Showing results by narrator "Christopher Lane" in All Categories

July 1864. Union officer Nathan Parker has been imprisoned at nightmarish Andersonville prison camp in Georgia along with his soldiers. As others die around them, Nathan and his men hatch a daring plan to allow him to escape through a tunnel and make his way to Vicksburg, where he intends to alert his superiors to the imprisonment and push for military action.

Late October, 1962. Wes Avery, a one-time air force tail-gunner, is living his version of the American Dream as loving husband to Sarah, doting father to 17-year-old Charlotte, and owner of a successful Texaco station along central Florida's busiest highway. But after President Kennedy announces that the Soviets have nuclear missiles in Cuba, army convoys clog the highways and the sky fills with fighter planes. Within days, Wes' carefully constructed life begins to unravel.

One of the most dynamic eras in American history, the 1920s began with a watershed year that would set the tone for the century to follow. The Roaring Twenties is the only decade in American history with a widely applied nickname, and our collective fascination with this era continues. But how did this surge of innovation and cultural milestones emerge out of the ashes of World War I?

Thirty years hasn't changed Las Vegas - the desert just got dirtier. The biggest game in town centers on a massive, deadly roller coaster that winds its way through the Strip's most famous attractions. On the first Saturday of every month, twenty-four desperate passengers get strapped into the notorious ride and gamble with their lives in a twisted game of chance, to the thrill of webcast audiences worldwide. One of them will win, and one will die, but the other twenty-two will escape with nothing but their lives.

Junior exec Ben thought working for a prestigious bank in Hong Kong would be a career-building adventure and an exotic change from his staid Long Island upbringing. In the complex splendor of Hong Kong, he finds himself in a position of extreme privilege - a position in which everything is seen as a commodity. When he and his colleagues take an outing on the South China Sea to escape the city smog, a sordid secret is revealed.

Capturing the seedy and sordid side of life isn't anything new for photojournalist-turned-paparazzo Graham Wells. But when a shoot turns deadly - secretly causing the car crash that takes the lives of two beloved public figures - he knows the ensuing media spotlight could easily destroy him. Fortunately, no one else knows his shameful secret except for a mysterious CIA operative, and that clandestine agent swears he'll keep quiet...for a price.

Donald S. Crowley was a CPA by day; a bean counter; a number cruncher and a certified bore. By night he was as stimulating as the hero in his latest read with all the social skills of a brick and to make matters worse he was in love with a door. Not just any door, number four was special. Her alluring smile had caught Donald's eye when he was just a boy and she called him by name.

They were a family. The young father, haunted by his own parents’ disappointment, can’t manage to complete his doctorate, nor can he imagine being able to earn a living or pursue a career. Just as he comes to terms with being a stay-at-home dad, leaving his wife to provide for the family, she hits him with a shocking surprise. As the father begins to hope for a return to the lifestyle he enjoyed before fatherhood, he finally finds the inspiration to see something through to the end.

A Jewish teenager on the hunt for black-market tight pants and rock records, Svyatoslav somehow fails to develop his undying love for Lyuba into a happy ending. He finds work in a mental institution, runs off to Kiev with one of the patients, marries a few times, has a son, becomes a professor, and halfheartedly runs interference for the KGB.

Mary Morrissey is living the life of her dreams. She has a loving husband, Tom, two daughters, and twin boys. But beneath the shiny veneer, Mary hasn’t taken a calm breath in 10 years. She lives in a constant state of panic, afraid the secret she’s kept hidden for so long will be revealed, shattering her perfect life. When addictively charismatic ex-boyfriend Landon James reappears during his high-profile Senate campaign, Mary’s fears become even more real.

For the McWilliams children, life is forever altered the day a terrorist bomb blast rips through the train carrying them across Italy, instantly killing their parents. Dazed and frightened, Charlotte, Oliver, and baby Julia cling to oldest brother Sam, who - only seven at the time - is haunted by every detail.

These masterly poems span the whole of Nabokov's career from "Music", written in 1914, to the short, playful "To Vera", composed in 1974. The works are newly translated by Dmitiri Nabokov, and include "The University Poem", an extraordinary autobiographical poem in which Nabokov recalls his life in Cambridge, with its crooked alleys and age-old gates, teas at the vicar's and British girls. Included to are such poems as "To Russia" ("Will you leave me alone! I implore you!), the enchanting "Eve", and verse about America, sport, love, and poetry itself.

When he mysteriously finds himself drawn into a world of his own devising, writer Rod Everlar is confronted by a shocking truth: he has lost control of his creation to a brooding cabal of evil. In order to save his creation - and himself - he must seize control of Falconfar and halt the spread of corruption before it's too late.

Dark Lord is the first epic installment in The Falconfar Saga, from best-selling author Ed Greenwood.

Angered by assaults on a nation he knows and admires, the distinguished French intellectual Jean-Francois Revel has come to America's defense in Anti-Americanism, a biting and erudite book that, paradoxically, given his country's especially vehement attack on the U.S., spent several weeks last year at the top of France's best seller list.

Montana native Gabriel Du Pre has been hired as a consultant by a group of filmmakers shooting a documentary on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Du Pre is a descendent of a Metis fiddler and voyageur named Cruzatte who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their journey. And Du Pre's daughter, Maria, has been cast in the role of Sacajawea. But trouble is afoot. First a fire damages the film props, and then two bodies are fished out of the river. Someone doesn't want them there.

From the station-houses to the joy-houses, they knew about Mike Carmody. He was the best cop money could buy. And when the Syndicate boys said jump, Carmody knew just how high. But they couldn't buy Carmody's kid brother Eddie. And when Eddie turned against them, the Mob snuffed him out like a nickel cigar.

A serial killer is on the loose in Providence, Rhode Island, and he’s killing women who, in life, were anything but angels. Yet when homicide detective Danny Martell arrives on the scene, he finds the victims have been elaborately made up, with fabric wings attached to their lifeless bodies. The papers have dubbed the killings “the Angel Murders” - but it isn’t long before the crime wave drags Danny into his own personal hell.

Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. How many of us now work from home, our wireless economy allowing and encouraging us to work 24/7? How many of us talk to our children while scrolling through e-mails on our BlackBerrys? How many of us feel overextended, as we are challenged to play multiple roles - worker, boss, parent, spouse, friend, and client - all in the same instant?

Dalton Conley, social scientist and writer, provides us with an X-ray view of our new social reality. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., Conley connects our daily experience with occasionally overlooked sociological changes: women's increasing participation in the labor force; rising economic inequality generating anxiety among successful professionals; the individualism of the modern era - the belief in self-actualization and expression - being replaced by the need to play different roles in the various realms of one's existence. In this groundbreaking book, Conley offers an essential understanding of how the technological, social, and economic changes that have reshaped our world are also reshaping our individual lives.

In this sizzling debut, J. J. Salem relentlessly lays bare the private behavior of public people in the fast-paced media spotlight. From Manhattan to the Hamptons, from Miami to Hollywood, the settings are larger than life, but the intimate realities hit straight to the heart.

The Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, is thought of as a mysterious, almost mythical place for the cure of the rich and famous, among them Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minelli, Tony Curtis, and Robert Mitchum.