Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

For a little girl named Susan, Christmas could be any other day. She doesn't believe in Santa Claus or magic or miracles of any kind. Then, one day, she meets Kris Kringle. As she doubtfully tells him which gifts she wishes for most, deep down Susan finds herself hoping that, just maybe, he is the real thing. Based on the original holiday classic, Miracle on 34th Street: A Storybook Edition is a heartwarming story about generosity, imagination, and the spirit of Christmas.

A queen of punk before her time. A duo on the brink of stardom. A night that will define their story for ever. Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, a Black punk artist before her time. Despite her unconventional looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her one night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together.

What connects Paleolithic bone flutes to the invention of computer software? Or the Murex sea snail to the death of the great American city? How does the bag of crisps you hold in your hand help tell the story of humanity itself? In his brilliant new work on the history of innovation, international best-seller Steven Johnson argues that the pursuit of novelty and wonder has always been a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change.

After China announced a space mission to place its own flag next to the one US astronauts planted during the Apollo 11 mission, few people bat an eyelid. Shortly after this statement, Charlie Stephens, an 81-year-old former filmmaker, is murdered. The incident is made to look like an accident, but why?

When psychologists try to understand the way our minds work, they frequently come to a conclusion that may seem startling: people often make decisions without having given them much thought - or, more precisely, before they have thought about them consciously. When we decide how to vote, what to buy, where to go on vacation and myriad other things, unconscious thoughts that we are not even aware of typically play a big role.

A series of huntsmen disappear in a mysterious forest. It is eventually discovered that an iron-skinned man is dragging passersby into the lake where he lives. The man is captured by the king and subsequently released by a sympathetic prince, who then must flee the kingdom. The prince, with the help of the iron-skinned man, defeats an army and wins the hand of a princess. The prince is reunited with his parents, and Iron Hans is revealed to be a normal man who was under a spell and released from it by the prince who was found to be pure of heart.

Grad to Grown-Up: 68 Tips to Excel in Your Personal and Professional Life is a unique self-help book that offers a roadmap to kickstart your future. Rags-to-riches author and CEO Gene Rice and his high school English teacher daughter Courtney Bejgrowicz demystify adulthood by sharing critical information alongside professional and personal successes and failures. The five sections—life, job search, career, personal finance, and health and relationships—provide real-world insights that are often overlooked in formal education.

Llama just ate a doughnut—the most scrumptious, most sprinkled doughnut in existence—and he needs to eat it again. The problem? He can’t. He has already eaten it! The solution? A pair of time-travel pants, of course! But when Llama goes way farther back than he intended, the dessert he winds up taking has an owner who’s more than willing to travel through time to retrieve it.

In The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact, celebrated nonprofit executive Jacob Harold delivers an expert guide to doing good in the twenty-first century. In the book, you'll explore nine tools that have driven world-shaking social movements and billion-dollar businesses--tools that can work just as well for a farmers market or fire department or small business.

Cap’n Bill, a little girl named Trot, and Button-Bright are marooned in Jinxland, a mountainous region adjacent to Oz but separated by a bottomless chasm. While there, they get embroiled in a political rivalry between good King Kynd and the notorious usurper Krewl. When the Scarecrow gets wind of the trouble via Glinda’s Great Book of Records (a kind of precursor to the internet), he joins the fight between good and evil.

Vix Leonard is twelve when she meets dazzling, reckless Caitlin Somers. Invited to spend holidays on Martha's Vineyard with Caitlin and her eccentric, mysterious family, Vix is welcomed into a life totally unlike her own. As days of bold adventure give way to nights of shy discovery, she and Caitlin come together in the complications of growing up; the refuge of belonging; the pact to Never Be Ordinary . . . Until one devastating summer when a local boy changes everything.

In her debut novel, author Jaclyn Gilbert weaves together the strands of two lives that form a union as finely nuanced and delicate as a spider’s web - and just as vulnerable. Following the relationship of Murray and his ex-wife, Nancy, in alternating narratives, we experience their early moments of hope and desire as well as their fears and failings. With poignancy and grace, Late Air traces the collapse of a marriage, exhausted by time and trauma, and one couple’s journey to regain their footing.

In About You, Dick Staub addresses irreligious, religious, spiritual seekers, and all kinds of Christians and shows us that Jesus came to satisfy our universal longing for a fully human life, not to establish a narrow us-versus-them religion. In short, Jesus didn't come to make us Christian; Jesus came to make us fully human.

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution. In the near future, most of us will not own automobiles but will travel instead in driverless electric vehicles summoned at the touch of an app. We will be liberated from driving, so that the time we spend in cars can be put to more productive use. We will prevent more than 90 percent of car crashes, provide freedom of mobility to the elderly and disabled and decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. Autonomy tells the story of the maverick engineers and computer experts who triggered the revolution.

“You’re going up the Valley". Black didn’t know its name, but he knew it lay deeper and higher than any other place Americans had ventured. You had to travel through a network of interlinked valleys, past all the other remote American outposts, just to get to its mouth. Everything about the place was myth and rumor, but one fact was clear: There were many valleys in the mountains of Afghanistan, and most were hard places where people died hard deaths. But there was only one Valley. It was the farthest, and the hardest, and the worst.

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and the basis of a major film adaptation, Seabiscuit is the true story of three men and their dreams for one racehorse. A story that symbolises a pivotal moment in US history, as modern America was born out of the crucible of the Depression and the new century’s greatest nation found the courage to bet on itself to win against the odds. In 1936, the habits of 19th-century America were finally consigned to history just as Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was published.

'As I look back, there is a parallel theme to my years at war: love. By that I mean the love - there is no other word for it - I came to feel for the troops and the overwhelming sense of personal responsibility I developed for them. So much so that it would shape some of my most significant decisions and positions.'

The keeping of secrets and the telling of lies; sex and desire and ordinary love; existential doubt and model rocketry all feature in the new novel from the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. 'The world, like the Tower of Babel or my grandmother's deck of cards, was made out of stories, and it was always on the verge of collapse.' Moonglow unfolds as a deathbed confession.

In What Can I Do? Fonda’s deeply personal journey as an activist is weaved alongside interviews with leading climate scientists and discussions of issues such as water, migration and human rights to emphasise what is at stake. Throughout, Fonda provides concrete solutions and actions that everybody can take in order to combat the climate crisis in their community. As Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace US and Fonda's partner in developing FDF, has declared, 'Change is inevitable; by design, or by disaster'.

Louie Hake is 43 and teaches architectural history at a third-rate college in Michigan. His second marriage is collapsing, and he's facing a potentially disastrous medical diagnosis. In an attempt to fend off what has become a soul-crushing existential crisis, he decides to treat himself to a tour of the world's most breathtaking architectural sites. Perhaps not surprisingly, Louie gets waylaid on his very first stop in Rome - ludicrously, spectacularly so - and fails to reach most of his other destinations.