Showing results by narrator "Rob Shapiro" in All Categories

When Nick Flynn left the US Air Force to join the Quartet Directorate, he did so with the full knowledge that no one could ever know. This covert private force—called Four by its members—promised him the chance to lead his own missions and make his own decisions, though the risks are high. When a former senior CIA executive goes dark, Flynn and his team—including the daring Laura Van Horn—are ready to step in. What begins as a quiet check on his home turns into a firefight against a familiar enemy who is more dangerous than ever.

During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry.

Former US Air Force officer Nick Flynn joined the clandestine Quartet Directorate to continue its long-standing mission: to act decisively against serious threats to the free world. And with the backing of Russia’s authoritarian president, no threat is more deadly than that of Pavel Voronin and his mercenary Raven Syndicate. Twice they have almost succeeded in bringing the United States to its knees, only to be stopped at the last moment by Flynn and his team of highly trained operatives.

In early 2020, Luke Mogelson, who had been living in France and covering the Global War on Terrorism, returned home to report on the social discord that the pandemic was bringing to the fore in the US. Soon, he found himself embedded with militias descending on the Michigan state capitol. From there, the story swept him on to Minneapolis, then to Portland and ultimately to Washington, D.C. His stories for The New Yorker were hailed as essential first drafts of history. They were just the tip of the iceberg.

For generations the electric guitar has been an international symbol of freedom, danger, rebellion, and hedonism. In Play It Loud, Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna bring the history of this iconic instrument to roaring life. It's a story of inventors and iconoclasts, of scam artists, prodigies, and mythologizers as varied and original as the instruments they spawned. Play It Loud uses 12 landmark guitars - each of them artistic milestones in their own right - to illustrate the conflict and passion the instruments have inspired.

At 5:58 a.m. on 3rd October 2009, Combat Outpost Keating, located in frighteningly vulnerable terrain in Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistani border, was viciously attacked. Though the 53 soldiers stationed there prevailed against nearly 400 Taliban fighters, their casualties made it the deadliest fight of the war that year. Four months after the battle, a review revealed that there was no reason for the troops at Keating to have been there in the first place.

An insidious curse is weakening the Norse kingdom of Saylok, where no daughters have been born in years. Washing up on these plagued shores is Ghisla, an orphaned stowaway nursed back to health by Hod, a blind cave dweller. Named for a mysterious god, Hod is surrounded by prophecy. To Ghisla, he’s a cherished new friend, but to Hod, the girl is much more. For when Ghisla sings, Hod can see.

Mr. Perfect, Mr. Romantic, Mr. Corporate, Mr. Mysterious, and Mr. Match found what they were looking for and now it's time to seal the deal. Five Aston hasn't quite found his happily ever after yet...not quite. But he will. And he's about to host the party of the century for all his family and friends. Mr. & Mrs. is the delicious cherry on top of the most perfect dessert and all your favorite characters will be back for one...final...swoon-worthy story.

Nia Martins believes that a fresh start will help her leave her traumatic past behind. Moving to a different country, she seeks to shake off her demons by doing the one thing that sets her free from her destructive thoughts - teaching dance. But change doesn't come easy, and all Nia really wants is to take the next breath without the perpetual suffocation that follows. Reeves Mitchell has looked death in the eye so many times that it has become habitual. That is, until his best friend's life was on the line.

I remember everything, only now I wish I didn't. When the fog is sucked away from my mind like smoke through a vacuum, the truth that has been beyond my reach for months finally reveals itself. But the relief I thought I would feel never comes, and I'm more afraid now than I was the morning I woke up handcuffed in King's bed. Because with the truth comes dark secrets I was never meant to know. I don't know if I'm strong enough to resist the magnetic pull toward King that grows stronger every day.

The fruit of the long history of John Brockman's profound engagement with the most important scientific minds who have been thinking about AI - from Alison Gopnik and David Deutsch to Frank Wilczek and Stephen Wolfram - Possible Minds is an ideal introduction to the landscape of crucial issues AI presents. The collision between opposing perspectives is salutary and exhilarating; some of these figures are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others have a very different view.

Bear is leather and lawless. Thia is prim and proper. It will never work between them. It's a lie they almost believe.

Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers.

Paxton Vance isn't as cryptic as he thinks. That broody nature and tough-guy exterior aren't fooling me one bit. I know everything about him. I listen in on his most personal phone calls. I read his mail before he does. I even know what his mother got him for Christmas last year. You're the man of my dreams, Paxton Vance. You just don't know it yet. But don't worry, I'll remind you. I'm here to give you everything you need, before you know you need it.

Bayr of Saylok, bastard son of a powerful and jealous chieftain, is haunted by the curse once leveled by his dying mother. Bartered, abandoned, and rarely loved, she plagued the land with her words: From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok. Raised among the Keepers at Temple Hill, Bayr is gifted with inhuman strength. But he’s also blessed with an all-too-human heart that beats with one purpose: to protect Alba, the first girl child born in nearly two decades and the salvation for a country at risk.

T. M. Frazier presents the finale to Bear and Thia's epic love story.

After years of bitter debate, the United States declared war on Imperial Germany on April 6, 1917, plunging the country into the savage European conflict that would redraw the map of the continent - and the globe. The World Remade is an engrossing chronicle of America's pivotal, still controversial intervention into World War I, encompassing the tumultuous politics and towering historical figures that defined the era and forged the future.

In 1937, as the Nazi Party tightened its grip on the city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), Justus Rosenberg’s parents made the wrenching decision to send their son to Paris, where he would have the hope of finishing high school and going on to university in safety. He was 16 years old, and he would not see his family again for 16 years more. Even after war broke out in 1939, life in France was peaceful for a time - but when the Nazis pushed toward Paris in the spring of 1940, Justus was forced to flee south to Toulouse.

It's March 2020, and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most.

From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.