Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

PI John Cooper's favorite actress was Melissa Bright, but she died much too young, and John can't accept the official version of how she died. He suspects foul play and sets out on his own to get to the truth. The movie studio, as anyone from the Hollywood area knows, wields more power than some countries, and if anyone gets in their way, well, let's just say they have a record for making their problems disappear. In this, my third Cooper novel, John gets so far in over his head that someone plants a bomb under his car. Want to see how it comes out? Listen to it.

Three hundred and sixteen people are shot or killed every day in the United States. At five humans attacked per day per zombie, it would take 24 days for 316 zombies to overtake a population of 7.9 billion. “Tad Spector at your service!” “Look Tad, I heard you were the best," said the president. "I need you on my team, on my side. You hear me. I need a guy that’s not a part of the system.” Seemed a bit paranoid at the time. But now he seemed even more suspicious. “They are after me, Tad. You can keep a secret, right? I mean, that's your job.”

Tarot cards have been around since the Renaissance, and have become increasingly popular in recent years, often due to their prevalence in popular culture. This audiobook is an extensive history of the development and evolution of Tarot, and its place in culture. It begins with an extensive review from its roots as a game, to its supposed connection to ancient Egyptian magic; through its place in secret societies, and to its current use in meditation and psychology.

Embracing Disillusionment: Achieving Liberation Through the Demystification of Suffering employs a multidisciplinary examination of the relationship between oppression and suffering. Written for professionals as well as the general public, a framework is provided for understanding the causes and forms of oppression and why these constitute injustice, the dynamics of self-deception, and how ideology utilizes these to portray the social causes of suffering as individual and intrapsychic maladies.

In the wake of the coronavirus and George Floyd killing, many of the issues dividing us as a nation - race, politics, class, gender, climate change, globalism, and religion - have only been magnified, and although the US surgeon general has called for an end to bickering and partisanship, it is unclear to what extent this will take effect. What is clear, however, is that safe, mindfully structured dialogues are imperative if we are to salvage our republic and the democratic principles on which it is built.

The robotic revolution is here and there's no going back. From the way we raise our children, to our work settings, to our governments, and even our wars, the quick-fix, instant result society is roiling our world. This audiobook dwells on the miracle of the unknown. It is an intimate trek into the evolving spirituality of awe - the humility and wonder and sense of adventure toward life. Can we preserve awe - the arguable "heart" of humanity - in spite of and even in light of our technologies? There is no more critical problem for our age.

As the first decade of the 21st century has made brutally clear, the very definitions of war and the enemy have changed almost beyond recognition. Threats to security are now as likely to come from armed propagandists, popular militias, or mercenary organizations as they are from conventional armies backed by nation-states. In this timely book, national security expert Max G. Manwaring explores a little-understood actor on the stage of irregular warfare - the gang.

How do public employees win and lose their collective bargaining rights? And how can public sector labor unions protect those rights? These are the questions answered in From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging. Dominic Wells takes a mixed-methods approach and uses more than five decades of state-level data to analyze the expansion and restriction of rights.

What if you love your day job, but you love stand-up comedy, too? Can you reconcile the two passions? Yes! We’ll show you how. In this book, you’ll have access to the following: more than 100 locations where you can do stand-up comedy in the US and Canada, how to use your current job to help your stand-up comedy career, how to have enough time for your job, your comedy, and your family, how to get paid gigs at comedy clubs, how to produce and promote your own show and get paid for it, how to get paid gigs at colleges, how to get paid gigs on cruises, and more.

Long before the indigenous people of southeastern North America first encountered Europeans and Africans, they established communities with clear social and political hierarchies and rich cultural traditions. Award-winning historian Gregory D. Smithers brings this world to life in Native Southerners, a sweeping narrative of American Indian history in the Southeast from the time before European colonialism to the Trail of Tears and beyond.

In Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture, Anthony Wilson examines the relationship between the ecological history of the southern swamp and the evolution of southern culture from the colonial era to the present. To early European colonists, the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity. To the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development.

More than 50 years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. In Rich Thanks to Racism, Jim Freeman, one of the country's leading civil rights lawyers, explains why as he reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. He details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality.

Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do.

Are you excited about planning your next trip? Do you want an edible experience? Would you like some culinary guidance from a local? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this Eat like a Local book is for you. Eat like a Local - Bulgaria by author Iliyana Stoyanova offers the inside scoop on the best of the Bulgarian cuisine.

Cultivated from the fierce ideas seeded in Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals is an elegiac reflection on death, pain, and a wavering confidence in humanity’s own abilities for self-preservation. After years of reporting on border violence, sex crimes, and the devastation of the land, Bowden struggles to make sense of the many ways in which we destroy ourselves and whether there is any way to survive.

The third book in Charles Bowden’s “accidental trilogy” that began with Blood Orchid and Blues for Cannibals, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing attempts to resolve the overarching question: How can a person live a moral life in a culture of death? As humanity moves further into the 21st century, Bowden continues to interrogate our roles in creating the ravaged landscapes and accumulated death that still surround us, as well as his own childhood isolation, his lust for alcohol and women, and his waning hope for a future.

How will the lives of the next few American generations change? Are we at a turning point in the political history of the United States - one in which people overall, be they “ordinary” or “extraordinarily empowered”, will make fewer and fewer decisions? To what extent are political and social processes objective, and to what extent can we govern them? What depends on us?

Public Gardens and Livable Cities uses a prescriptive approach to synthesize a range of public, private, and nonprofit initiatives from municipalities throughout the country. In doing so, the authors examine the initiatives from a practical perspective to identify how they were implemented, their sustainability, the obstacles they encountered, the impact of the initiatives on their populations, and how they dealt with the communities' underlying social problems.

The story of a trip around the world, visiting 24 countries in 33 days...beating out Around the World in 80 Days! LOL! Observations of people - rich and poor - going about their daily lives in so many different - yet sometimes similar - environments. The journey is sprinkled with humor, philosophical, and political comments.

On the night of April 8, 1956, Marine drill instructor Matthew McKeon led Platoon 71 on a forced march through the backwaters of Parris Island in an effort to restore flagging discipline. Unexpectedly strong currents in Ribbon Creek and an ensuing panic led to the drowning of six recruits. The tragedy of Ribbon Creek and the court-martial of Staff Sergeant McKeon became the subject of sensational national media coverage and put the future of the US Marine Corps in jeopardy.