Showing results by narrator "Michael Axtell" in All Categories

After 40 years in San Quentin, Luke Palmer leaves with a state-issued suit, $100 dollars to buy a bus ticket, and a map that will lead to a promise and into the heart of a dark forest. College graduate student Molly Monroe is about to release rare butterflies not far from where the FBI used 4,000 bullets in a shootout to kill Ma Barker and one of her gangster sons in 1935. Molly snaps a picture that will frame something she never sees coming.

Exhausted by dead-end forays in the gay dating scene, surrounded constantly by friends but deeply lonely in New York City, and drifting into academic abyss, 20-something graduate student Richard has plenty of sources of anxiety. But at the forefront is his crippling writer’s block, which threatens daily to derail his graduate funding and leave Richard poor, directionless, and desperately single. Enter Anne: his brilliant classmate who offers to “help” Richard write his papers in exchange for his company, despite Richard’s fairly obvious sexual orientation.

In her new collection of stories, award-winning New York Times Notable author Leila Aboulela offers us a rich tableau of life as an immigrant abroad. Shuttling between the dusty, sunbaked streets of Khartoum and the university halls and cramped apartments of Aberdeen and London, Elsewhere, Home explores, with subtlety and restraint, the profound feelings of yearning, loss, and alienation that come with leaving one’s homeland in pursuit of a different life.

When Courtney Burke appears at Ponce Marina on a humid summer morning, she leaves Sean O’Brien with a haunting tale. Her story could lead O’Brien down a path that began with a brutal crime 40 years earlier and hidden family secrets spawned from the desecration of the innocent. O’Brien learns that Courtney is linked to a series of carnival murders. Police are convinced she’s a serial killer, and all of her victims are men. But like the illusions found in the carnival’s house of mirrors, nothing is as it appears.

On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Most citizens adapted and many even allied themselves with the new fascist leadership. Yet others refused to capitulate; in answer to the ruthless violence, shortages, and curfews imposed by the Nazis, a resistance arose. Among this shadow army were Jews, immigrants, communists, workers, writers, police officers, shop owners, including many young people in their teens and 20s.

When an old man sees an unidentified Civil War photograph of a woman in the newspaper, he begins a desperate search for a 160-year-old painting that he believes will match the image of the enigmatic woman in the photograph, and if it does, it will prove that his great-great-grandfather did not run from battle. After the old man hires Sean O’Brien to find the mysterious painting, O’Brien discovers it’s linked to a secret letter and map that will lead to a trapdoor where a hidden key to the most horrific war on US soil lies buried.

One humiliating photo, a stupid prank, and a hashtag that goes viral. That's how my senior year goes from predictable to absurd in a heartbeat. This year is supposed to be easy. I've finally scored first chair in band, my college applications are done, and all my friends and I have to do is survive one more year of high school before our real lives can begin. Instead, I find myself in trouble with the principal, humiliated in front of the entire school, and fighting with my neighbor - AKA star quarterback, Prince Charming, and nicest guy on the planet.

Mikey Callahan, a 30-year-old who is suffering from the clouded vision of macular degeneration, is reconnecting with "The Gunners", his group of childhood friends, after one of their members has committed suicide. Sally had distanced herself from all of them before ending her life, and she died harboring secrets about the group and its individuals. Mikey especially needs to confront dark secrets about his own past and his father. How much of this darkness accounts for the emotional stupor Mikey is suffering from as he reaches his maturity?

Did anyone ever tell you about the Dimension Rifts? Yes, portals to other dimensions, which one day, sprung up all over the entire world. Rumors say it happened on a day like any other, and it came without any warning. With the Dimension Rifts appearing all over the world, a new era had come. Though filled with endless possibilities, its lurking dangers would prove to be our end. That was the start of the apocalypse; the Dimension Apocalypse. It's also the start of one man's story: Evan Cross, a warrior from the destroyed future of Earth.

When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it’s what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt—kill or be killed. Here are fifteen all-new stories of such “close encounters,” written by many of today’s most extraordinary authors. Set during the events of all four Alien films, sending the Marines to alien worlds, to derelict space settlements, and into the nests of the universe’s most dangerous monsters, these adventures are guaranteed to send the blood racing—one way or another.

On New Year's Eve in 2012, Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria, where he'd been photographing the country's civil war. Just 45 minutes from the safety of the Turkish border, he was taken prisoner by the al-Nusra Front. Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. And, eventually, he would escape. In this gripping, raw, and surprisingly funny memoir, Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight, wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world's most violent Islamic extremists.

An acclaimed investigative journalist explores ethical hacking and presents a listener-friendly, informative guide to everything there is to know about entering the field of cybersecurity.

The audiobook The Last Incarnation is filled with stories and reflections about Rama - Dr. Frederick Lenz. There are over 100 stories written by people who had direct personal contact with Rama for periods of time ranging from a few months to many years. Together these stories create a collection of powerful spiritual experiences retelling an ancient story: the search for God and Truth in human experience.

After being tossed into an unknown dimension, the earth's inhabitants must strive to fend off a supernatural menace, each possessing an overwhelming power. With the world's mightiest struggling to adapt, Evan Cross and his allies must now embark on a quest against time. Through countless perils, they must strive to acquire the strength to venture across an alien land to save all from a world of calamities.

The year is 1996—a time before cell phones, status updates, and location tags—when you could still travel to a remote corner of the world and disappear. This is where we meet Gina and Duncan, a young couple madly in love, traveling around Europe on a romantic adventure. It’s a time both thrilling and dizzying for Gina, whose memories are hazy following a head injury—and the growing sense that the man at her side is keeping secrets from her.

Evan Michaels struggles with being different, with having the complete memories of two other people who lived sequentially before him. He fights loneliness and believes his ‘condition’ is unique, until he meets Poppy. She recognises his struggle because she has the same ‘condition’, except that she is much older, remembering back seven consecutive lives. But there is something else she must share with Evan - she is a member of a secret society of others like them. They are, in effect, near immortals.

The Switch unpacks the revolutionary research on the body's natural process for maintaining health and youthfulness as well as the 'dial' that controls it. Backed by a synthesis of the data, and with a foreword by renowned Harvard geneticists Drs. George Church and David Sinclair, The Switch not only decodes the science of autophagy but also teaches listeners how to control it and benefit from its profound impact.

The comet, Cain, came from beyond our solar system, its debris containing elements unknown. It brought a powerful new metal to the once-declining Midwest, alien fungus to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and now, in the isolated region of Fairbanks, Alaska, the skies shift and stretch as an interstellar dust cloud seeds itself in the atmosphere. The National Weather Service dismisses the anomaly. Then, an hour outside of Fairbanks, a plane shudders its way through pulpy, swirling, bruise-shaped clouds, lit with sudden cracks of lightning. The sky opens. And the plane vanishes.

This collection of five short stories touches on themes and topics throughout the genre including zombies, superheroes, artificial intelligence, and the changing role of birthdays in the future. "Billy and the Zombies" is a story about a boy who spent most of his life preparing for a zombie apocalypse and now has to deal with one in real life. "Mom's Special Day" talks about an indeterminate future where birthdays have a much different meaning than they do today. "The Trial of WLQC-73" discusses what happens when we create computers that are as human as we are with all of our faults and failings. "The Heist" is a story about a future where Superheroes aren't as clean cut as our comic books show them to be. "Chance Encounters" describes what happens when a simple misunderstanding spirals out of control.

Eddie Raven isn't quite sure what's happening to him - and he's in a race to find out before it kills him. His adventures begin with a shooting in a very strange shop in Manhattan - but soon he finds himself the owner of a very familiar bar in Casablanca. By the time he adjusts to that reality, he's suddenly become one of several undersized people helping a young woman search for a wizard. But as he rushes to solve the mystery of his many appearances, a larger threat looms. Because someone or something is stalking him through time and space with deadly intent.