Showing results by narrator "Kyle Los" in All Categories

In our self-help, DIY culture, we love the idea of improvement. We make-over wardrobes and restore houses and commit ourselves to better habits. But we're still left feeling empty and not-quite-enough. That's because what we need is not an upgrade but a complete upending of our lives. We need to be reborn. And it's not something we can do by ourselves.

Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father - comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when the opportunity doesn't come - or worse - it comes and goes?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God." Over the centuries much ink has been spilled on the subject of grace. Yet perhaps nothing is as hard to explain as God's grace. It doesn't make sense. It's not fair. It can't possibly cover over what I've done. The best way - perhaps the only real way - to understand it is to experience it. But too often in our churches we're not getting grace across and grace is not experienced.

What makes life meaningful? More to the point, what makes our life meaningful? Without a good answer to that question, we can expend much energy and experience much anxiety as we attempt to live lives of significance, only to find that in the end we missed the point entirely and along the way were deeply dissatisfied. But there is hope. In Why You Matter, Michael Sherrard shows that life is only meaningful if God exists. He then shows how that fundamental fact provides clarity for some of the most important questions of our lives.

We live in a 24/7 culture of endless productivity, workaholism, distraction, burnout, and anxiety-a way of life to which we've sadly grown accustomed. This tired system of "life" ultimately destroys our souls, our bodies, our relationships, our society, and the rest of God's creation. The whole world grows exhausted because humanity has forgotten to enter into God's rest. Combining creative storytelling, pastoral sensitivity, practical insight, and relevant academic research, Subversive Sabbath offers a unique invitation to personal Sabbath-keeping.

When American covert operative Chase Fulton finally believes his life has become as close to normal as it will ever be, he finds himself in a magnificent anchorage in the Bahamas with his beautiful, new wife on the first night of their honeymoon. But as the sun melts across the western horizon, his dream vacation is thrown into chaos when a mega yacht races into the harbor at full speed, bearing directly on his catamaran. After narrowly surviving the collision, it soon becomes obvious the episode was no accident.

Harry Houdini. Penn and Teller. David Copperfield. Marcus Millian the Third. Okay, so Marcus isn't a famous magician. He may not even be a great magician. But his great-grandfather, the once-legendary and long-retired Zachary the Stupendous, insists Marcus has true talent. And when Grandpa Zachary boasts that he and Marcus are working on an illusion that will shock, stun, and astonish, Marcus wishes he could make himself disappear.

Ex-deputy US Marshal Axel Blaze is doing what he knows best—dealing with trouble. Ten years in the special forces and five years in the US Marshals have made Blaze a trained investigator and expert in combat. Blaze does not fight his opponents; he puts them down. He strikes first. And hard. Takes them out. Fast. Deputy Marshal Carter has gone missing in Little Butte, Nevada. The Dawsons own the town. The Mexican cartel is moving in on their meth business.

Shane "Knight" Ballard knew the blonde beauty he saw on the courthouse steps was meant to be his. But with danger looming, the time wasn't right to claim her. Not when it could put her safety at risk. What Knight didn't know was that Kiara Timkins was already smack-dab in the middle of it all. The crooked judge the Silver Saints were looking into was her father . . . and she was going to need Knight to come riding to her rescue.

In the vein of Bill Bryson, Tim Cahill, and Ellen Meloy, Burrillo's is a fresh voice in humor-spiked nature writing and cultural commentary. Running throughout the wide-ranging topics of The Backwoods of Everywhere are themes of place and locality, and how these vary between cultures and individuals. Marrying the intensely personal with the complex and technical, Burrillo's candid voice brings humor, wonder, irony, and wit to each thought-provoking essay.

Juan initiates the journey, selling lies to convince the others to join him on the raft. Senator Spinelli manipulates the emotions of Cuban American dreamers for self-enrichment and power. With his strategy-savvy Chief of Staff Terri Turner, President Winslow risks the pinnacle of success to change the future. Fidel Castro is a double-dealing despot who will burn the house down around himself in revenge for the exodus. Their collective desperation is woven into a complicated yet beautiful imbroglio of faith, dreams, and desire that, in the end, will unite or destroy them all.

For seven years, Paul Lockhart's A Mathematician's Lament enjoyed a samizdat-style popularity in the mathematics underground, before demand prompted its 2009 publication to even wider applause and debate. An impassioned critique of K-12 mathematics education, it outlined how we shortchange students by introducing them to math the wrong way. Here, Lockhart offers the positive side of the math education story by showing us how math should be done. Measurement offers a permanent solution to math phobia by introducing us to mathematics as an artful way of thinking and living.

Two questions fundamental to human existence have always been the metaphysical “where do I fit in the grand scheme of things?” and the ethical “how should I behave?” Religion is no longer a source of answers for many people, and nothing has replaced it. Moore uses his signature framework-based approach to answer these questions, taking us on an intellectual roller coaster ride through physics, chemistry, biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Along the way, he builds a metaphorical ladder that leads from the big bang to the need for ethical action in our daily lives.

King Crow isn’t having a very good day. The Empire’s most famous athlete suddenly finds himself convicted of treason and sentenced to the Hunt, an annual event where the city’s most undesirable prisoners are sent into a dungeon filled with treasure, magic, and… bloodthirsty monsters. Crow didn’t commit the crime, so why is he in the dungeon? Who set him up? And why—for the love of god—is his only weapon a fast-talking, sapient, electromagnetically charged potato named Spud?

From Taya Kyle, New York Times best-selling author of American Wife and widow of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle, an inspiring collection of stories, both personal and drawn from American history, that showcase the resilience of the “American spirit”.

Finn Harding (Mr. Finn to his clients) specializes in finding people who don't want to be found. Stripped of his PI license, Finn begins working for the type of clientele who operate in the shadows, pay in cash, and don't care if he's licensed or not. Working with criminals has its advantages; staying alive isn't one of them. In the Mr. Finn series, Trace Conger delivers sharp-edged and gritty tales of crime, murder, and family. These are fast-paced crime thrillers that hold nothing back.

A tasty compendium of spices and a fascinating history and wide array of uses of the world’s favorite flavors - The Book of Spice: From Anise to Zedoary reveals the amazing history of spices both familiar and esoteric. John O’Connell’s erudite chapters combine history with insights into art, religion, medicine, science, and they’re richly seasoned with anecdotes and recipes.

Abolition for the People brings together 30 essays representing a diversity of voices - political prisoners, grassroots organizers, scholars, and relatives of those killed by the anti-Black terrorism of policing and prisons. This collection presents listeners with a moral choice: “Will you continue to be actively complicit in the perpetuation of these systems,” Kaepernick asks in his introduction, “or will you take action to dismantle them for the benefit of a just future?”

Annabelle Blake fully expects this school year to be the same as every other: same teachers, same classmates, same, same, same. So she’s elated to discover there’s a new kid in town. To Annabelle, Bailey is a breath of fresh air. She loves hearing about their life in Seattle, meeting their loquacious (and kinda corny) parents, and hanging out at their massive house. And it doesn’t hurt that Bailey has a cute smile, nice hands (how can someone even have nice hands?) and smells really good.

The mission couldn't be simpler. It sounds like an easy, straightforward operation to take care of some small-time raiders hijacking black-market weapons shipments in the Pirate Worlds. Former Recon Marine war hero Randall Munroe doesn't need to know why his Corporate bosses care about one group of criminals stealing from another, he just has to do the job. But when Munroe is ordered to lead his crack squad of mercenaries into a gang war on the harsh, ice-covered, barely habitable battleground that is Peboan, he discovers that things are never simple.