelton has never written anything longer than a shopping list, but now his brain tumor is making him write a novel. It's a baseball novel about a crippled janitor who cleans up at a forgotten minor league field, and who is accidentally discovered to be a perfect never-misses hitter. Will Joe die before we find out whether the Joltin' Janitor makes it to the big leagues? An imagined Roger Angell leads an unforgettable ensemble of quirky characters on a gentle and poignant race to discover the meaning of baseball, fate, will, and chance.

Scouting has been called pro baseball’s personalized way of renewing itself from year to year and a pathway to the game’s past. It takes a very special person to be a baseball scout: normal family life is out of the question because travel is a constant companion. Scouts have the difficult task of not only discovering and signing new players but envisioning the trajectory of raw talent into the future. But the place of the traditional scout has become increasingly dire.

Conflicted hearts search for human connection upon waters and vivid landscapes. Randolf, a Susquehanna ferryman, is piloting an Amish wedding party in the title story of this collection, “Nunc Stans—A Ferry Tale.” But mid-river, the ferry snags on a low dam, and a frightened mare bolts from the deck. As Randolf tries to save the ferry, he’s forced to confront his own remorse in a haunting reflection of a couple’s grief, guilt, and awakenings in the aftermath of a stillbirth.

Robert Dean Emslie (1859–1943) spent fifty-six of his eighty-four years in professional baseball—eight as a player and forty-nine as an umpire. When arm problems ended his career as a Major League pitcher, he turned to umpiring, serving in that capacity for thirty-five seasons, then as an umpire supervisor for thirteen years. Emslie endured the rough-and-tumble umpire-baiting 1890s, the Deadball era, injuries from thrown and batted balls, physical and verbal assaults from players and fans, and criticism in the press.

Lew Wallace, a fascinating and multitalented historical figure, has consistently been overlooked and lost in academia, articles, and modern books. When he has been discussed, he has often been misrepresented and misunderstood. This is partly due to the sordid and profoundly controversial period in the United States during his lifetime. Yet, Lew wrote one of the most successful and influential novels of the 19th Century. The story he created, and the high-profile controversies he was intimately involved in, have lived on in numerous movies and television programs.

College junior Ethan Trousock has his own problems: professor Bourman's history exam, parental aging, dating dry spells. The devastating oil spill that blanketed his university's coastline half a century before and led to the birth of the modern environmental movement is ancient history. Until one night when an ocean portal transports him back to 1969.

In 1842, every resident of Copper Harbor, MI disappeared without a trace. In 2019, Bill Hitze and his son Brandon make a gruesome discovery while fishing on Lake Superior that starts to shed light on the old mystery. According to Professor Stephanie Crowe, an Ojibwa legend predicts that the town's residents will be lost again. Together, Bill and Stephanie strive to discover the truth about what happened so they can protect the small tourist town. But time runs out when brutal winter weather hits Copper Harbor and awakens the ancient horror.

From the Revolutionary War to his death in 1831, James Monroe's life was dominated by partisan politics. Monroe not uniquely among the American founders hated political parties, even writing that he "always considered their existence as the curse of the country." Yet his career saw the rise, fall, and rebirth of American political parties.

In Escaping Nature, Orrin H. Pilkey and his coauthors offer concrete suggestions for how to respond to the threats posed by global climate change. They argue that while we wait for the world’s governments to get serious about mitigating climate change we can adapt to a hotter world through technological innovations, behavioral changes, nature-based solutions, political changes, and education.

St. Petersburg, Russia’s Window to the West. Thirteen-year-old tomboy Rian Krieger has run away to Russia to help her uncle and cousin build a railroad for Tsar Nicholas I. But there’s a problem: Rian is posing as her uncle’s coachman, a boy. The Tsar takes note of Rian’s bravery and resourcefulness and asks her (meaning orders her, for a request from the Tsar of All the Russias is, in fact, a command) to spend her days in his palace as companion to Grand Duke Konstantin, his ten-year-old son. Philadelphia, U.S.A, the “Workshop of the World.

This book chronicles the long and tortured history of the NCAA's attempt to maintain the myth of amateurism and the student-athlete, along with the attendant fiction that the players academic achievement is the top priority of Division-I athletic programs. It is an indictment of the current system, making the case that big-time college sports cannot continue its connection to universities without undermining the mission of higher education. It concludes with bold proposals to separate big-time college sports from the university, transforming them into on-campus business operations.

Beyond Barron, the second volume of a memoir initiated by the publication of Back to Barron (in 2008), encompasses captivating humor and telling detail to narrate the story of author Van Tassel and his wife’s life together and their kindred careers. It focuses on schools and colleges and universities attended, taught at, and visited; homes purchased, built, modified, and redecorated; vehicles and pets acquired; and travels and forms of recreation that served as accompaniments to their academic careers and enhancements of family life.

This comprehensive account of California’s numerous and perilous natural disasters explores how a unique combination of forces has affected Californians throughout the state's history and carries a sobering message about our short disaster memories. California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns and regions frequently contend with destruction caused by earthquakes, floods, landslides and debris flows, and sea-level rise and coastal erosion.