Showing results by narrator "David De Vries" in All Categories

By the early 1970s, practically everyone under a certain age liked rock music, but not everyone liked it for the same reasons. We typically associate the sounds of classic rock 'n' roll with youthful rebellion by juvenile delinquents, student demonstrators, idealistic hippies, or irreverent punks. But in this insightful and timely book, author George Case shows how an important strain of rock music from the late 1960s onward spoke to and represented an idealized self-portrait of a very different audience.

George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the 19th century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West.

Henry Lindon's flight across the north Atlantic was turbulent and sleepless. His plane has just touched down in Amsterdam, where he’s come to work as a visiting professor. Lindon is torn about leaving his troubled wife, Marylou, behind in Dallas, but relieved and excited to start a new chapter in a lively city. But troubles from the past soon cross the Atlantic. Lindon discovers that notorious Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren, born in 1899, is about to play a part in Lindon’s own personal drama.

Imagine flipping through old family albums. The faces are familiar; their true stories lost to time — half-forgotten family anecdotes woven together by generations of proud aunts and kindly grandmothers conceal more than they reveal.

After the performance of a lifetime at the sold-out Stade de France, comic Édouard Bresson decides to vanish. Très drôle. His estranged son Arthur isn’t laughing. Édouard has sent him a letter and instructions to a puzzle - a treasure hunt for the son he ignored and misses and loves. If Arthur is willing to find out everything there is to know about his father and to understand the choices he made, all he has to do is put the pieces together. As the trail of clues winds its way through the past, what unfolds is a surprising journey of forgiveness, family, and self-discovery.

On the storm-swollen Aisne in northeastern France, an alcoholic actor combats both his demons and nature’s tempests. Along the Main and Rhine in Germany, a kindhearted logger has but one wish: to travel with the lumber from his small Franconian hometown to the end of the river in the Netherlands, where it feeds into the majestic North Sea. In a bucolic vale in the French region of Brittany, two families, divided by religion and an unnamed stream, sustain a centuries-old feud, their resolve no match for the constantly shifting flow of water.

This is not your typical afternoon at the library. It's Family Fun Day, and a magical man with a big hat has suddenly appeared. A crowd gathers to see what kinds of tricks this surprise visitor will perform. That's when the Magician pulls off his favorite trick of all. He invites kids to reach into his hat to pull out whatever they find when they dig down deep. Soon - poof! - each child comes away with something better than they could've imagined - a book that helps them become whatever they want to be, and makes their dreams come true through words and the adventures that follow.

In France, Johnson is like an alien from another planet. Everything is strange to him. His goal is to speak French without going to prison, drive without being squashed like a bug, dance the tango without losing his marriage, and belt out a tune with a world-class jazz combo without being booed off the stage. Repeatedly, the author fearlessly steps into harm's way. He joins a summer acting troop and witnesses the French version of sexual liberation.

Searching for Islamic terrorist Mohammed, a British MI6 agent and French Foreign Legionnaire cross paths as one seeks Mohammed for help to stop slaughter in Beirut while the other is on a mission of revenge for his brother who was killed by Mohammed's terrorist cell. They are caught in a cat and mouse chase that reveals the depths to which Rosa, a remorseless Palestinian guerrilla, will go to protect Mohammed, and the tragedies facing innocent residents of Beirut like Anne-Marie, who is caught in the middle.

When a ten-year-old girl's mutilated body is found in a public park in Paris, chief of police Nico Sirsky takes action. But his elite team of homicide detectives isn't on the case for even twenty-four hours before a second child is found murdered and left to rot inside a middle-school classroom. With the City of Light on edge awaiting another gruesome discovery, the clock starts ticking for Sirsky to catch the elusive killer who calls himself the gamemaster.

When Grampa's friend drops off his chicken, Malicia, at the Bed and Biscuit for a well-earned vacation, Ernest the mini-pig is determined to put aside his dislike for chickens and be a good host. But Malicia is no ordinary chicken: she’s magic! And she seems determined to use her magic to make the animals miserable. Together with Gabby the mynah bird, Milly the cat, and Sir Walter the Scottish terrier, Ernest must figure out a way to get Grampa to see how awful Malicia really is - before she does something truly terrible!

The Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse has gone wild! Grampa Bender is temporarily caring for a wounded Canada goose, a cranky old muskrat, and two starving fox kits. Luckily Ernest, Grampa’s capable mini-pig, is there to encourage the other animals to be good hosts. But the visiting creatures are wild, not tame, and they all just want to go home! Despite the chaos, Ernest also takes on the training of Sir Walter the Scottie, the newest addition to Grampa’s blended animal family.

Grampa Bender couldn’t run the Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse without the help of Ernest the mini-pig, Gabby the Vietnamese mynah bird, and his young cat, Milly. These three animals think of themselves as Grampa’s family, and they have always assumed he felt the same way.

Finding murderers is just a day on the job for police captain Nadia Barka. But when a mutilated corpse is discovered in an old baptistery, she's faced with some difficult questions: Who left a young woman's body in a high-security museum in the middle of the night? And where is the victim's heart?

Ed and Kim experience unexpected consequences when they try to reunite their adopted daughter with her Native American heritage. The couple decides to take turns splitting their time between their Seattle condo and the second home they've built on the Montana prairie so Kaitlyn can get to know her birthplace.

"Spore" follows hard-working Rosália, a manicurist who has built herself a solid reputation and is trusted by her wealthy clients; that is, until she unexpectedly discovers her own dark side. Now she will have to go to great lengths to hide her twisted urges.

The detective is losing his mind. Suffering from a panic disorder that has him haunting emergency rooms in rising waves of crisis, the detective begins to lose his grip - on his relationship with his fiery young lover, on his ability to work, on his health.

Phelan Tierney helps people who hope to start their lives over. When a young woman he's taken under his wing disappears, the former lawyer devotes himself to finding her - despite her puzzlingly unhelpful family and his own ghosts.

In these funny, surprising, and touching stories, Gordon gets at the big stuff - art and religion, literature and madness, the supernatural, and the dark fringes of sexuality - in his own unique style, described by novelist Rivka Galchen as "Dashiell Hammett divided by Don DeLillo, to the power of Dostoyevsky - yet still pure David Gordon."

A young man fleeing heartbreak back home meets a mysterious expat at a café in Paris. What begins as a friendly conversation between two outsiders soon transforms into a heart-pounding confession that threatens to shake both men to their cores. In this darkly funny, Sopranos-meets-Sebald page-turner by acclaimed mystery writer David Gordon, people aren’t always what they seem, and digging for the truth could have fatal consequences.