Showing results by narrator "Robin McAlpine" in All Categories

What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? How do elites maintain their dominant position? And why do ruling classes sometimes suddenly lose their grip on power? For decades, complexity scientist Peter Turchin has been studying world history like no one else. Assembling vast databases mined from 10,000 years of human activity, and then developing new models, he has transformed the way we learn from the past. End Times is the result: a ground-breaking account of how society works.

Using granular data and authoritative Chinese sources, Oriana Skylar Mastro demonstrates that China was able to climb to great power status through a careful mix of strategic emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship on the international stage. This “upstart approach”—determined by where and how China chose to compete—allowed China to rise economically, politically, and militarily, without triggering a catastrophic international backlash that would stem its rise.

This boxed set includes the first three books in the Martina Monroe crime thriller series: What She Left (Book 1), If She Ran (Book 2), All She Wanted (Book 3).

The Fullness of the Ground distills Dr. Judith Blackstone’s decades of teaching into the essentials of the nondual spiritual path. Embodied nondual realization can have a profound effect on your senses, your experience of your own authentic existence, and your relationships and ability to love.

When a woman is discovered beaten and bloodied in a park, with no ID, no memory, and no past she can recall, Martina and her team at Drakos Monroe Security & Investigations are called in to uncover the truth. But from the start, this case defies all logic. The woman, known only as "Jane Doe," has no fingerprints or DNA matches. No social media. No records. It’s as if she never existed. Every lead Martina follows only deepens the mystery, raising questions that pull her further into an unsettling puzzle.

Whether you’ve only learned about your pre-teen’s diagnosis recently or you’ve been trying to manage their condition for quite some time, you may find yourself constantly overwhelmed, stressed, and even frustrated…and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

This must-have cookbook for dog owners features over 300 nutritionally balanced fresh dog food recipes. Written by a veterinarian, who is also a culinary school graduate, 300 Dog Food Recipes shows how fresh ingredients cooked and measured per each meal will produce the healthiest diet for any size dog. The book includes cooking instructions, snacks, and feeding guides, as well as information on feeding dogs with illnesses.

If you want to learn about honey bees, set up your own apiary, and manage beekeeping as a hobby, then check out HowExpert Guide to Honey Bees & Beekeeping.

If Amber/Jane/Kelan chooses your neighborhood, it is because there is work to do. She will rent a house and be the perfect neighbor for a year, where she will tell you all about an aunt who raised her and passed along a lot of fabulous recipes that she will use to make friends with the other neighbors. Of course, the aunt does not exist. In the community garden, your new neighbor will hide the Poison Hemlock among Queen Anne Lace. If she gives you orange marmalade for your abusive husband, ensure only he eats it. And later, if the police ask you if you want an autopsy, say no.

Yes, Gurus don’t diet. They don’t use substances to mask or numb themselves from emotional pain and fears either. They empower themselves to look at their emotions, thoughts, and body sensations mindfully. With presence of mind, they uncover old patterns of thinking and believing that no longer make sense, except within the unexamined vault of wounds.

Marni Rome lives a happy life with her husband and two beautiful children. Her heart is filled with love for them. It’s a life that excites her every morning when she gets out of bed. She is lucky to be living in a beautiful home overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and she loves her career as a crime fiction novelist.

Whiskey Ryder spends most of his time on the back of a horse on a mountain. Whether it’s on a search and rescue mission or on the Ryde Hard Ranch working the land with his brothers. He’s all about being a cowboy…and a single father of a preteen who woke up one morning hating him.

Ten years earlier, two teenage girls were found murdered by what appeared to be a satanic sacrifice. The case had dominated the news headlines for months before the original investigators failed to arrest the perpetrators of the crime—despite multiple suspects. Without solid evidence to prosecute, and even with the near-heroic efforts of the original detectives, the homicide investigation turned cold. For years, the families of the two victims fought to keep the young women’s memory alive and to get the attention of law enforcement to not give up on finding those responsible.

PI Martina Monroe has found her groove working cold cases alongside Detective Hirsch at the CoCo County Sheriff’s Department. With a growing team of cold case detectives, Martina and Hirsch are on the heels of bringing justice for Julie DeSoto—a woman Martina failed to protect one year earlier. But when Martina receives a haunting request from her past, it nearly tears her in two.

Detective Leslie, once a key figure in the Cold Case Squad, is convinced she’s closed the case on Darren, Martina’s brother, for a cold-blooded murder. But Martina, shaken by her brother’s guilty plea and an anonymous tip claiming his innocence, starts questioning the conviction. As Martina delves into the details, she encounters a series of unsettling discrepancies. The investigation’s weak foundation, coupled with the lack of physical evidence and a dubious motive, ignites Martina’s suspicions.

In the thick of the current cold case investigation, PI Martina Monroe receives a hand-written letter from a desperate mother pleading for Martina and Hirsch to reopen the cold case of the woman’s missing daughter and five-year-old grandson. Feeling a deep connection to the request, Martina knows that Hirsch and she have found their next case.

PI Martina and Detective Hirsch accept the new sheriff’s request to reopen a ten-year-old serial killer case. Not that they could refuse. One victim was the sheriff’s brother, a married father of two. The case is strange. Someone has murdered three successful men within a six-month time period. There were no suspects and no motive. The only connection is their cause of death. The links are thin and the motive is unknown, but Martina and Hirsch know better than to ignore the similarities.

Twenty years earlier, a set of female eighteen-year-old twins went missing in the Bay Area. There were no news reports or national coverage. The original investigators had barely touched the case, and like so many other cases of missing teens, were quickly labeled runaways, and the file sat on the shelf. Baffled by the lack of attention for the sisters, Martina insists it will be Hirsch and the Cold Case Squad’s next case.

A young woman clinging on to life. A desperate family fighting for answers. Will Selena be able to discover the truth in time to save her? Selena Bailey returns with her Private Investigator license in one hand and the first official case for Bailey Investigations in the other. When the sister of a young woman, fighting for her life in the Intensive Care Unit, pleads with Selena to explore her sister, Stephanie’s, last days before she slipped into a coma, Selena must go undercover in the billion-dollar weight loss industry to discover the truth.

Never make a major life decision in the wake of emotional turmoil. Cassie Romano learned this the hard way, leaving sunny San Diego for a teaching position at a private school in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York after a painful break-up left her heart-broken and in need of a change. It all seemed so perfect in June when she came to interview. But now it’s December, and she’s stranded on top of a mountain surrounded by snow, ice, and acres of wilderness, lonelier than ever and bored out of her mind.