Showing results by narrator "Paul Boehmer" in All Categories

All it took to destroy Andy Nocera's seemingly perfect life was an anonymous tryst at an Interstate rest area. Sentenced to probation and thrown out by his wife, he spends his week as a traveling salesman, and his weekends at his mother's house where no questions are asked - and no explanations are offered. To clear his record, the State of North Carolina requires Andy to complete one year of therapy without another arrest. He attends his sessions reluctantly at first, struggling to comprehend why he would risk everything.

Five years ago, successful architect Wade Benson killed a young woman when he fell asleep at the wheel. His punishment: two days in jail for every year of his probation. But for one friend of the victim’s family - an ex-marine named Darryl Potter - this punishment isn’t enough. Potter sets out to even the score by kidnapping Benson’s 20-year-old daughter. It’s a bad, bad plan, and only Mike Barlowe, Potter’s former combat buddy, knows how to stop it.

Matthew Worth is a mess. Somewhere between a good cop and a bad screwup, he botched a marriage and a career. His fellow officers think he’s a joke. His commanders are tired of cutting him breaks. Even his wife has left him for a flashy homicide detective. Busted to night patrol at a robbery-prone Omaha supermarket, Worth is doing time, wearing his uniform and asking shoppers if they want paper or plastic. If that isn’t enough, he suspects he might be falling for Gwen, the shy checkout girl who may be an even bigger mess than he is. It couldn’t get any worse. Until it does.

To many people, Lucia Chase (1897-1986) was the American Ballet Theatre, and her reign as the queen of American ballet lasted for more than four decades. It was Chase who brought Nureyev, Bujones, Kirkland, and eventually Baryshnikov to ABT. Under her leadership, the company worked with such legends as Agnes de Mille, Anthony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, and Twyla Tharp. Her drive, ambition, tenacity, and money kept the doors open even during the lean years. A dancer when the company made its debut in 1940, she was artistic director for an unprecedented thirty-five years, from 1945 to 1980.

Thirty original stories - each inspired by a Janis Ian song - from some of the biggest names in science fiction and fantasy, including: Tad Williams, Harry Turtledove, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, John Varley, Mercedes Lackey, Judith Tarr, Janis Ian, and others.

Today's business environment poses unprecedented perils for the average American as for the first time ever, more than half of Americans now own stock. Identifying the problems of the past, Skeel offers a strikingly new diagnosis of the fundamental flaws in corporate America today, and of what can be done to fix them.

Wooed away from a top job at a competing firm by Ed Roth with promises of breaking the glass ceiling when she succeeds him as the head of the investment bank Drake Carlson, Kate learns that she has real potential for the top spot. First, she must prove her worth by unconventionally putting together an IPO for a small games maker whose most valuable but unknown asset may be a painting stolen from a Jewish family as they fled Austria after the Nazi invasion. Kate’s professional challenges play out amid a family crisis: Her husband’s company is imploding and he may have to relocate to a remote part of China to save even a small portion of his business.

Ernie Davis was an All-American on the gridiron and a man of integrity off the field. A multi-sport high school star in Elmira, New York, Davis went on to Syracuse University, where as a sophomore he led his team to an undefeated season and a national championship in 1959, and earned his nickname: the Elmira Express. Two seasons later, Davis broke the legendary Jim Brown's rushing records and became the first black athlete to be awarded the Heisman Trophy.

Teddy is the leading candidate in the race to become the new U.S. senator. But behind his golden public persona lie some darker truths: his daughter has barely spoken to him since his divorce from her mother and he is estranged from his own mother. So when his sister asks Teddy to spend some time with their mother before Alzheimer's steals her mind, Teddy balks. But his campaign manager sees an opportunity for a photo op that will jack up his poll numbers, and Teddy reluctantly agrees to the trip.

Greta Lipinski's biological clock is about to run out of batteries. She’s always wanted children, and the fact that she isn’t married isn’t about to stop her. Her track record for dating losers is just further proof that she doesn’t need a man to have a baby. Seeking out the help Dr. Alec Thurston, a renowned New England fertility expert, Greta initiates the fertility process. Alec, the privileged son of wealthy but distant parents, grew up barely knowing the meaning of the word "family". He loves his job, and is happy to help Greta fulfill her dreams, but fatherhood is not for him....

A man will endlessly torture his muscles until they shriek and complain. But he will not give in. He will take a hammer to his ceiling until the neighbors begin to watch from the window and the journalists knock at the door. He will continue to train and hack away at the house until it is finished and the trapeze is in place. Although his parents thought he was nice and kindhearted and teachers saw him as a good boy, secretly he hated his drab, ordered world and longed for more.

Glorette Picard is dead. Her body was found in the alley behind a taqueria, half-hidden by wild tobacco trees, but no one—not Sidney, who knew she worked that alley, not her son Victor who memorizes SAT words to avoid the guys selling rock out of dryers in the Launderland, not her uncle Enrique, who everyone knows will be the one to hunt down her killer—saw her die.

This is not a hair book. It's a dark comedy of a spiritual misfit, a child with a dream born into the wrong town. Religious cults, corporate cults, and insane clients - Francis can't catch a break. Francis has observed his own inability to fit in since birth, and his decision to be a professional cosmetologist only exacerbates his innate oddness.

Ira Stoll's fascinating biography not only restores this figure to his rightful place in history but portrays him as a man of God whose skepticism of a powerful central government, uncompromising support for freedom of the press, concern about the influence of money on elections, voluble love of liberty, and selfless endurance in a war for freedom has enormous relevance to Americans today.

Locked away for a crime he didn't commit, Patrick spends his days in lockup making sure every hardened criminal behind bars with him knows he's the biggest and baddest of them all. But with the help of his handy little gift of teleportation, his nights are spent watching a certain green-eyed goddess from the shadows. When he discovers a couple of Inheritors stalking her one night, he realizes the obstacle of explaining who and what he is to Emma might not be the biggest battle they face.

In Drawn, a mysterious little boy has begun appearing in the paintings of an artist who can't remember ever actually seeing him. A partially blind, disfigured agoraphobic who suffers crippling panic attacks if he even tries to leave his apartment is forced out by an unseen entity. A lonely widower begins to suffer terrifying nightmares that his long-missing, presumed-dead son is still alive and in mortal danger. A young runaway realizes that a man he thought was his traveling companion is actually his captor...and a predator.

Based on the life of an actual soldier who claimed to have fought at Bunker Hill, Israel Potter is unique among Herman Melville's books: a novel in the guise of a biography. In telling the story of Israel Potter's fall from Revolutionary War hero to peddler on the streets of London, where he obtained a livelihood by crying "Old Chairs to Mend," Melville alternated between invented scenes and historical episodes, granting cameos to such famous men of the era as Benjamin Franklin.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair's extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform.

Everybody Who's Nobody Goes There. The place is gaudy yet drab, lively yet death-like, dispassionate mother hen to a brood of dithered chicks. Discover its bizarre existence from the inside, through the muddled collective mind of the outcast in-group, a gay throng of third-sex bewildered ones who frantically seek a why -but must always settle for The Why Not.

Enjoy the traditions of holidays past with this classic collection of fun and touching stories. Includes selected readings from Charles Dickens' timeless "A Christmas Carol"; the text of the original newspaper editorial "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus", which has become an indelible part of popular Christmas folklore; O. Henry's unforgettable "The Gift of the Magi"; and much more....