Showing results by narrator "Joe Barrett" in All Categories

From the introduction by Les Standiford: "The truth is that Miami, though naturally lovely, is a frontier town, perched on the border between the known and the rarely before experienced. The poet Richard Hugo once said that the natural place for the writer was on the edge, and 'edge' might well be the definitive word when it comes to this city... We are not only on the edge of the continent, we are to this country what New York was in Ellis Island's heyday, what the West Coast was in the middle of the 20th century.

Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about: his 28 mystery novels have sold millions of copies in nearly 30 countries, and he has a top agent and publisher in New York. He also has a loving wife, three grown children, and is a well-regarded philanthropist in his small New Jersey town. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym "Jack of Spades", he writes another string of novels - dark potboilers that are violent, lurid, even masochistic...

Goings: In Thirteen Sittings is Gordon Lish’s first completely original work in sixteen years, thirteen stories that mark the ongoing vitality of one of the era’s enduring scribes. Widely acknowledged as one of the most influential editors of our era, Gordon Lish has quite simply changed the face of American literature.

Old Earth is gone. Humanity has been scattered to the stars. Some left their dying planet in spaceship arks, in search of new worlds to inhabit. Others, nanoengineered for near-immortality, explore the far reaches of interstellar space in gargantuan macrolife mobiles. An earthlike human society endures on the einvironmentally volatile planet of Tau Ceti IV - a rigid community of the faithful that has declared evil the science that caused the homeworld's destruction.

In the fall of 1943, armed with only his notebooks and pencils, Time and Life correspondent Robert L. Sherrod leapt from the safety of a landing craft and waded through neck-deep water and a hail of bullets to reach the shores of the Tarawa atoll with the US Marine Corps. Living shoulder to shoulder with the marines, Sherrod chronicled combat and the marines' day-to-day struggles as they leapfrogged across the Central Pacific, battling the Japanese on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

Stripping away the revisionism to reveal the true nature of the man himself, this new book recounts the life journey of a fighter universally recognized as a unique and treasured world icon. Few global personalities have commanded an all-encompassing sporting and cultural audience like Muhammad Ali. Now, Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest allows us to more fully appreciate the truth - and understand both the man and the ways in which he helped recalibrate how the world perceives its transcendent figures.

Centered around multi-million dollar stakes and a series of nationally televised poker tournaments, Fading Hearts on the River offers a story of odds - the odds of a newborn surviving severe jaundice, the odds of Congress passing a law that renders one's online gambling income inaccessible, the odds of drawing the right card on the turn or the river.

General Douglas MacArthur is one of the towering figures of World War II, and indeed of the 20th century, but his leadership of the second largest air force in the USAAF is often overlooked. When World War II ended, the three numbered air forces (the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Seventh) under his command possessed 4,004 combat aircraft, 433 reconnaissance aircraft, and 922 transports.

When a world-renowned forensic anthropologist journeys to Winchester, Wyoming, to examine the long-dead remains of a woman who claimed to be Etta Place - the Old West's most mysterious and legendary female outlaw - he's not expecting to find a man's headless corpse in her crypt. The grisly discovery plunges him and Jefferson Morgan - the editor of the weekly Winchester Bullet - into a shadowy and deadly world of satellite-savvy highway pirates, rural meth labs, computer hackers, and old-fashioned corruption.

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital - each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace.

In The Obama Hate Machine, Bill Press returns to show how the Right has taken rhetoric to slanderous new levels in attacking the nation’s forty-fourth president. But presidents have always been attacked like this, right? Wrong. As the author shows, while presidents and presidential candidates have routinely been subject to personal attacks, the outright disdain Obama’s extremist opponents have for the facts has inspired an insidious brand of character assassination unique in contemporary politics.

Sixteen-year-old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel's hired boy. It's a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it's a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May 1889.

A routine investigation of an open-and-shut case is just what PI Ray Dudgeon needs to recover from the physical and emotional consequences of confronting the Chicago Outfit - until "routine" spirals out of control. The victim was no quiet, unassuming, unlucky single woman; she lived a double life in the shadowy realm of covert intelligence...and she died for the truth.

Before America joined World War I, a small group of Americans volunteered for the French Foreign Legion to help defeat the Central Powers. Historian David Hanna profiles seven of these volunteers: a poet, an artist, a boxer, a stunt pilot, a college student, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and an advertising executive. All seven men were united in courage; and some, like poet Alan Seeger, paid the ultimate sacrifice.

After the stunning historical novels The Clearing and The Missing, Tim Gautreaux now ranges freely through contemporary life with 12 new stories and eight from previous collections. Most are set in his beloved Louisiana, many hard by or on the Mississippi River, others in North Carolina, and even in midwinter Minnesota. But generally it's heat, humidity, and bugs that beset his people as they wrestle with affairs of the heart, matters of faith, and the pros and cons of tight-knit communities.

Joel Brandt swears he’s never met the woman before. His wife dead six months before, the small-time businessman is perplexed when Del Moray police inform him that a local woman, Marla Cloy, has accused him of harassing her. According to her, Joel has been lurking outside of her house, following her car, even assaulting her at the grocery store. Brandt says it’s all a lie, but the police don’t believe him. He goes to Fred Carver, an ex-cop turned PI, for help clearing his name.

In The Conciliators, the conclusion of the Collectibles trilogy, Preston Wilson's life is once again imploding - this time as headline news, bylined by Katherine Kelly. Under fire thanks to the financial shenanigans of a longtime friend, the CEO finds himself in trouble with the FBI, the Russian Mafia, and his creditors. If he doesn't come up with a plan (and quickly), he could lose everything and find himself, his wife, and his shareholders in prison.

Gillian Bellaver's family is one of the wealthiest in the world. Robin Sandza's father Peter is a government assassin. The two teenagers seem to have nothing in common. Yet they are spiritual twins, possessing a horrifying psychic energy that threatens humanity. While dangerous and fanatical men vie for the secrets of their awesome power, Peter Sandza, using all the ruthless skills of his trade, makes a final desperate effort to save them.

Katharine can’t believe what she’s seeing. Her world has always been planned and orderly, but now, she’s petrified that she’s going insane, and she’s equally afraid that she’s not. What if the strange creatures she’s seeing really are disappearing and the messages showing up in Latin actually mean something?

Go ahead, be skeptical about big data. The author was - at first. When the term "big data" first came on the scene, best-selling author Tom Davenport ( Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work) thought it was just another example of technology hype. But his research in the years that followed changed his mind. Now, in clear, conversational language, Davenport explains what big data means - and why everyone in business needs to know about it.