Showing results by narrator "Stephen Bowlby" in All Categories

Lu Anne Henderson was a beautiful 15-year-old girl in Denver in 1945 when she met Neal Cassady, a fast-talking hurricane of male sexuality and vast promises. The two married, and soon they were hanging out with a group of young would-be writers, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. But Neal and Jack initially didn’t like each other very much.

Jason Peters is an operative for Narcom, a private organization that handles missions too politically risky for US intelligence agencies. When he gains possession of a laptop linked to unexplained murders, his trail will lead him around the world, to ancient ruins in Sicily and Greece, and a plot by eco-terrorists to assassinate the president of the US.

An ax-wielding monk hacks at the door. Toby Peters is on the other side, running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow. Alongside him is Salvador Dalí, dressed in a rabbit suit, insistently muttering "grasshoppers" as they try to make their escape. Dalí insists on being carried across the lawn, so Peters hobbles along with the surrealist in his arms. They get in the car just as the monk chops down the front door. The car doesn't start, and the monk charges silently, the ax in the air.

The year 1942 is a bad time to stage Madame Butterfly. Although Puccini's masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension in the dark months following Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against the cast and crew. When the first workman dies, the maestro calls Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who works discreetly for Hollywood's rich and famous.

If you're slogging through your days in a boring or unrewarding job, it may be time to make a big change. Careers for Dummies is a comprehensive career guide from a top career coach and counselor that will help you jump start your career and your life. Dive in to learn more about career opportunities, with a plethora of job descriptions and the certifications, degrees, and continuing education that can help you build the career you've always wanted.

The world prizes success. It rarely shows the effort people make to achieve it. We crave success, but it can seem so unattainable that we assume it’s not for us. What if successful business people were to let us in on their secrets? That what separates the adored from the overlooked is mindset. This anthology gathers advice from several dozen exceptional leaders, ranging from CEOs to champions to game-changers. Success Mindsets reveals that many roads lead to success and you must choose the one that suits your concept best.

David Shields decided to gather every interview he’s ever given, going back nearly forty years. If it was on the radio or TV or a podcast, he transcribed it. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he knew he wasn’t interested in any of his own answers. The questions interested him—approximately 2,700, which he condensed and collated to form twenty-two chapters focused on such subjects as Process, Childhood, Failure, Capitalism, Suicide, and Comedy.

Traveling to 20 towns in 20 weeks, author Theron Hopkins examines the magic of high school football in America. He finds that, in a world of spectacle and drama, the Friday night lights are not the most important part of what makes high school football so loved by those who play it, coach it, and watch it.

Dan Fortune’s girlfriend, Marty, asks him to pawn her diamond ring in order to buy them a few weeks by the seashore. Fortune does as told, but picks up some business while at the pawnshop. There he meets Claude Marais, brother of the pawnbroker and veteran of the humiliating French defeats in Vietnam and Algiers. Fearing that someone is trying to kill her husband, Claude’s wife hires Fortune to guard him against a mysterious German with a years-old wartime grudge.

With its last gasp, a wounded alien injects Shepherd with a high-tech serum that gives him near superhuman powers. Now, with a new body but a soul as fractured as ever, Shepherd becomes the reluctant leader of the human resistance against the coming invasion. With enemies on all sides, the man who couldn’t bear the guilt of seeing one more friend die in battle now finds himself charged with protecting the entire planet.

Ben Lopez spends his life travelling the world, bartering with people who value money over life. Working for governments, law enforcement agencies, multinational corporations and private clients, Ben is an expert K&R (Kidnap and Ransom) consultant, supplying professional kidnap-negotiation services. He can be called out to anywhere in the world within 24 hours notice to set up and command the negotiator's cell, bargaining with religious fanatics, hardened criminals, and other desperate people in order to save the lives of their captives.

Since the publication of his first book Hacked Again, Scott Schober has dedicated himself to educating anyone who would listen by telling his own story of being hacked in the hope that others can learn from his own mistakes. Now, joined by his brother Craig, the two have set their sights on the biggest target of all: small businesses. Throughout Cybersecurity Is Everybody's Business, Scott and Craig contextualize the impact of these cyber attacks on your small business and daily lives to provide expert insight and a plan of attack for fending off future security breaches.

Once Billy Fox starts looking for trouble, he discovers that in Chicago, trouble's under every footstep. Home from the war, Billy Fox leaves Michigan for Chicago, hoping to find his ex-girlfriend, Rita - now another man's wife. Chicago isn't a town that takes kindly to strangers, and Billy finds himself barely scraping by, working odd jobs and living in squalor among convicts. A chance encounter lands him a job with Harry Strummer, the streetwise owner of the Peerless Detective Agency.

The demands of work and the fast-moving pace of technology wear heavily on employees and entrepreneurs alike. The "hustle and grind" lifestyle that most of us have bought into is simply unsustainable, leading to physical ailments, emotional burnout, and a darkness in the soul. Joel Comm has found a better way. In The Fun Formula, Comm demonstrates that the best path to success - in work and in life - is to focus on our passions, curiosity, and the things that bring us great pleasure.

Thomas Tessler, devastated by a tragedy, has cloistered himself in his bedroom and shut out the world for the past three years. His wife, Silke, lives in the next room, but Thomas no longer shares his life with her, leaving his hideout only in the wee hours of the night to buy food at the store around the corner from their Manhattan apartment. Isolated, withdrawn, damaged, Thomas is hikikomori. Desperate to salvage their life together, Silke hires Megumi, a young Japanese woman attuned to the hikikomori phenomenon.

Three disparate and suspenseful looks at ourselves in three very different worlds. These engaging short stories by three of the masters of American science fiction literature, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Philip K. Dick, open windows into our psyches, our souls, and our surroundings that presage the world we find ourselves in today. Like episodes of The Twilight Zone, cinematic in their language and characters, the stories connect with our times in surprising ways.

J. is a smuggler living in Russia, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. In Istanbul he takes a commission to trap an endangered Russian butterfly and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. In the port of Odessa, she disappears, and J. continues alone to a small village on the Black Sea. Letters from V. begin to arrive, and as J. hunts the butterfly, he seeks a way to lure V. back into his life.

Learn the art of true, conscious creation. We spend our lives searching for things that we think will make our lives better, more abundant, loving and fulfilling. Yet, as we take part in our day-to-day busy lives, we often get sidetracked from our truest dreams and desires. Instead of creating the life that we have always dreamed of, we get lost in an endless series of events where we are often unprepared, reactionary, and less tolerant.

Are you ready to get your faith in shape? A 40-Day Spiritual Workout for Catholics is designed to bring about deeper transformation and conversion in your life. Rice challenges his listeners to spend 40 days developing a habit that will last a lifetime. Each of the 40 days includes a Scripture quote, a quote from a saint or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a short reflection, thought-provoking questions, and a prayer. Your spiritual workout borrows concepts from physical training, including stretch, cardio, muscle-building, hydration, fat-burning, and cool down.

A series of grave robberies in the 1920s go unsolved until reporter Michael Jacobs follows a new thread. His investigation leads him to a small town in the suburbs of Chicago named Elk Hills. While there, he finds out more haunting information than the police ever discovered. But with each interview bringing him closer to the truth, he finds himself becoming a part of the story he was looking to write.