Showing results by narrator "joel richards" in All Categories

Anna Draekus has harbored a shadowy secret all her life - a secret that she's trained for years to conceal from her king and fellow military officers. Anna belongs to an elite, underground guard charged with protecting the royal family at all costs. This sworn responsibility is one that must never be discovered - not even by King Jared himself. But when her superior officer, Nevin Daniels, uncovers her membership in the circle of protectors thought to be extinct, Anna finds herself in treacherous territory.

Why do politicians engage in nasty politics? Why do they use insult, accusations, intimidation, and in rare cases violence against their domestic political opponents? In Nasty Politics, Thomas Zeitzoff answers these questions by examining this global political trend in the US, Ukraine, and Israel and looking at how key leaders such as Trump, Zelensky, and Netanyahu use it. Nasty Politics highlights how it influences the kinds of politicians who run for office and deepens our understanding for why so many politicians now rely on outsized anger and withering insults for political gain.

Franklin is a wanted man living under an alias, and, more curiously, he has three wives. No More Strangers and Foreigners is a true story of polygamy lived in the open - not the sordid brand of the 21st-century polygamy with its child brides and forced marriages, but the saga of ordinary love and extraordinary lives. In a chain of polygamist colonies south of the Texas border, founded by fellow Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the Spencers immerse themselves in the culture of their adopted land.

Collin War wakes up in a bed that is not his own, in a body that feels changed. He is the first of his kind, the first to recover from a mysterious fever that has ravaged the world. Collin awakens in the small town of Goshen, Montana, a community struggling to survive while maintaining a faithful existence. He yearns for his lost family but finds himself drawn to the people of Goshen.

While their family’s wagon train stops for a rest, Jacob Milam goes hunting with his younger brother, Tom. They are hoping for a rabbit, a deer, or even a buffalo, but they haven’t managed to catch anything bigger than a rattlesnake when they see the Indian raiding party galloping over the plains. Jacob races back to camp, desperate to warn his parents, but it is already too late. Betrayed by their Indian guide, the settlers have been slaughtered. Jacob and Tom are the only survivors.

Unlike her brother, Saracasi Ocaitchi has always known that her loyalties belong to the ideals of freedom and democracy, not the government of the Alliance, and that protecting those ideals would require a fight. But now that the rebellion she has dreamed about has finally begun, she must come to terms with what that truly means: for herself, for her brother, and for all of the people who will die in the coming war.

A classic tale that features all the beloved subjects and icons - stagecoaches, gold rush towns, and whiskey bars - that represent the romance and excitement of America's frontier.

In The Safety of the Kingdom, J. Michael Martinez takes up the question of how the United States government has responded to terrorist attacks and, in the absence of an attack, the fear of foreign and subversive elements that may harm the nation. In some cases the government “overreaction” led to a series of abuses that amplified the severity of the original threat.

When a daffy young American comes to Rio de Janeiro in search of her missing brother, Captain José Da Silva does his best to stay out of it. But when her search draws her into the mystery of the bridge that went nowhere, Da Silva will have to risk a jungle expedition of his own to save her life.

Two friends develop a dangerous performance. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

Two creatures found in the woods are taken in by a troubled couple. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

Hilarious and heartbreaking, profane and profound, It Takes a Worried Man is the true story of a young husband and father whose life is changed forever by his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. Following Brendan Halpin’s cranky, irreverent, and lustful thoughts through the diagnosis and treatment of his wife, Kirsten, It Takes a Worried Man is an unflinching and raw look at how cancer transforms a family. It’s also the funniest book about cancer you’ll ever read.

In search of a missing treasure, Da Silva returns to an old case. Off the island of Barbados, the crew of a Brazilian ocean liner strains to hear the sounds of Carnival coming from shore. A small boat pulls alongside, and a band of steel drummers offer to play for them. As they make their rounds on the ship, the bandleader slips away. He pistol whips one of the crew, forcing him to open the ship's safe, and escapes before the song has ended, taking half a million dollars in gems with him.

A traveler is murdered in Rio for the sake of a stuffed snake. The man in white has money to fly, but he boards a bus instead. It takes hours for the rickety old bus to snake down the Brazilian coast, and the man arrives in Rio de Janeiro well after midnight. He is on his way to make his fortune when he spots the killers following him and knows is life is through. A few hours after dawn, the man in white is brought to the city morgue.

A fraud case leads Da Silva on a wild search across Brazil. It's snowing in New York, and Jimmy Martin is pleading for his life. He owes a loan shark $100,000, but he knows he will make his fortune if he can just hop a plane to Brazil. The lender gives him a 30-day extension, and Jimmy is on his way. But he will find Brazil a better place in which to end a life than to save one.

A gang of assassins draw Da Silva into Brazil's rugged interior. George Chaney may have been raised in the roughest neighborhoods of the United States, but he's never been anywhere quite as dangerous as Paraíso. Although booming with petrodollars, this rugged city in the Brazilian wastelands is still a frontier town at heart. On the run from the mob, Chaney comes here in search of sanctuary. He will find that though the city's name means paradise, its reality is much closer to hell.

A quartet of kidnappers make the mistake of hiring Da Silva as their driver. Chico Xavier needs cash. His father has cut off his allowance, and for a university student with expensive taste - and an even more expensive girlfriend - this is a death sentence. And so he and his friends arrange to kidnap one of their school chums: a fellow dilettante who lets himself be taken in exchange for a cut of the ransom. Two days of criminal behavior, Chico thinks, and they'll all live happily ever after - or die in the Rio sand.

At an international summit, Da Silva searches for an assassin. Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, a freighter battles the waves. The steward has been stricken with appendicitis, but the sea is too rough for the ship to dock. A coast guard helicopter brings him to shore, where he is put in an ambulance and rushed the hospital. But when the ambulance arrives, the patient has disappeared. He was never sick, and he is not a sailor. He is an assassin, and he's vanished into thin air.

Most of us are sleepwalking, focusing on the physical world when we should be paying attention to our inner selves, and to being in the present. The Three Rooms will help listeners awaken and align with their Higher Self. The book uses the metaphor of rooms to represent places our thoughts go: backwards to the Past Room, forward to the Future Room, or now in the Present Room.

For almost sixty years, the weekly St. Louis Evening Whirl brazenly attacked criminals, exposed the sexual peccadilloes of the black bourgeoisie, and racked up millions in libel claims—most of the time in iambic, rhyming couplets.