Showing results by narrator "Neil Shah" in All Categories

In 1991, at the beginning of Desert Storm, the defeat of American forces at the battle of Khafji is the signal for a broad and bloodily successful anti-Western uprising. In this alternate history, America faces endless war in the Middle East, a resurgent Soviet Union, and growing tyranny at home.

In the Pittsburgh Marathon, 18,000 people from all over the world will participate. Some 9,500 will run a half marathon, 4,000 will run in relays, while 4,500 participants will attempt the full 26.2 miles. Over 200 will quit before it’s over. More than 100 will be injured and require medical treatment. And one man is going to be murdered. When Dr. Cyprus Keller lines up to start the race, he knows who is going to die - for the simple reason that he’s going to kill him.

>Do you feel overwhelmed by work - or life in general? Having trouble coping with too many demands on your time and energy? Well you're not alone! Britain is currently suffering from a stress epidemic. A staggering one in four employees are said to suffer from stress and it is listed as the noumber-one reason for workplace absence in the UK. Luckily for us, Neil Shah at the Stress Management Society is here to help. With a fantastic 10-step plan, he offers simple and practical solutions for reducing your stress levels so you can manage your life and breathe a sigh of relief.

The handsome Texas sailor who offers dinner to a runaway in Central Park. The Midwestern college girl who stops a cop in Times Square for restaurant advice. The Brooklyn man on a midnight subway who helps a weary tourist find her way to Chinatown. The Columbia University graduate student who encounters an unexpected object of beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art....

From the day Cobb and Mary meet kayaking on Maine’s Allagash River and fall deeply in love, the two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river’s treacherous rapids. But rivers do not let go so easily - and neither does their love. When Mary’s life takes a cruel turn, she vows to face those rough waters on her own terms and asks Cobb to promise, when the time comes, to help her return to their beloved river for one final journey. This beautiful tale is set against the rugged wilderness of Maine, the exotic islands of Indonesia, the sweeping panoramas of Yellowstone National Park, and the tranquil villages of rural New England.

Susan is the new girl - she's sharp and driven, and strives to meet her parents' expectations of excellence. Malcolm is the bad boy - he started raising hell at age 15 after his mom died of cancer, and has had a reputation ever since. Susan's parents are on the verge of divorce. Malcolm's dad is a known adulterer. Susan hasn't told anyone, but she wants to be an artist. Malcolm doesn't know what he wants - until he meets her. Love is messy and families are messier, but in spite of their burdens, Susan and Malcolm fall for each other.

When a six-year-old girl disappears and calling the police isn’t an option, her desperate mother, Pernilla, turns to an unlikely source for help. She finds a cryptic ad online for a private investigator: “Need help, but can’t contact the police?” That’s where Kouplan comes in. He’s an Iranian refugee living in hiding. He was forced to leave Iran after news of his and his brother's involvement with a radical newspaper hated by the regime was discovered. He makes a living as a P.I. working under the radar, waiting for the day he can legally apply for asylum.

How does it feel to receive a phone call from your 14-year-old son who is in the back of a squad car because he laughed at a police officer? How does a young person of color cope with being frisked several times a week since the age of 15? These are just some of the stories in No Place on the Corner, which draws on three years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the South Bronx before and after the landmark 2013 Floyd v. City of New York decision that ruled that the NYPD's controversial "stop and frisk" policing methods were a violation of rights.

A group of entrepreneurs brings roaring back to life a defunct turbine factory and the town around it, promising a return to the days of dignity, jobs and the good life and bright future that a manufacturing center can dispense to a small town. But is a return to the days of plenty possible? And what of the changed relationships between lovers, and within families, that have transpired in the years since that earlier time? Perišić takes us there, into the past and into the future, and watches with a bemused sad smile as the inevitable wreaks havoc with the possible.

Evolutionary biologist Amina Abdul accepts a post-doc in Washington, DC, choosing her career studying hybrid zones over a faltering West Coast romance. Her brother and sister-in-law welcome her to the city, but their marriage is crumbling, and they soon rely on her to keep their son company. Omar, hungry to understand his cultural roots, fakes an Indian accent, invents a royal past, and peppers his aunt with questions about their cultural heritage. When he brings an ornamental knife to school, his expulsion triggers a downward spiral for his family.

In the lush world-banking capital of Geneva, Switzerland, three friends from Harvard Business School find their lives and their work unexpectedly intertwined. Catherine and Majid are handling investments for clients with dubious pedigrees. When their friend Rafe shows up in Geneva, he claims to be just another start-up hedge fund manager. But Rafe, after a moral awakening, is now an undercover agent with the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and he’s in Geneva secretly investigating his old friends, one of whom was his former lover.

After Deputy Ben Patil finds an abandoned newborn in rural South Dakota, he and his wife Abbi seem the perfect foster parents. But the infant’s arrival opens old wounds for Abbi and reveals how much Ben has changed since his devastating tour in Afghanistan.

When Jack and his family moved into their new house, he thought his life was getting an upgrade. A manor, rather than his old small apartment? He could have many adventures, even if his family did move from the city to a tiny town. Except, he's started seeing the ghost of a young girl holding a teddy bear at the edge of his vision. Following him. Everywhere he turns, he sees her. Getting slowly closer.

Despite hard-won victories, the revolutionary forces known as the Red Hand are more endangered than ever: the Planetary Alliance Commission—the PAC—has branded them public enemy number one, ramping up their efforts to eliminate the Red Hand’s remaining members even as the pandemic rages on. In order to protect the progress they have made, the team must adopt new tactics. Ashiva, armed with a new bionic upgrade, leads a team back into the fray on a dangerous mission across a toxic wasteland wracked by storms.

In a world gone wrong, heroes and villains are not always easy to distinguish and every individual has the ability to contribute something powerful. In this stunning collection of original and rediscovered stories of tragedy and hope, the stars are a diverse group of students, street kids, good girls, kidnappers, and child laborers pitted against their environments, their governments, differing cultures, and sometimes one another as they seek answers in their dystopian worlds.

In the city of Mardin, near Turkey’s border with Syria, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo then travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop, but even there, life, with all its sorrows, joys, injustices, and gifts, draws him in unexpected directions.

The South Asian Province is split in two. Uplanders live in a luxurious, climate-controlled biodome. Outside, the poor and forgotten scrape by with black-market robotics, in slums threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air, and deadly superbugs. Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries fighting the government, which is run by a merciless computer algorithm. As a smuggler with the best robotic arm and cybernetic enhancements the slums can offer, her cargo includes the city’s most vulnerable abandoned children.

Today ten times more tigers live in captivity than survive in the wild. For over five decades, K. Ullas Karanth has been engaged in the struggle to bring wild tigers back from the brink in India, their last remaining wild stronghold. He tells the story of the tiger itself—its incredible biology, its critical role in shaping natural ecosystems of Asia, and the unique place it holds in our collective imagination. Among Tigers is the story of how we wound up with fewer than 5,000 wild tigers, and how, with focused efforts, we can grow that population ten times or more in a few decades.

After years of harsh monsoon seasons, a forest on the river island of Majuli is in danger of being slowly washed away. Jadav is determined to save the forest he loves. This is the true story of how one young boy dedicated his life to creating and cultivating an expansive forest that continues to grow to this day. In a world impacted by climate change, Jadav Payeng’s inspirational story shows how one person’s contributions can make a difference in helping to save our environment.