Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Yen" in All Categories

When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and 1,800 pounds of pornographic fiction. Andrew had been considered the "king of 20th-century smut", with a writing career that began as a strategy to pay for his son's orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the 1970s, when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel reached its height. With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon.

Far too many executives, salespeople, consultants, and even rank-and-file employees suck at communicating. Some think that they're speaking and writing effectively when they drop ostensibly sophisticated terms like paradigm shift, synergy, net-net, form factor, and optics. Others think that they're being clever.

Nine million Americans are touched by aneurysms during their lifetimes. This is one story of love. Brainstorm is the candid and powerful memoir of the author's harrowing experience of an aneurysm and his road to recovery. It is a journey of love and devotion and a clash of medical beliefs and countercultures.

Phillip Springer has been grading diamonds since he was eight years old. His eyes are as sharp as any magnifying glass, and he has used them to turn the family diamond business into a global concern. Besides their love of diamonds, the Springers have another interest: the occult, ESP, and the mystical power of gems. Phillip has never fully believed in such superstition, but a sudden death in his family forces him to contemplate things he thought impossible.

The train slips across the horizon, its serial numbers painted over, its cars empty save for the soldiers who guard the cargo. Its mission is classified, but there are four men waiting in the night, keeping a close eye on the mysterious train. They know it carries something far more dangerous than a nuclear bomb, and they will do anything to get their hands on it. Unlocking the train's secrets requires a daring crime, and victory seems within their reach. But they did not count on Hazard.

All life on Earth is about to be terminated by an entity as old as the galaxy itself. To make matters worse, Simon has broken everything already. In a future world that is run by computer systems and that is without want, how can a man find his role? Then, if the very computers he works on to try to make them more human suddenly try to kill him, revealing a secret so vast that it affects every living soul on the planet, can that man be a hero?

Markos is an officer on a ship sent from Earth to investigate probe reports of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Markos is killed by the commander of this mission, and is then resurrected in an alien body by a race of aliens who need him to stop an interstellar war. But will he ever become human again?

Coward. It’s a grave insult, likely to provoke anger, shame, even violence. But what exactly is cowardice? When terrorists are called cowards, does it mean the same as when the term is applied to soldiers? And what, if anything, does cowardice have to do with the rest of us? Bringing together sources from court-martial cases to literary and film classics such as Dante’s Inferno, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Thin Red Line, Cowardice recounts the great harm that both cowards and the fear of seeming cowardly have done, and traces the idea of cowardice’s power to its evolutionary roots.

A series of developments capped by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision have effectively crowned a bunch of billionaires and their operatives the new kings of politics. Big Money is a rollicking tour of a new political world dramatically reordered by ever-larger flows of cash. Ken Vogel has breezed into secret gatherings of big-spending Republicans and Democrats alike, from California poolsides to DC hotel bars, to brilliantly expose the way the mega-money men (and rather fewer women) are dominating the new political landscape.

In Obsessed: The Compulsions and Creations of Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, author Steve Volk ventures deep into the mind of Jeffrey Schwartz, a controversial, often combative psychiatrist and expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Considered a pariah among his academic peers, Schwartz’s unconventional treatment methods draw on his fascination with the Holocaust, his experience with Buddhist meditation and his pioneering work documenting the neural circuitry of OCD.

The story of the rise of modern navigation technology, from radio location to GPS—and the consequent decline of privacy. What does it mean to never get lost? You Are Here examines the rise of our technologically aided era of navigational omniscience—or how we came to know exactly where we are at all times. Filled with tales of scientists and astronauts, inventors and entrepreneurs, You Are Here tells the story of how humankind ingeniously solved one of its oldest and toughest problems—only to herald a new era in which it’s impossible to hide.

A stand-alone novella in the Dale Kinsall mystery series (Nose for Trouble; Scent of Danger): Who really has the nose for trouble…Flagstaff veterinarian Dale Kinsall or his young Beagle Sully? A trip to New Mexico for a tracking dog test leaves Dale with as many questions as answers…especially when Sully, true to form, tracks his way to more than the final glove.

His life's work and ambition fulfilled, Francis Brimm believes the only metamorphosis left him is a slow, affable decline toward death. So he returns to the town of his youth and to his sister, Muriel, whose life has been as uneventful as Francis's has been exciting.But life is not about to let Francis go. Faces from the past haunt him, surprises in the present unsettle him. And suddenly, two people who thought their lives were over find themselves struggling not to be overwhelmed by new knowledge, hidden truths, and unexpected danger.

A follow-up to his 1970 science fiction collection, The General Zapped an Angel, Fast’s book of 13 new science fiction stories is brisk and engrossing. In "The Hoop", a scientist builds a portal to an unknown destination, which the mayor of New York City hijacks to use as a garbage dump until the location’s surprising, and hilarious, revelation. And in "The Egg", set 3,000 years in the future, a research team discovers an egg, something they have never seen before, cryogenically frozen in a nuclear bunker. These 13 stories are bizarre, hilarious, poignant, and sure to entertain.

The award-winning, bestselling author's first novel. The beamjacks work in zero-gravity constructing satellites in the vacuum of deepest space. And they're not going to let the military control them anymore.

NEA's Reach for Power exposes the National Education Association (NEA) for what it really is and provides a hands-on guide for teachers, parents, and communties to increase their voices in bringing education back to the children.

We all have a story to tell. And that's what this book is about. It's a collection of 35 true stories of forgiveness to inspire and encourage you. These stories come from 33 different people from various walks of life. So, no matter where you are at in your journey of life, we believe you will find hope while listening to this book. Unshackled and Free Freedom...isn't that what we truly want? To be unshackled and free from whatever holds us back and imprisons us.

Frustrated 35-year-old plumber Isaac Sullivan believes he has both the intellect and skill to be a surgeon. Forced to take over his father's plumbing business straight out of high school, Isaac's dreams of attending the University of Michigan fell by the wayside. However, the unfortunate setback didn't stop him entirely. For the past decade, he has absorbed every medical textbook and journal available to him. For practical experience, Isaac performs surgeries on the wildlife around his house, preparing for the day he attends Michigan.

He had to keep moving, that the man instinctively knew. He had to get away, from the rioting, the lawlessness, the killing. Away from the brutal gangs that ruled the highways. Then there was the boy that he found along the way, an orphan with no place to go. He couldn't leave the child behind; that would be murder. Together they had to make their way across the razed landscape of post-collapse America, west to where there was safety, a chance to begin again. If only they survived the journey.

In The Sum of Our Dreams, Louis P. Masur offers a sweeping yet compact history of America from its beginnings to the current moment. Evoking Barack Obama's belief that America remains the "sum of its dreams", Masur locates the origin of those dreams - of freedom, equality, and opportunity - and traces their progress chronologically, illuminating the nation's struggle over time to articulate and fulfill their promise.