Showing results by narrator "Charlie Thurston" in All Categories

In Living in Data, Thorp proves that thinking about data in a human context makes us better problem solvers and builds a healthier relationship between us and our data - one that puts our well-being front and center - and that there is a path forward beyond the extractive, impersonal nature of the “big data” era.

Nick Merrick is stretched to the breaking point. Keep his grades sky-high, or he'll never escape his hometown. Keep his brother's business going, or the Merricks will be out on the street. Keep the secret of where he's going in the evenings from his own twin, or he'll lose his family. Keep his mind off the hot, self-assured dancer who's supposed to be his "girlfriend's" partner.

Three years ago, 15-year-old Ellen Vicksburg went missing in the quiet town of River Remez, New Mexico. Ellen was kind, studious, and universally liked. Her younger brother, Ben, could imagine nothing worse than never knowing what happened to her - until, on the first anniversary of her death, he found her body in a shallow grave by the river's edge. Ben, now 17, is relentlessly driven to find answers to Ellen's homicide. Police believe she was the victim of a psychopath known as the Demon.

Jerome "Corky" Corcorn. A money-juggling wheeler dealer, rising politico, popular man's man, and successful womanizer. It is a Memorial Day weekend, and we are about to live with him, breathe with him, and sweat with him in a nonstop marathon of mounting desperation as he tries to keep his financial empire from unraveling, his love life from shredding, and his rebellious daughter from destroying both herself and him. Seldom in fiction has a man been brought so vividly to life in all his strength and weakness, hunger and ambition, carnality and corruption.

A gut-wrenching, beautiful memoir which explores toxic masculinity and the devastating consequences of war on one impressionable young soldier Matt Young joined the Marine Corps aged 18, after a drunken night that culminated in him crashing his car into a fire hydrant. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases of California. Young survived training and then three deployments to Iraq as an infantryman.

When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as listeners start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Neiders has written a book on a highly successful stuttering therapy that enhances the ability to recover from stuttering by using a holistic approach. The therapy utilizes psychological methods from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy to manage the unhealthy negative feelings of anxiety, shame, guilt and worthlessness and the beliefs upon which these feelings are based. To eliminate the uncontrollable struggling, forced stutters the authors explain how to learn easy bounces, a minimally disruptive habit based on the Iowa bounce technique adapted from Wendell Johnson.

The rain began nineteen years ago, and it never stopped: more than a foot of rain per day until almost the whole of North America was underwater. Those who survived the first year were forced to take drastic measures, and those who held to the veneer of civilization were few and very far between. Seventeen-year-old Tanner grew up after the rain began. She and her adoptive caretaker, Russell, have long sought a fabled Colorado refuge, a dream that has kept them going through years of brutal trials as they try to stay one step ahead of the “face eaters”.

Modern business gurus all cry for the need to innovate, to disrupt, and to act like a startup. It's hard to argue with that kind of thinking. It's sexy and exciting. But it's wrong. Too many businesses become enamored by shiny new objects and end up overlooking the value locked away in their existing products. Maybe your business is one of them. Iconic Advantage is a different approach that allows companies to leverage what they already have to create lasting differentiation and deeper relationships with their customers. It generates disproportionate levels of profit and protects against market fluctuations. Many of the world's most successful brands have been using it for years.

1964: Justice, Mississippi, is a town divided. When attorney Coop Lindsay agrees to defend a Black man accused of murdering a White teenager, the bribes and death threats don't intimidate him. 2014: To some, the result of the trial still feels like a fresh wound even 50 years later, when Coop's grandson arrives in Justice seeking answers to the questions unresolved by the trial that changed his family's legacy.

Sebastian Cody did something horrible, something no one - not even Sebastian himself - can forgive. At the age of four, he accidentally shot and killed his infant sister with his father's gun. Now, 10 years later, Sebastian has lived with the guilt and horror for his entire life. With his best friend away for the summer, Sebastian has only a new friend - Aneesa - to distract him from his darkest thoughts.

In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don't know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.

A body burns in the high desert hills. A boy walks into a fire station, pale with the shock of a grisly discovery. A middle school teacher worries when her colleague is late for work. By day's end, when the body is identified as local math teacher Adam Merkel, a small Nevada town will be rocked to its core by a brutal and calculated murder. Adam Merkel left a university professorship in Reno to teach middle school in Lovelock seven months before he died.

In a former life, Nick Lutz, sold cars in the Golden State. He had a wife and a young son, and they struggled along until Nick was shot in the head when a potential customer hijacked the car he was demonstrating. The incident sets off a bad-luck domino fall, and he loses an eye, his job, his family, and, eventually, his self-respect. With nothing left, Nick heads for Mexico, where he sheds his former self among an eclectic group of expats and locals, who fondly name him “Pirata” on account of his eye patch.

Late one night, investigative journalist Jack Logan receives a surprise visit from US Senator Malcolm Phillips at his New York apartment. Disheveled and in a panic, the senator swears that he’s about to be murdered and pleads with Jack to protect his wife Taylor, who happens to be the only woman Jack has ever truly loved.

With these 13 transfixing, ingenious stories, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world - cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.

Victory comes at a price. Mare Barrow learned this all too well when Cal's betrayal nearly destroyed her. Now determined to protect her heart - and secure freedom for Reds and newbloods like her - Mare resolves to overthrow the kingdom of Norta once and for all...starting with the crown on Maven's head. But no battle is won alone, and before the Reds may rise as one, Mare must side with the boy who broke her heart in order to defeat the boy who almost broke her. Cal's powerful Silver allies, alongside Mare and the Scarlet Guard, prove a formidable force.

Mario Woods is looking forward to one normal night before he graduates. He's spent most of high school riding solo. But when fate lands him a date for prom, he figures this might be his chance to be less of a loner.

Sixteen-year-old Hal Stevens is a budding historical scholar from a small town in Colorado. A virtual outcast at high school, he has only two friends: Roberto the Biker Witch and Cleo Mallawi. Cleo claims to be the reincarnation of Queen Cleopatra. But when Hal and Roberto find Cleo murdered in the forest near her home, it appears she may have been telling the truth. Her last request sends them journeying to Egypt, where it quickly becomes clear that Cleo has set them on the search of a lifetime: the search for the lost graves of Marc Antony and Cleopatra.

Raised in Florida by an aunt and uncle after his mother’s death when he was four, Joe had a seemingly normal childhood, spending summers at church camp and dreaming of going to college. But nearly fifteen years later, the ground shifted beneath his feet when he discovered a family secret that would impact the rest of his life.