Showing results by narrator "Marvel" in All Categories

What explains the massive worldwide success of video games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, and Pokemon Go? Game companies and their popularity are poorly understood and often ignored from the standpoint of traditional business strategy. What lessons can we draw from its major successes and failures about the future of entertainment?

Champagne Charlie tells the story of a dashing young Frenchman, Charles Heidsieck, who introduced hard-drinking Americans to champagne in the mid-19th century and became famously known as Champagne Charlie. Ignoring critics who warned that America was a dangerous place to do business, Heidsieck plunged right in, considering it "the land of opportunity" and succeeding there beyond his wildest dreams. Those dreams, however, became a nightmare when the Civil War erupted and he was imprisoned and nearly executed after being charged with spying for the Confederacy.

Chris Grant had taken the close protection gig for a finance guy as a break from the last two decades spent in war zones around the world. When a coordinated attempt is made on the client’s life, however, he finds that this job isn’t as simple as it seemed. Things only get more complicated from there. The Pallas Group Solutions contractors haven’t been selected because they’ll sit on their hands. As they begin to gather more intelligence, and as the bodies stack up, they discover that there’s more to both the client and their own company than meets the eye.

Evelyn Lewis's secret dream of marrying her brother's best friend is shattered when he leaves their home town to seek his fortune elsewhere. For six long years, she's waited and wondered if he would return. After the shocking murder of her parents, her brother is the only family she has left. Refusing to accept a betrothal to a man she doesn't love, she decides to take control of her destiny and confront her parents' killer.

Ray Garrett, a wealthy young American living in Europe, is grieving over the death of his wife. Ray is at a loss for why she would take her own life, but Peggy's father, Ed Coleman, has no such uncertainty - he blames Ray completely. Late one night in Rome, Coleman shoots Ray at point-blank range. He thinks he's had his revenge, but Ray survives and follows Coleman and his wealthy girlfriend to Venice.

Adam Plantinga, author of the acclaimed 400 Things Cops Know and a 17-year veteran sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department, gives an inside view of the police officer's job, from handling evidence and conducting interrogations to coping with danger, violence, and death. Not hesitating to confront controversial issues, Plantinga presents the police officer's views on police shootings, racial profiling, and relationships between police and the community.

The enemy demands Americans be kicked out of every nation. Germany. England. France. Every US citizen must leave. The high seas are their only refuge. Ted and Emily crash into the middle of the enemy camp, but they've all been betrayed by David and his Legion. While Americans were the first to fall, it becomes clear the enemy leader has his sights set on a much larger target.

Reflections of a Vintner recounts the lessons learned, relationships forged, and observations made from an insider's nearly 50-year journey through the burgeoning wine industry in Napa Valley. From the mid-'70s, when there were less than 50 wineries, to the present, with over 800, Tor Kenward shares his recollections as the region became a world-class wine destination.

Artificial intelligence surrounds us. More and more of the systems and services you interact with every day are based on AI technology. Most AI is narrowly specific; that is, it can only do a single thing, in a single context. Human intelligence is different. We can solve a variety of tasks, including those we have not seen before. In Artificial General Intelligence, Julian Togelius explores technical approaches to developing more general artificial intelligence and asks what general AI would mean for human civilization.

Raine Meyers is alive today only because of the heroic efforts of the Delta Force Echo Team. It's time to pay that debt. As an undercover defense intelligence officer, Raine tracks a Russian threat to the Delta Force wives left vulnerable while their husbands are downrange protecting the US. FBI Special Agent in Charge Damian Prescott, former Delta Force operator - also Raine's former fiance - falls quite literally into the middle of her operation.

Inspire yourself and others with the second edition of this best-seller. With heartfelt advice, practical wisdom, and examples from the field, Todd Whitaker explains the qualities and practices that distinguish great principals.

The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump's path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.

The Dreamland team has used stealth, raw nerve, and technology to defuse nightmares all across the globe. But now the darkness is racing toward America at blinding speed. With more than two dozen nuclear devices unaccounted for, the global masters of terror have set a catastrophe in motion: a surprise attack more deadly than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined. If the nation is to survive, Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian and his crew will have to reach deep into their cutting-edge arsenal. And they’ll have to do it shorthanded.

In the frigid days of February 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory. Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband, Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril. The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help.

Inarguably one of the greatest dramas in the history of the American theater” (Chicago Tribune), Eugene O'Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT receives a vibrant and timely update….

Dragged to an unfamiliar continent transformed by war and monstrous creatures, Cleve's path home has never been less clear. With a place in a king's plot, a princess who wants to marry him, and the companionship of a brash Sartious mage, Cleve learns that--while some battles are won with a sword - others are played out through a more delicate dance. But Cleve has never been one for delicacy. Soon he's making tidal waves in every puddle he crosses on his path to return home.

The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psychological thrillers The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. A critically acclaimed, best-selling author in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Eleven is Highsmith's first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability.

The classic genre-defining whodunit, by the mother of the detective novel. Introducing the first American series detective, Ebenezer Gryce, The Leavenworth Case was published nine years before the debut of Sherlock Holmes, and made author Anna Katharine Green an enormously popular and influential writer who changed the mystery genre forever.

When 14-year-old Brittany disappears one night, her parents are devastated, certain she has been taken. They can't bear to think about who has done this and what might be happening to their precious girl. Even worse, the police seem to see them as suspects, implying that they may have had a part in their own daughter's disappearance. Only their neighbor, Taylor, is a rock. She organizes search parties, feeds the volunteers, works night and day to help them find Brittany.

A Sportsman’s Notebook, Ivan Turgenev’s first literary masterpiece, is a sweeping portrayal of the magnificent 19th-century Russian countryside and the harsh lives of those who inhabited it. In a powerful and gripping series of sketches, a hunter wanders through the vast landscape of steppe and forest in search of game, encountering a varied cast of peasants, landlords, bailiffs, overseers, horse traders, and merchants. He witnesses both feudal tyranny and the submission of the tyrannized, against a backdrop of the sublime and pitiless terrain of rural Russia.