Showing results by narrator "Robert Petkoff" in All Categories

A revealing biography of Dr. Benjamin Rush - fiery signer of the Declaration of Independence, prominent physician, ardent politician, zealous social reformer, passionate humanitarian, and dedicated educator. Known primarily as America's most influential and leading physician, Rush was also among the first to call for the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, free education and health care for the poor, slum clearance, citywide sanitation facilities, an end to child labor, and universal public education, among other causes.

In 1908, 16-year-old Bridey runs away from her small town in Ireland with her same-age sweetheart, Thom. But when Thom dies suddenly of ship fever on their ocean crossing, Bridey finds herself alone and pregnant in a strange new world. Forced by circumstance to give up the baby for adoption, Bridey finds work as a maid for the Hollingworth family at a lavish, sprawling estate. She cares for the Hollingworth children as if they were her own, until a mysterious death changes Bridey and the household forever.

Deserts of sand and deserts of the heart, Middle Eastern deserts and American deserts: Two Deserts, a collection of stories, follows the circles of two unforgettable women across cultures and deserts. The Arabian circle includes a 17-year-old girl yearning for freedom and a Muslim mother plotting to rescue her son from a jihadist movement. The American circle includes a hooker who is training her daughter for the life, a priest in love, and a club of women whose husbands are dying.

It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.

Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on 40. He’s recently called off a wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Superbowl commercial for his diaper account in record time. Fortunately, it gets worse....

I'm Just No Good at Rhyming is this century's most acclaimed comedic poetry collection so far, described as "a worthy heir to Silverstein, Seuss, and even Ogden Nash" (PublishersWeekly), "wildly imaginative...inspired and inspiring" (Kirkus), and as "everything a book for kids should be" (B.J. Novak). Now, Chris Harris delivers all that and more with dazzling new heights of creativity, kooky conundrums, witty wordsmithing, and of course, wacky laugh-out-loud fun!

Pamela Colman Smith, newly arrived from New York to her birthplace of London, is received as an oddball in Victorian society. Her second sight helps her in her new job: illustrating tarot cards for the Golden Dawn, a newly formed occult group. But when Pamela refuses to share her creations with Aleister Crowley, a controversial magician, he issues a threat: give up the cards’ power, or he’ll harm her muses.

Tara Beckley is a senior at idyllic Hammel College in Maine. As she drives to deliver a visiting professor to a conference, a horrific car accident kills the professor and leaves Tara in a vegetative state. At least, so her doctors think. In fact, she's a prisoner of locked-in syndrome: fully alert but unable to move a muscle. Trapped in her body, she learns that someone powerful wants her dead - but why? And what can she do, lying in a hospital bed, to stop them?