Showing results by narrator "Sean Patrick Hopkins" in All Categories

Stephen King has fully authorised a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology, as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today's greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand - brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.

One moment Ruby Grace is an ordinary girl enjoying a ski trip in the Adirondack Mountains, and the next she’s running through the woods as a wolf. When she’s herself again, she seeks refuge in the house of Connor Ward, the mysterious and devastatingly gorgeous guy whose party she attended the night before. She tells him what happened, and he drops the biggest bombshell of her life: she’s a wolf shifter. Except when Ruby tries to use shifter magic, nothing happens. Which relegates her to the bottom tier of shifter society. Basically, lower than dirt.

Kissinger's six leaders are Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher. All of them were formed in a period when established institutions collapsed all over Europe, colonial structures gave way to independent states in Asia and Africa, and a new international order had to be created from the vestiges of the old.

In Nature and The Mind, leading neuroscientist Dr Marc Berman explains how nature captures attention in ways that lead to improvements in cognitive performance, but also in self-control, reduced aggression, and crime. His research shows the different ways that interaction with nature also increases self-reflective thought and spirituality. Incredibly, you don’t even need to like being in nature to get these benefits. Some of them can be obtained from proximity with architecture, art, or stimuli that simply mimic patterns of nature.

It's autumn in Harrow, but something is changing in the town besides the season. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard grows a new sort of apple: strange and beautiful, with skin so red it's nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples and you will you will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But soon your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing - and become darker.

In Dr. Steven Gundry’s breakout best-seller The Plant Paradox, people learned the surprising truth about foods that have long been regarded as healthy. Lectins - a type of protein found in fruits, vegetables, legumes, dairy, and grains - wreak havoc on the gut, creating systemic inflammation and laying the groundwork for disease and weight gain. Now, in The Plant Paradox Quick and Easy, Dr. Gundry makes it simpler than ever to go lectin-free. His 30-day challenge offers incentives, support, and results along with a toolkit for success.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

Joseph and Evelyn’s New England beach homes have been side by side for generations. And in the summer of 1941, on the shores where they were raised, these two childhood friends fell in love. Now, more than sixty years later, Joseph and Evelyn gather their three grown children to share the staggering news: in one year’s time, they will end their lives on their own terms. She has received a diagnosis and he cannot – will not – live without her.

Hoist the mizzenmast and batten down those bloody hatches: Pirates! Scoundrels Who Shook the World tells the hilarious-but-true adventures of history’s most amazing pirates.

A vast and largely unseen transformation of how war is fought as profound as the invention of gunpowder or advent of the nuclear age is occurring. Flying cars that can land like helicopters, artificial intelligence-powered drones that can fly into buildings and map their interiors, microsatellites that can see through clouds and monitor rogue missile sites—all these and more are becoming part of America’s DIU-fast-tracked arsenal. Until recently, the Pentagon was known for its uncomfortable relationship with Silicon Valley and for slow-moving processes that acted as a brake on innovation.

Ten percent of people whose hearts stop and then restart report near-death experiences. Stories of lights, tunnels and reunion with late loved ones have been relayed - and dismissed - since ancient times. But when Dr Bruce Greyson's patients started describing events that he simply could not dismiss, he began to investigate. In After, he shares the scientific revelations of four decades of research into the dying process. He has become increasingly convinced that dying is less an ending than a transition, the threshold between one form of consciousness and another.

In Conscious Luck, New York Times best-selling authors Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline share eight secrets - four core shifts and four daily practices - that will allow anyone to intentionally change their fortune. Instead of living at the whim of luck, waiting for the winds of chance to offer opportunities and success, Conscious Luck shows you how to seize control of your destiny, cultivate your own luck, and create the life you want to live.

When Isabel Marshall moved away from her hometown with hopes of making a name for herself in Los Angeles, she didn’t mean to abandon her roots, but that’s what happened. Now, four years later and having amassed an interior design empire, Isabel must return to Mapleton to film a home renovation special for her TV show. While most of the village welcomes her with open arms, her family and the ex-boyfriend she left in her dust are another story.

Farnum has always been terrified of adventure, content to run his zoo in the safety of the same town he’s lived in for most of his life. But how will he ever expand his zoo without exploring the Overworld in search of new mobs for it? Piglin Kritten is advisor to the Great Bungus, piglin brute and ruler of a bastion remnant. At least, they were. Now, they’ll do anything to ensure their survival. What happens when Farnum and Kritten’s worlds collide and the old legends of a piglin invasion appear to be coming true?

If you love mysteries with action, suspense and a touch of humor and romance, then the David Wolf series is for you.

No organization is totally free from destructive friction; the forces that make it harder, more complicated and sometimes downright impossible to get things done. Drawing on years of research and featuring case studies on the likes of Uber, Netflix and Boeing, The Friction Project teaches listeners how to become 'friction fixers'. Stanford professors Sutton and Rao unpack how we should think and act like trustees of others' time. They provide friction forensics to help listeners identify where to avert and repair bad friction, and where to maintain and inject good friction.

Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there's a psychological force just as powerful - yet almost nobody has heard of it. It's responsible for binging groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fuelling cycles of anxiety and guilt. According to French polymath René Girard, humans don't desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic - we imitate what other people want.

IIf we continue as we are, with birth rates falling globally, the world’s human population will peak in the next few decades – and then begin a sudden and rapid decline. It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better: better for the planet, better for the people who remain. In After the Spike, two leading population economists ask us to think again.

Suleika has kept a journal her whole life. Journalling has marked her greatest triumphs and buoyed her in her toughest moments. Featuring writing prompts, essays and wisdom from one hundred contributors and serving as a companion during challenging times, The Book of Alchemy explores themes such as fear, love, beginnings, memory, the body and purpose. In doing so, the book offers encouragement, direction and gives readers the tools to engage with discomfort, to ask questions, to peel back the layers and uncover their truest selves.

It seems obvious that pleasure leads to happiness - and pain does the opposite. And yet we are irresistibly drawn to a host of experiences that truly hurt, from the exhilarating fear of horror movies or extreme sport, to the wrenching sadness of a song or novel, to the gruelling challenges of exercise, work, creativity and having a family. In The Sweet Spot, pre-eminent psychologist Paul Bloom explores the pleasures of suffering and explains why the activities that provide most satisfaction are often the ones that involve greatest sacrifice.