Showing results by narrator "David Stifel" in All Categories

Best-selling author Norman Cantor delivers this compact but magisterial survey of the ancient world - from the birth of Sumerian civilization around 3500 BC in the Tigris-Euphrates valley (present-day Iraq) to the fall of the Roman Empire in AD 476. In Antiquity, Cantor covers such subjects as Classical Greece, Judaism, the founding of Christianity, and the triumph and decline of Rome.

Ben Roselli, president of First Mercantile American Bank and grandson of the founder, makes the shocking announcement that he's dying. With no offspring to inherit the company, Roselli knows that executive VPs Roscoe Heyward and Alex Vandervoort are the obvious candidates to succeed him. Heyward, who has been with First Mercantile for two decades, will do whatever it takes to bring in new clients and win the coveted presidency. Vandervoort, a newcomer from the Federal Reserve with a left-wing girlfriend, advocates for a socially responsible plan of growth.

For many billions of years, humans - having conquered the curse of aging - spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction because the universe is dying a protracted yet inevitable death.

Finn and his companions barely escaped their encounter with Bilel. But not without a cost - including the loss of Finn's left arm and the magical corruption that now plagues his body. Despite those handicaps, Finn must keep pressing forward if he is to have any hope of bringing Rachael back. As the Seer predicted, the guilds and Khamsin have formed a fragile alliance. But before they can lay siege to Lahab, Finn and his companions must first find a way to defend themselves and their fledgling army from the effects of the god relic that Bilel now wields....

For the town of Randall, Arizona, the terror starts quietly, oddly - a senile woman in her 80s becomes pregnant. Then the town's beloved minister mysteriously disappears, leaving his church and home hideously defiled by blasphemous obscenities scrawled in blood. Farmers going out to their fields in the morning find their herds of goats slaughtered. Then, as the terror intensifies, the farmers themselves are massacred. The town begins to smell of death, and the trust which has bound neighbors to one another turns to ashes.

Cloaked by the mists of dawn, Task Force 61 - carrying tanks, aircraft, and over 5000 Marines - steams toward Syria with deadly intent. Their mission: rescue 100 hostages from a terrorist stronghold - alive. With realism seldom seen in military fiction, The Med is a magnificent and timely epic that brings the human drama of armed conflict compellingly to life.

Eric R. Kandel, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is one of the pioneers of modern brain science. His work continues to shape our understanding of how learning and memory work and to break down age-old barriers between the sciences and the arts. In his seminal new audiobook, The Disordered Mind, Kandel draws on a lifetime of pathbreaking research and the work of many other leading neuroscientists to take us on an unusual tour of the brain. He confronts one of the most difficult questions we face: How does our mind, our individual sense of self, emerge from the physical matter of the brain?

For billions of people, having a religious belief system provides purpose in life. For some, religion serves as a guide for moral behavior. After many years exploring the foundations of various world religions, Jason Boyett has written this comprehensive, easy-to-understand exploration of the 12 major world religions through a meticulous, yet unbiased lens. 12 Major World Religions offers an impartial look at where each of these belief systems intersects, how they differ, and why some have been - or are currently - misunderstood.

The town of Stillwater has been dying - the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it - a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater...and feeds off them. The children who haven't disappeared whisper the same word - "vampire". But they're wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.

A century since the departure of the Gods, the Three Nations are now united beneath the Tsar. Magic has been outlawed, its power too dangerous to remain unchecked. All Magickers must surrender themselves to the crown, or face imprisonment and death. Alana's mundane life has just been torn apart by the emergence of her brother's magic. Now they must leave behind everything they’ve ever known and flee – before the Tsar’s Stalkers pick up their trail. Tasked with hunting down renegade Magickers, the merciless hunters will stop at nothing to bring them before the Tsar’s judgement.

Cathy was six when the man next door killed his wife and himself. It was early morning, and she was playing outside when she heard the first shot. And then another shot. And another.

For four years at Annapolis he prepared for this, pledging his youth, his ambition, and even his life. But when junior officer Dan Lenson finally gets his commission, it's an aging World War II destroyer. Now, with a mix of pride and fear, he heads into the world's most dangerous seas. As the Ryan plunges into the dark waters of the Arctic Circle at the height of storm season, Lenson and the crew pursue a mysterious and menacing enemy. But he soon discovers a foe even more dangerous within the Ryan, advancing a shocking agenda that drives the ship ever closer to disaster.

Chizmar assembles 35 stories, including a previously unpublished novella, and presents us with A Long December. This massive new collection features more than 150,000 words of Chizmar's very best short fiction and includes 8,000 words of autobiographical story notes. Eerie, suspenseful, poignant, the stories in A Long December range from horror to suspense, crime to dark fantasy, mainstream to mystery.

Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and fall - and rise and fall again - of the psychedelic community through the life of the man known as the "Acid King": William Leonard Pickard. Pickard was a legitimate genius, a follower of Timothy Leary, a con artist, a womanizer, and a believer that LSD would save lives. He was a foreign diplomat, a Harvard fellow, and the biggest producer of LSD on the planet - if you believe the DEA.

This crescent of bottomlands between Memphis and Vicksburg, lined by the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, remains in some ways what it was in 1860: a land of rich soil, wealthy planters, and desperate poverty - the blackest and poorest counties in all the South. And yet it is a cultural treasure house as well - the home of Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Charley Pride, Walker Percy, Elizabeth Spencer, and Shelby Foote.

Biologist Rob Dunn reveals the crucial influence that other species have upon our health, our well-being, and our world in The Wild Life of Our Bodies - a tour through the hidden truths of nature and codependence. Dunn illuminates the nuanced relationships that exist between homo sapiens and other species, relationships that underpin humanity's ability to thrive and prosper in every circumstance. Fans of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma will be enthralled by Dunn's powerful, lucid exploration of the role that humankind plays within the greater web of life on Earth.

In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of 20 individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund's collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling".

This volume, aimed at the general audience, presents life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth's history. During this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. Although life had been around for more than 2 million millennia, Cambrian rocks preserve the record of the first appearance of complex animals with eyes, protective skeletons, antennae, and complex ecologies.

In this accessible, absorbing overview, Mancuso considers how plants convince animals to transport them around the world, and how some plants need particular animals to spread; how they have been able to grow in places so inaccessible and inhospitable as to remain isolated; how they resisted the atomic bomb and the Chernobyl disaster; how they are able to bring life to sterile islands; how they can travel through the ages, as they sail around the world.

John Brown is a common name, but the John Brown who masterminded the failed raid at Harpers Ferry was anything but common.Nevertheless, today Brown is a martyred hero who gave his life attempting to terminate the evil institution of human bondage. This new biography covers Brown's background and the context to his decision to carry out the raid, a detailed narrative of the raid and its consequences for both those involved and America; and an exploration of the changing characterization of Brown since his death.