Showing results by narrator "Peter Berkrot" in All Categories

Alexa and Francis were wealthy executives who had everything, except for kids. When he tragically passed away, she gave up hope for being a mother...until she met Vick Miller, a simple family man and a nearly perfect doppelganger of her husband. She pays him handsomely for his donations to produce a child who resembles her beloved husband. The offers grow more enticing, and Vick’s marriage begins to strain.

In this stunningly detailed account of US military power in the Obama era, Mark Moyar reveals how Obama's military decisions have led to the international catastrophes of his second term. While the current downward spiral did not become noticeable until 2014, Moyar finds its roots in Obama's first-term decisions to shrink the US military and replace large overseas military commitments with "light footprints".

Marine Sgt. John Peck survived an IED during the War on Terror that left him with a traumatic brain injury, amnesia, and cost him his marriage. He survived another three years later, one that left him with three and a half limbs missing. He’s one of only two living people to survive the flesh-eating fungus he contracted in recovery at Walter Reed, one that left him as a quadruple amputee. And that’s only the beginning of his story. What followed was a recovery nothing short of miraculous.

In the early 1930s in Berlin, Germany, a group of leading Eastern European Jewish intellectuals embarked upon a project to transform the lives of millions of Yiddish-speaking Jews around the world. Their goal was to publish a popular and comprehensive Yiddish-language encyclopedia of general knowledge that would serve as a bridge to the modern world and as a guide to help its readers navigate their way within it.

The General. A name whispered in hushed tones among the criminal underworld, from Miami to Buenos Aires. A name even the drug cartels fear. Yet the General is a man without a face. There are no fingerprints on file, no known base of operations, not even a biographical sketch.

It was 1945, and Romek Wajsman had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a brutal concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured and had no idea where his family was - let alone if they were alive. Along with 472 other boys, including Elie Wiesel, these teens were dubbed 'The Buchenwald Boys'. They were angry at the world for their abuse and turned to violence: stealing, fighting and struggling for power. Everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation.

Across America and around the world, people wander through flea markets to search for lost treasures. For decades, no such market was more renowned than the legendary Chelsea flea market, which sprawled over several blocks and within an old garage on the west side of Manhattan. Visitors would trawl through booths crammed with vintage dresses, rare books, ancient swords, glass eyeballs, Afghan rugs, West African fetish dolls, Old Master paintings, and much more.

A CIA field officer monitoring chemical weapon smuggling in Jordan is missing and with him, the trail for those deadly weapons. Skilled Vector operatives Alex Wolfe and Skylar Cruz are deployed to find them before they fall into the wrong hands. But they’re not the only ones on the chase. When Vector is ambushed, they find themselves at the mercy of the strange chemical weapon they were sent to track. A weapon based on technology far more insidious and dangerous than they ever could have imagined...one that affects their very perception of reality.

Laying out the nine common hazards that trip up otherwise well-prepared retirees to encourage you to think through your decisions and set a course aligned with your values and your ultimate goals, Retirement Fail helps you identify potential pitfalls and teaches how to safeguard your hard-earned retirement assets. Contrary to what most people think, it is not poor portfolio performance that usually busts your retirement accounts. Rather, it's the emotional decisions you make that can cause major problems.

The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas, a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct, a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have.

Moscow, February 1953. A week before Stalin's death, his final pogrom, "one that would forever rid the Motherland of the vermin", is in full swing. Three government goons arrive in the middle of the night to arrest Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, an actor from the defunct State Jewish Theater. But Levinson, though an old man, is a veteran of past wars, and his shocking response to the intruders sets in motion a series of events both zany and deadly as he proceeds to assemble a ragtag group to help him enact a mad-brilliant plot: the assassination of a tyrant.

Declan "Mac" MacManus, some-time PI turned full-time Southampton cabbie, has had to endure much in his young life: the loss of family and friends, grave bodily injuries at the hands of ruthless enemies, and the knowledge that more than a few lives have been shattered by the decisions fate has forced him to make. But nothing of what Mac has encountered - and nothing of what he now knows about his own mysterious past - can compare to what awaits him in the heart-pounding final installment of The Gin Palace Trilogy.

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

Something very strange is going on in Bowling Green, Kentucky. A masked terrorist attacks a local politician and a news reporter at a minor league baseball game. A Gay Pride parade is bombed. A veteran's home is invaded and taken over by new ownership, and every resident that is not Caucasian has suddenly...disappeared.

Bestselling author Loren W. Christensen served as a Military Policeman in Saigon, Vietnam, "the most dangerous city in the world," as it was called at the time. Shortly after returning home, he joined the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon, serving for twenty-five years. As a street cop, there were times he was dispatched to dead body calls so frequently that other officers teasingly called him the "Death Car."

Miro Basinas is an experimental botanist who sells his rarefied product to a discerning clientele. Only Miro's not growing heirloom tomatoes or making organic wine - he's growing weed. And when Miro hits the big time by winning Amsterdam's famed Cannabis Cup, cannasseurs and ganjaficionados aren't the only people who want a piece of him and his mind-blowing pot that tastes like mangoes.

At a mausoleum in Cairo’s most notorious cemetery, a mercenary receives a package containing a silver test tube suspended in hydraulic stasis. An investigative reporter tracking rogue biomedical companies is terrified by the appearance of a mummified man outside her Manhattan apartment. A Bulgarian scientist who dabbles in the occult makes a startling discovery in his underground laboratory.

With his trademark rock 'n' roll hair and snakeskin spandex pants, plus a hot rod and a Harley, Lüc Carl fit the part as a bar manager based in New York City's gritty Lower East Side. And life was good for this Omaha, Nebraska, transplant-a talented drummer who originally moved to the big city to pursue his rock 'n' roll dreams-until, suddenly, it wasn't. Fast forward through seven years of working long hours, binging on late-night Chinese food, and drinking excessively; life had found Lüc 40 pounds overweight and completely out of shape.

1937. The gears of world war have begun to grind, but Inky Lautman, star point guard for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, America’s greatest basketball team, is dealing with his own problems. His coach has unwittingly incurred a massive gambling debt to the Bund, a group of American Nazis. His main basketball rival is self-righteously leading public protests against homegrown American fascism. It’s more than Inky can deliver.

Five years ago, Robert Clarion was immersed in that perilous world of double-crosses, late-night drug deals, and constant glances over his shoulder. A dispute with a drug supplier culminated in the kidnapping of Clarion's daughter Rachel. He made a promise to his wife that, if they got their daughter back, he would get out of the drug business and never let anyone stand in the way of his family's safety again. With the help of FBI agent Jack Paris, Clarion's daughter was rescued, but the person who carried out the kidnapping was never identified or captured.