Showing results by narrator "Patrick Cronin" in All Categories

In hospitals and ad hoc chapels, on patrol and at makeshift altars, military chaplains help American soldiers find peace amid the chaos and danger of the front lines.

On a searing summer Friday, Eddie Chapman has been stuck for hours in a traffic jam. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his car and run home, he sees that the trees along the edge of a stream have been burnt, and the water in the streambed is gone. Something is very wrong. When he arrives home, the power is out, and there is no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, have gone dry.

They are four outcasts brought together by the god Vili, bonded by a sacred oath and sworn to each other's fealty. Bith the young sorceress. Cal warrior and outlaw for a crime he didn't commit. The troll Hathor who has foresworn his people's barbarous ways. The enigmatic elf Endril. Each had pledged to defeat the Dark Lord and his minions...or give their lives trying.

Bith the sorceress and her companions - Cal the outlaw, Hathor the troll, and Endril the elf - have armed themselves with powerful weapons and magic. They are ready to do battle with the Dark Lord's minions, be they orc or dragon. But are they ready to confront their own nightmares?

When Belle touches the Beast's enchanted rose, memories flood through Belle's mind - memories of a mother she thought she would never see again. And, stranger still, she sees her mother is none other than the beautiful enchantress who cursed the castle and all its inhabitants. Shocked and confused, Belle and the Beast will have to unravel a dark mystery about their families that is 21 years in the making.

When Jafar steals the Genie's lamp, he uses his first two wishes to become sultan and the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Agrabah lives in fear, waiting for his third and final wish. To stop the power-mad ruler, Aladdin and the deposed Princess Jasmine must unite the people of Agrabah in rebellion. But soon, their fight for freedom threatens to tear the kingdom apart in a costly civil war.

They were no elite force. They were just an average lot of men who'd undergone the seemingly magical training process that produces marines. But this proved to be their greatest strength that long and terrible night, fighting one of the truly great final stands in all of history - they were marines.

It is 1951. The close-knit community of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, does not welcome those who are different. Jacob Hampton's wealthy parents disinherited him when he married Naomi, an uneducated hotel maid from out of town. They had bigger plans for him. Now Jacob has been called up to fight in Korea, leaving a pregnant Naomi behind. The only person he can entrust to take care of her is his lifelong friend, Blackburn Gant. Blackburn, who tends the local cemetery alone, is an outsider too, his appearance irrevocably altered by childhood disease.

Walentin Ivano's murder was no isolated act of brutality. It was the handiwork of one of the most virulent street gangs in American history.

Magentite. The rarest of gems, one capable of turning any mage into an unstoppable force of destruction. A gem found only in the empty lands surrounding the Tyber River. And now war has come. Endless war between Esteria and the native Tyberons, a savage and mysterious people who prowl the grass-covered land with spearpoints ready. Unable to end the conflict the Esterians rely on mercenaries to bolster their military, desperate men like Dain Gladstone, a disgraced Paladin.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

To salvage his broken-down ranch, near-bankrupt Ben Pearce devises a hunting scheme, the consequences of which he cannot begin to imagine. The prey: three rare, fierce cats - a leopard and two mountain lions caught in the wild. The predators: an arrogant Texas millionaire, his beautiful but disturbed wife, and their near-psychopathic teenage son. Each of them will hunt one of the animals with only Ben as guide: first the wife, then the son, and finally the Texan.

For generations, the urban legend of Granny Hatchet has plagued the quiet residential area of Suvikylä in northern Finland. As the story goes, this immortal killer murders her victims with a hatchet then buries the hearts in a potato field and eats them after they've rotted black. But not everyone is convinced it is just a story.

When Benedict left home, it was maybe the first time he'd stood up to his family. It was also meant to be the last. "No contact," he said. "I'm disinvesting." In all honesty, they weren't sorry to see him go. Ben had never had their talent, never had the family spark. When you run a city - especially the way the Macallans ran theirs - the last thing you need is a reluctant passenger.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

When the world’s best magicians are offered an extraordinary opportunity, saying yes is easy. Each could join the secretive Alexandrian Society, whose custodians guard lost knowledge from ancient civilizations. Their members enjoy a lifetime of power and prestige. Yet each decade, only six practitioners are invited—to fill five places.

An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment. Old alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

On June 23, 1997 - barely three weeks after her 18th birthday - Kristen Modafferi, a tall, vivacious brunette, ended her workday and vanished into thin air. An investigation into her disappearance has yet to produce a trace.