Showing results by narrator "Christopher Lane" in All Categories

When Quentin Draith wakes up in a private sanatorium, he has no memory of who he is or how he received the injuries riddling his body. All he knows is that he has to get out, away from the drugs being pumped into him and back to the real world to search for answers. His first question: How did his friend Tony’s internal organs fill with sand, killing him in a Las Vegas car crash? After a narrow escape, he tracks down the basic facts: He is an investigator and blogger specializing in the supernatural - which is a good thing, because Quentin’s life is getting stranger by the minute.

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain-computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world’s problems.

In the desolate hills of the Fascelli family ranch, a skeleton has been discovered. The sheriff needs Du Pre's long experience in Montana to identify the bones. What Du Pre finds leads him on a search through the history of a troubled family, a search that brings him closer to a secret from his own past. Along the way, Du Pre meets a range of interesting folk, some to his liking, some decidedly not.

On the 85th floor of a glittering high-rise in Los Angeles, Robert Tarza steps into the lobby of the Marbury Marfan law firm to discover his partner Simon Rafer lying in a pool of blood - an ornate dagger plunged into his back. Robert had worked with Simon for decades, and their relationship was fraught with conflict. But he never imagined he would wind up as the prime suspect for his colleague’s murder. As the evidence stacks up against him with frightening speed, he quickly falls from his respected position to that of a criminal dragged through the tabloids.

The world is on the brink of disaster. Iran has just conducted its first atomic weapons test. Millions of Muslims around the world are convinced their messiah — known as the Twelfth Imam — has arrived on earth. Israeli leaders fear Tehran, under the Twelfth Imam’s spell, will soon launch a nuclear attack that could bring about a second Holocaust and the annihilation of Israel.

A group of people evacuating ahead of civil unrest amid a societal collapse find themselves lost, alone, and on the run, deep in the woods of rural West Tennessee. With snow on the ground, no skills, and not much more than the clothes on their backs, the group is in dire straits and probably won't last the coming night. Until out of the falling snow, a lone figure approaches. Over the next few days their silent benefactor will keep them safe, fed, and warm while helping them acquire the know-how to care for themselves. The thing is, he's just a kid....

On a secret island in the Caribbean, bioengineers have devised a vacation resort like no other, promising the ultimate escape. But when Dr. Roger Clark investigates, he discovers the dark secret of Eden Island and of Advance Biosystems, the shadowy corporation underwriting it...

Finally settling into a peaceful life after more than a decade on the deadly frontlines of the war on terror, Ryan Kealey believes he’s put danger behind him - and some of his demons to rest. But his calm is shattered when he’s swept into a highly organized and merciless terror attack during a charity gala in downtown Baltimore. Dozens are dead and critically injured, including the wife of CIA Deputy Director John Harper, whose investigation of the ambush is hampered by suspicion.

When a top Iranian source reveals that Iran is planning to bomb the United Nations, U.S. Intelligence begins counter-measures. Only Kealey sees it as a smokescreen for another, far more involved plot. But getting anyone to believe him isn't going to be easy. With only his ally, London's newest assistant chief, Naomi Kharmai, by his side, Ryan will have to operate outside the lines in order to prevent a terrible attack in a city on lockdown.

They are stronger, heal better, and think faster than any humans ever created - and they must be destroyed. Not even Victor Helios - once Frankenstein - can stop the engineered killers he's set loose on a reign of terror through modern-day New Orleans. Only the one-time "monster" Deucalion and his all-too-human partners, Detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison, stand in their way.

Modern-day Georgia. The state Supreme Court celebrates the opening of its new courthouse, but the chief justice - shot dead in his chambers - is late to the party. Enter ex-lawyer Chance Meridian. Pressed into service by an offer he cannot refuse, Chance launches the search for the bold killer. But dirty politics is part of Atlanta’s DNA. The town is full of secrets - secrets too damning to see the light of sunshine. And if Chance cannot crack the case and fast, the next murder on the court’s docket could be his own.

In remote, icy Greenland, ex-Air Force General Steven Macaulay helps lead an expedition to recover a lost World War II plane. Encased in ice below is a find that will astonish the world - a perfectly-preserved Viking ship, buried for nearly a thousand years, along with the frozen corpses of nine crewmen. Assembling the foremost Viking scholars, Macaulay tasks the gorgeous Lexy Vaughan to translate the ship’s markings - until her work is cut short when her colleagues are murdered.

For intelligence operative Sean Dillon, it is a routine passport check. But the events it will lead to will be as bloody as any he has ever known. The man he stops at Heathrow airport is Caspar Rashid, born and bred in England, but with family ties to a Bedouin tribe fiercely wedded to the old ways, as he's just found out to his pain.

David Hall, an American nuclear engineer, arrives in Israel on a mission of truth. Believing that the defenders of Masada killed themselves to protect a great secret, Hall plans to explore the heavily guarded site and discover the real reasons behind the dramatic end of the Roman siege. Hall is shadowed by an Israeli archaeologist, Judith Ressner, a reserved professor with an agenda of her own. There is more than history hidden within the mountain, and Hall soon finds himself the target of ferocious Israeli security forces.

In the eighteen years since her father went to prison for killing her mother and brother, Della Stallings has battled a crippling phobia. Her fear only grows when her father’s released. She still believes he killed her family, but the police don’t have enough evidence to arrest him again. When new grisly murders occur - each bearing the telltale signs that seem to implicate her father - Della begins to wonder if the real murderer is still out there. Could her father have been framed?

The Enchanter is the Ur-Lolita, the precursor to Nabokov’s classic novel. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls, whose coltish grace and subconscious coquetry reveal, to his mind, a special bud on the verge of bloom.

For more than a decade, New York University president John Sexton has used baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life in a wildly popular course at NYU. Using great works of baseball literature as well as the actual game’s fantastic moments, its legendary characters, and its routine rituals - from the long-sought triumph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers to the heroic achievements of players like the saintly Christy Mathewson and the sinful Ty Cobb to the loving intimacy of a game of catch between a father and son - Sexton teaches that through the game we can touch the spiritual dimensions of life.

Defense attorney David Nash has made a career out of setting monsters free — and no one does it better. Now a case has come to “the Ice Man” that could help cleanse Nash of the guilt and doubts that torment him: that rarest of all defendants, an innocent man.

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination - in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC....

Billy Todd has always been different. Most people called him odd, and those were the nice people. Though he was born with a learning disability, Billy's parents never allowed him to consider himself disabled. Raised to be self-sufficient, Billy might not be as smart as some, but he was a lot smarter than people realized.