Showing results by narrator "Bronson Pinchot" in All Categories

Alan Lightman's grandfather, M. A. Lightman, was the family's undisputed patriarch: it was his movie-theater empire that catapulted the family to prominence in the South, his fearless success that both galvanized and paralyzed his descendants, haunting them for a half century after his death. In this lyrical and impressionistic memoir, Lightman writes about returning to Memphis in an attempt to understand the people he so eagerly left behind forty years earlier.

“A mathematician,” G. H. Hardy wrote, “like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns." Throughout his childhood, Jim Tilley was encouraged to discover such patterns through the mathematical puzzles his father posed for him to solve. Never satisfied with ordinary solutions, his father insisted on mathematical elegance. Always more comfortable in the realm of the mind, he could never bring himself to give Tilley a hug; they'd merely shake hands on parting. Both father and son set standards for intellectual achievement so high it was difficult to ever be satisfied.

In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, and mysteries are deepened.… Following the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy introduces John Rodriguez, the new head of the government agency responsible for the safeguarding of Area X. His first day is spent grappling with the fall-out from the last expedition. Area X itself remains a mystery.

River is gone and Athens abandoned … With nowhere else to go, the Tartans evacuate both their citizens and the Hawaiian refugees to Galveston, the capital city of New Texas. Surrounded by pre-wave technology, Felicity has never been more uncomfortable while Winter thrives in her position as Assistant Director of the New Anaphedarin project. The shift in Tartan dynamics has caused some friction between the years-long group of friends, but as uncomfortable as the Athenians are, the Hawaiians are having an even harder time adjusting; particularly Zac.

The highly anticipated third volume of the haunting, disturbing, and evocative Southern Reach trilogy.It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown, navigating new terrain and new challenges, the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting. In this last instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may have been solved.

This nonfiction essay, first published in Vertex in April 1973, discusses the grandfather paradox.

Detective-Lieutenant Gene Trimble faces an increasing number of bizarre suicides in a world struggling to come to terms with its place in a multiverse of different timelines, where every decision ever made by anyone becomes an alternate universe.

A young graphic designer fresh out of college in the summer of 1961, Happy has just landed his first job at a wacky advertising firm filled with eccentric creative artists. Everything is going great until Happy is assigned to design a newspaper ad recruiting participants for an experiment in the Yale Psychology Department. Happy can't resist responding to the ad himself.

The title work in this collection of ten short stories and poems is widely regarded as the most famous of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings. This unsettling tale in verse tells of a man’s slow descent into madness as he mourns the loss of his lover. The mysterious visit of a talking raven that utters only one word sparks the man’s steady decline.

Opened in 1965 and located along the Potomac River in Washington, DC's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, the Watergate became one of the capital's chicest addresses, a hub for power brokers and the epicenter of a scandal that brought down a president. In The Watergate, writer and political consultant Joseph Rodota skillfully paints a vivid portrait of this historical landmark whose name has become an indelible part of the cultural zeitgeist.

When Sargent Singer discovers that the paintings in his father’s gallery are alive, he is pulled into a captivating world behind the frame that he never knew existed. Filled with shady characters, devious plots, and a grand art heist, this inventive mystery-adventure celebrates art and artists and is perfect for fans of Night at the Museum and Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer. There’s one important rule at the Beaverbrook Gallery - don’t let anyone know the paintings are alive.

In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toy shop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter inside.

Llama loves cooking...and baking...and, above all, eating. For breakfast, Llama makes one epic spread...as well as a big mess. But Llama hates cleaning. So by lunch, Llama has cooked up something really devious - an idea - and by second lunch, Llama has cloned his most fastidious friend, Alpaca, to clean his house. And Llama doesn't stop at just one clone. By dinner, the alpaca clones threaten to tidy the world into utter destruction - the Alpacalypse is here!

What would it be like, to get absolute power? Would you wear a cape and fight crime? Rule the planet? Or perhaps you would be like Rob Lewis, and watch your world collapse around you. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Rob is going to find out.

The Sublime Engine explores the profound sense of awe every person feels when they ponder the miracle encased within the ribs.

In this lyrical history, a critically acclaimed novelist and a leading cardiologist - who happen to be brothers - draw upon history, science, religion, popular culture, and literature to illuminate all of the heart's physical and figurative chambers.

Brand-new stories from David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, Bruce Rubenstein, K.J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Brad Zellar, Mary Sharratt, Pete Hautman, Larry Millett, Quinton Skinner, Gary Bush, and Chris Everheart.

This early Niven story was the first of many to delve deeply into the legal and ethical implications of organ-transplant technology. It introduces Known Space's organ banks and the breed of criminals known as "organleggers".

The New York Times best-selling author of Einstein's Dreams presents a collection of essays, written over the past 20 years, that displays his genius for bringing literary and scientific concerns into ringing harmony. Sometimes provocative, sometimes fanciful, always elegantly conceived and written, these meditations offer listeners a fascinating look into the creative compulsions shared by the scientist and the artist.

Did you know that subsidized goods often cost us more than we'd pay for them in the free market? In fact, we sometimes pay for goods that will never exist at all. It turns out that the free market in America is anything but. How did a system designed to safeguard American farmers turn into the nation's biggest scam?Most of us don't know what subsidies are and don't think they affect us directly, so we tune out. But they have an enormous impact on all of us.

Like "Cloak of Anarchy", this story is peopled with fictional versions of several of Niven's friends. A discussion among friends about the theory of "Multiple Edens" suddenly becomes all too real, and the reason Tom Findlay has been asking such interesting questions over the years becomes clear.