Showing results by narrator "Rudy Sanda" in All Categories

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California, in the 1980s and '90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner-city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men.

Breakups can be messy. After his ex-girlfriend Hope embarrasses him in front of the entire school, Tony wants revenge. So he signs her up for online dating sites and subscriptions and even makes the location of her phone public. And it works. A few days later, Hope calls begging Tony to stop the prank. Then Hope screams, and a car door slams. The call drops. Tony tries to keep cool. It's just like Hope to get back at him with more drama.

Why do political leaders become entangled in so many sex scandals? How did the US military inadvertently help make San Francisco a mecca of gay culture? And what was the original purpose of vibrators? Find out the answers to all these questions and more as journalist Ross Benes delves into the complicated relationship between everyday human life - including religion, politics, and technology - and our sexuality.

All I ever wanted was to be a female fighter. It was in my blood to smack people around. Some girls wore pink dresses and makeup; I wore sneakers and bruises. I was a loner, stuck to myself because I was different, until Camden Steel moved next door. I punched him in the mouth, and he saw me through rose-colored glasses from that day on. I had everything I ever wanted. The boy next door, inspiring career...until I didn't.

When Drake and I arrived at our new home, I could pretend it had been all a dream. A nightmare. Here, we are safe and happy - and together. Our safety and comfort are only temporary. Drake and I know that to reach the peace we seek, to be really free of the past, we need to return and fight back. We need to put an end to this chaos and madness. We need to face the vampires, the witches, the werewolves, and we need to win. But since fleeing the last battle, I've been sick, and it's only getting worse.

When I ran out in front of his speeding motorcycle, I was desperate. I had no idea who he was. I needed help, and he was my only prayer. Cash Flannigan was handsome. He was intense. He was irresistible. And, he was a member of Devil's Disciples MC. He was exactly what I needed to get out of a jam at that instant, but not at all what I needed in my life. But, as a "thank you" for him saving me on that dreadful night, I agreed to go on a date. Having a young biker look at me with lustful eyes was a nice change.

Ex-Navy SEAL Adam Cain finds himself attempting to make a living the best he can in the alien universe he's been dropped into - as an assassin. After all, with his kick-ass attitude and instinctive hatred for aliens, he's a natural at it. As a human among aliens, he's stronger, faster, and tougher than just about everyone - and everything - he encounters. In this reality, Adam is the Superman.

A war has broken out in the galaxy! The great spacefaring races are all entangled in the fight, and even at the very edge of the known universe, humanity can hear the echoes of its distant bloody battles. Gnat is with the Shiamiru crew on the front lines. He's just changed class to Listener, and his friends find themselves right in the thick of this grand interstellar war....

Return to the world of Wicked Lovely! Listen to an all-new Dark Court short story. "Love Hurts" catches up with Irial, Niall, and Leslie - and offers clues about the Wicked Lovely prequel novel, Cold Iron Heart. Tales of Folk & Fey also includes "Old Habits" and "Stopping Time" (previously published Wicked Lovely Dark Court stories) and two previously published selchie short stories ("Awakened" and "Love Struck"). As a bonus, the collection also includes "Carnival of Lies", a prequel story to the 2012 novel, Carnival of Secrets.

Ex-Navy SEAL Adam Cain and his band of intergalactic Raiders are fighting a behind-the-lines insurgency against the Juirean Expansion. In the meantime, the Human Fleet is now ready to take on the forces of the Expansion in massive head-to-head battles among the stars. But not all is as it seems, as the puppet-masters - the Klin - soon learn the Humans - and Adam Cain in particular - are aware of their behind-the-scenes manipulations of the Human-Juirean War.

Anyone who has ever crammed for a test, capitulated to a grade-grubbing student, or fretted over a child's report card knows that the way we assess student learning in American schools is freighted with unintended consequences. As experts agree, our primary assessment technologies—grading, rating, and ranking—don't actually provide an accurate picture of how students are doing in school. In Off the Mark, Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt explain how we got into this predicament, why we remain beholden to outmoded forms of assessment, and what we can do to change course.

Jake McGraw, independent space trucker, has been shanghaied. He and his crew, fresh off their adventures in Starrigger and Red Limit Freeway, are plucked off the Skyway by a creature of unknown power. Now on an alien planet where most of the rules of the regular universe do not seem to apply, Jake confronts the builders of the Skyway once and for all. Will he and his crew make it out alive?

Isla Lane is an ambitious violinist, who yearns for the career her grandmother had and had always planned for her. Though determined to make her mark on Manhattan and follow her dreams, she just can't seem to get back on course. Consumed with pain from the loss of her grandmother, Isla thinks that she has found the perfect distraction, but this perfect distraction will challenge her in ways she couldn't have imagined.

Jim and Kram are back in their second hilarious romp around their secluded Southeast Alaskan island. With a serial killer at large (a cereal serial killer, to be more accurate), an unlucky entrepreneur with an out-of-control facial tic, and the nephew of a notorious crime boss setting up shop on the island, Lieutenant Jim Wekle will have his work cut out for him.

I didn't realize my mother was a person until I was 13 years old and she pulled me out of bed and put me in the back of her car, and we left home and my dad with no explanations. I thought that Ma was all that she was and all she had ever wanted to be. I was wrong. As we made our way from Virginia to California, returning to the places where she'd lived as a kid in foster care and as a teenager on the run, repaying debts and keeping promises, I learned who she was in her life-before-me and the secrets she had kept - even from herself.

Thalia Lyndhoven's in a quandary. The Devil wants her daughter, and Thalia? Not unsurprisingly, she's not too fond of the idea. Thalia's proven time and time again that she'll do whatever it takes for those she loves, and for her unborn child? Well, Thalia's about to prove that momma bears have got nothing on her.

While Mexicans were hopeful for economic reform following the Mexican revolution, by the 1930s, large numbers of Mexican nationals had already moved north and were living in the United States in one of the 20th century's most massive movements of migratory workers. Fernando Saúl Alanis Enciso provides an illuminating backstory that demonstrates how fluid and controversial the immigration and labor situation between Mexico and the United States was in the 20th century and continues to be in the 21st.

One moment everything is perfectly normal, and in the next the power grid across the entire United States goes down and sends the country back to the Stone Age. With the cities completely overwhelmed with death and destruction, the forests of the Pacific Northwest seem to be the only place of possible safety or refuge. That's what brothers Randall and Thomas think as they fight their way to their family's secluded cabin to locate their grandparents, parents, and cousins, only to instead find themselves proven completely wrong as a new deadly threat from the woods emerges.

Ceasefires have one big downside: They eventually come to an end. And when they do, once again game nodes are set ablaze, and platoons of Dark Faction soldiers threaten our customary world with destruction. The enemy has grown stronger and more numerous. To make matters worse, they also got their hands on even deadlier weaponry. They have learned painful lessons from previous encounters and adjusted their tactics accordingly.

Courtney is a curvy, feisty bombshell who has watched her friends be swept off their feet by the alpha men of the Devil Chaser's Motorcycle Club. She thinks she has met her match when she falls for one of the MC bad boys, but a vindictive act against the Devil Chasers will change her forever. After surviving a horrific accident, Courtney is badly shaken by the uncertainty of her life. Her doubts and fears rise to the surface as she reevaluates everything she holds dear.