Showing results by narrator "David Devries" in All Categories

Some locales seem to come with their own soundtrack. Don Ho and his tiny bubbles provide the background music for Hawaii, Edith Piaf for Paris. The reggae of Bob Marley evokes Jamaica. The soundtrack for Alabama is without question provided by our troubled troubadour Hank Williams. The 2016 biography Hank by Mark Ribowsky paints a dark picture of the musician's short, alcoholic, drug-filled life: a life of loneliness and pain. He goes so far as to call Hank's life story "noir-ish"....

In this fast-paced, cluttered, and global marketplace, new influences are constantly affecting your business. Today's sophisticated consumers are searching for products that meet an emotional need, have added value, and come with no purchase risk. They want environmentally friendly products, and its important that they buy from businesses that share their core beliefs. Despite these demands, effective marketing still comes down to knowledge, empathy, and communication.

Most emerging markets investment guides focus on financial metrics, but fail to provide the listener with new and relevant insights into the history of the countries, the views of the people on the street, and the financial shenanigans that go on behind the scenes, that make for truly informed investing. As a result, despite the growing interest in investing in these markets, investors are often missing key opportunities because they either have incorrect information about a country where they might invest, or simply don't know what questions they should be asking.

Most of us assume our success relies on a network of friends and close contacts. But innovative thinking requires a steady stream of fresh ideas and new possibilities, which strangers are more likely to introduce. Our survival instincts naturally cause us to look upon strangers with suspicion and distrust, but in The Necessity of Strangers, Alan Gregerman offers the provocative idea that engaging with strangers is an opportunity, not a threat, and that engaging with the right strangers is essential to unlocking our real potential.

Baffled by the stereotypes presented by Hollywood and much historical fiction, many other Americans find the contemporary American Indian an enigma. Compounding their confusion is the highly publicized struggle of the contemporary Indian for self-determination, lost land, cultural preservation, and fundamental human rights - a struggle dramatized both by public acts of protest and by precedent-setting legal actions. American Indians, American Justice explores the complexities of the present Indian situation, particularly with regard to legal and political rights.

With disparate settings such as a Massachusetts farmhouse and the strange volcanic clime of the Enchanted Isles, this six-story anthology features some of Herman Melville’s most exceptional works. Included here is “Bartleby,” the dark tale of a Wall Street clerk who possesses a confounding and disarmingly passive insubordination; and “Benito Cereno,” in which the captain of a whaler boards a tattered Spanish slave ship in South America only to be drawn into an intricately plotted mutiny.

In the guise of political revolutionary Thomas Paine, bioengineer Peter Bernhardt brought down the corrupt and powerful Phoenix Club - and then turned revolution into evolution by becoming the first artificial human intelligence: Major Tom. In the two years since Major Tom revealed his digital existence and spread his freedom manifesto, he has been revered as a god and vilified as a demon. The United States and Europe have splintered into ideologically independent regions. Russia and China prepare to expand their empires.

During the Nazi occupation, fifteen-year-old Paul Vertune, the sensitive son of wheat farmers, prefers gazing at the ocean and contemplating life's mysteries over toiling in the fields of the Brittany coast. One fateful day, Paul's life is spared by a compassionate German soldier with eyes as blue as the sea. When Paul's village is liberated, an angry mob turns against their occupiers. The German soldier, near death, asks Paul to promise him one thing: find his daughter and tell her that her father loved her.

Three hunters find a crashed cocaine plane in the Montana wilderness. Each has a reason to steal the cocaine - who will? The two who do steal it soon find themselves hunted by the Mexican cocaine cartel, the DEA, Las Vegas killers, their guide, and the police of several states.

Award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson traces the stories of the heroic young men and women who would not stand by as their country was occupied. Rather, they fought back. Some were spies passing tactical information to the British; some were saboteurs who aimed to hamper and impede Nazi operations in Denmark; and 95 percent of the Jewish population of Denmark were survivors, rescued by their fellow countrymen who had the courage and conscience that drove them to act.

Phelan Tierney sees his mission in life as coming to the aid of the lost, the broken, the despised. This reputation as the justice system’s St. Jude compels a woman named Marcheline Whalen to seek him out and ask for his help. Her brother - an Iraq War vet - stands accused of killing a cop. Not just any cop - the most widely respected and deeply loved officer on the local force. What Phelan learns, and what he’s obliged to do, will reshape his notions of justice, honor, and compassion forever.

Former anti-gang police unit star Loïc Le Goënec has had a chip on his shoulder ever since he was mysteriously kicked off the force. But when detectives uncover a vile ring of sexual deviance with ties to a city official, the commissioner calls his brilliant but rough-edged protégé back into action.

Psychometrist/paranormal detective Simon Canderous wasn't always a goody-two-shoes. Before the events of Dead To Me, Simon had to learn that "with great power comes great responsibility". But in Simon's case it also came with added financial perks from thievery, too.

When a powerful client summons him for a midnight meeting, lawyer Chris Bruen knows something is very wrong. Zapper, the world's most popular search engine, has been compromised, and its most valuable asset - search algorithms - stolen. The company suspects that this most recent instance in a wave of high-tech crimes originated in China, and that the government itself is behind the systematic theft of US intellectual property.

The spirit populace of Manhattan doesn't appreciate its well-deserved RIP being disturbed, and Department of Extraordinary Affairs Agent Simon Canderous is sent in to do damage control. Meanwhile, his vacationing partner Connor Christos is in a sorry state, and he tells Simon that each night he's being haunted by visions of his long-lost brother at his window. Simon is worried that his partner may be going crazy - or worse, maybe he's not.

A new urban fantasy featuring a man working on the right side of the law - with talents that come from left field. Psychometry - the power to touch an object and divine information about its history - has meant a life of petty crime for Simon Canderous, but now he's gone over to the good side. At New York's underfunded and (mostly) secret Department of Extraordinary Affairs, he's learning about red tape, office politics, and the basics of paranormal investigation. But it's not the paperwork that has him breathless.

It's been 737 days since the Department of Extraordinary Affair's last vampire incursion, but that streak appears to have ended when a boat full of dead lawyers is found in the Hudson River. Using the power of psychometry - the ability to divine the history of an object by touching it - agent Simon Canderous discovers that the booze cruise was crashed by something that sucked all the blood out of the litigators. Now, his workday may never end - until his life does.

Based on Hawthorne's experiences as an undergraduate in the early 1820s, Fanshawe follows the romance of a young woman by two college students. Fanshawe was Hawthorne's first attempt at a novel, and after its commercial failure, the author destroyed the remaining unsold copies, leaving this novel to be mostly unknown until years after his death.

When Ike Larue is "imprisoned" at the Igor Brotweiler Canine Academy, he tries everything to get sent home - weepy letters to his owner, even illness. In reality, Brotweiler is more like camp than prison, but still, Ike's not cut out for life without Mrs. Larue & his creature comforts. Finally, he runs away only to find himself back in Snort City - just in time to save Mrs. Larue's life.