Showing results by narrator "J. L." in All Categories

There's a big dull elephant in the boardroom: this meeting! Most of the millions of meetings held in the world today are a monumental waste of time and talent. Worse still, most of the so-called solutions and books for boring meetings are twice as boring. Boring Meetings Suck provides tips and tactics to deliver "Get-In, Get-It-Done, or Get-Out" style meetings, while also tackling what most prefer to avoid; that you don't have to be in charge of a meeting to take charge of a meeting.

Their nickname was the Magnificent Bastards and they were warriors without a war. Kept stateside after 9/11 and left floating in the Pacific during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the thousand Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment were told they were bench-warmers as America sent troops into combat. But war was waiting. Iraq would explode in violence exactly one year after a U.S.-led Coalition swept into Baghdad and the Magnificent Bastards would find themselves at the epicenter.

Fall of Crysin, Book I of the Irrillania Chronicles, begins the journey of Prince Jayden Rionthorne, sole heir to the throne of Crysin.

The West is facing a happiness crisis. Today, less than a quarter of American adults rate themselves as very happy—a record low. False views of happiness abound, and the explosion in “happiness studies” has done little to dispel them. Why is true happiness so elusive, and why is it so hard to define?

Poems for the thought behind the romance in your mind. Poems that are the kind of poems that make you wonder why you are alive. Poems that leave behind the very thought of time. Poems for the gothically inclined.

In "The Corpse as Big as the Ritz", Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and master of the "investigation of investigations", gives us a Hollywood noir with shades of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler: An inquiry into the "Dirty Little Death in the Desert" of David Whiting, the love-stricken business manager of actress Sarah Miles, who was found dead in the actress's hotel room during the filming of the Burt Reynold's Western The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.

Knit me into a cocoon. Help me eat a burrito. Pretend to be a chair at my dinner party. Wrestle a Komodo dragon. Race me in a lobster suit. Author Kelly Mahon posts absurd gig ads online and shares the conversations she had with the brave souls who wanted the job.

Bob Honey, the disillusioned divorcee with a penchant for murder by mallet, weaves his way toward Washington DC, for the ultimate showdown with a certain nefarious "landlord", but nothing is as it seems, and Bob will have more than just the government working against him. Part comedy and part thriller, Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn establishes Sean Penn as a fixture of the literary landscape for years to come.

Sold to a master weaver, a thirteen-year old apprentice called Fahng must divine the meaning of a “sampler” made of strings and bamboo to continue with her weaving sisterhood. Encoded in a forgotten language of knotted Patterns, the sampler is The Weaving Maiden's Mystery. Aided by clues from weaving lore and her master’s training in martial arts, dance, and fortune telling, Fahng discovers the guild’s wisdom and its closely guarded technique for making an exquisite gauze fabric. Her visionary talents lead her to become a weaving master in her own right.

Theodore yearns to RACE, to EARN his wins, to prove his WORTH. The only catch? Well, he’s a sloth, the slowest mammal ON THIS EARTH. But that can't stop a dream. With determination, a few good friends and a touch of science, Theo sets out to overcome his obstacles.

What if the state as we know it didn't exist? Our air would be poisonous, our votes uncounted, and our markets dysfunctional. Yet across the world, in countries as diverse as Hungary, Israel, the UK, and the US, attacks on the modern state and its workforce are intensifying. They are morphing into power grabs by self-aggrandizing politicians who attempt to seize control of the state for themselves and their cronies. What replaces the modern state once it is fatally undermined is not the free market and the flowering of personal liberty.

Walt Whitman is celebrated as an iconic American poet, but few know of the crucial and heroic role he played tending to the wounded and dying in Civil War hospitals. This nonfiction book highlights Whitman’s compassion and teaches an important lesson about empathy. New York Times-bestselling author Gary Golio and Caldecott Honor artist E. B. Lewis bring Whitman’s story and his passion for America to life.

Toddlers don’t come with a manual, but here’s the next best thing. We’re Parenting a Toddler! is a comprehensive guide to parenting toddlers, with tons of practical strategies and sympathy for first-time parents. Get sound advice and funny stories from a four-time parent who’s been in the toddler trenches, covering key situations from eating, sleeping, and tantrums, to potty training, communication, and so much more.

Aria's chronic illness has robbed her of freedom, friends, and romance. However, an incredible act of magic transforms her and she's swept into a mysterious and perilous new world of fae, sorcerers, and vampires. In the once-sleepy town of Colville, the sky cracks open and magic rains down, enchanting everything it touches. Aria and her classmates Claire, Sorin, and Michael start to manifest strange supernatural abilities.

Are you experiencing a challenge that you wish to overcome? Do you want to discover your hidden survival skills? Do you have a goal you have yet to achieve? Would you like to discover your instinctive strengths? Listen to this audiobook to learn more.

Baseball’s most outspoken fireballer brings the high heat—calling out the hacks, cheats, and ridiculous rules that have tarnished the game—and pitches A-plus stuff on how to make baseball pure, fun, and damn near perfect.

Built with the best of intentions and using alien technology, Abacus exists within an electromagnetic bubble that protects it from the ruined planet. The culture is meticulously constructed to exclude dogmatic thinking in an attempt to keep the population well and at peace. But what happens when a sociopath is born into the community? Emma Jones is fighting mad and, with a group of friends, works to recover her husband and stop his kidnapper before he wipes out the last people on Earth.

From the time G39, a marine rifleman in mankind’s distant future, is “born”, to the time he crash lands on an alien planet only a month later, his life is a dizzying onslaught of action and pain. Everything he does has to be in accordance with his superior’s wishes, or the control device implanted in the base of his skull will "correct" him…painfully.

The NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes: An Amateurism That Never Was provides a comprehensive historical, sociological, legal, financial, and managerial argument for the reclassification of profit-athletes as employees. Such a reclassification would permit profit-athletes to gain not only fair financial compensation but also equal access to educational benefits that have been promised but systematically denied. The authors trace how Power Five college sports have morphed into a hyper professionalized and commercialized sport-business enterprise.

Merging memoir, anecdotes, and masterclasses on guitar, songwriting, and the artist's mindset, Lay It on the Line offers insight and perspective into the many roles Rik Emmett took on. "It" was always a parboiling, psychological gumbo: and this book attempts to finally share the recipe.