Showing results by narrator "Phil Thron" in All Categories

On a summer night in 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home through New Hampshire when a bright object appeared in the sky and began following them. When the couple finally pulled over to get a better look, the object vanished before their eyes. With nothing else to do, Betty and Barney returned to their car and kept driving into the night. The encounter left them rattled, but what came next was even more arresting: the following day, the Hills realized they couldn’t remember anything from almost two hours of their drive.

Many years have passed since the dark tide of violent and malevolent creatures spilled into the realm from an ancient portal that should never have been opened. Adamar, an elderly but legendary elven swordsman sent to track the incursion, had found a small frightened girl, Lauriel Valendril, hiding in the shattered remnants of her destroyed elven village. After taking her in as his own, he finds that her traumatic experience creates an unrivaled ambition to learn to protect herself and others, and he begins to train her in the ancient and secretive elven fighting style of the Andulari.

This bizarre episode is often humorously recalled, frequently satirized, and usually condemned. The more interesting questions, however, are how and why Prohibition came about, how Prohibition worked (and failed to work), and how Prohibition gave way to strict governmental regulation of alcohol. This book answers these questions, presenting a brief and elegant overview of the Prohibition era and its legacy.

Maxwell Barnes is an archeologist and the son of an archeologist. He and his companion, friend, and brother since youth, Axel Morales, have been treasure hunting for their benefactor Myron Crabtree, in the jungles of Guatemala. This area, not coincidentally, is also rumored to be the location of the last great city of the Maya, the legendary Ahrum. When Max meets a man who appears to be a young Mayan skateboard punk, his entire world is turned upside down as he hears the true story of the city’s demise, and of the Crystal of Ahrum.

Farley stands out among his Iñupiat neighbors in the Alaska village he calls home, both white and enormous, like the hungry polar bears that wander its streets. Jovial and a little hapless, he works as an investigator for a North Slope oil company, passing the long Arctic winters drinking whiskey with the village’s preacher and playing in the weekly poker game hosted by its matriarch and mayor. When his young daughter visits from thousands of miles away in Portland—where she lives with her mother, who despises him—a shocking moment of violence leaves her dead and Farley injured.

Now that Grey has delivered the city from the attacking hordes, he still has a lot of work on his hands. He needs to pay the Bina Shea a visit, find the Bullet Star, investigate the mysterious Project Aurora—and above all, he needs to restore the First Legion to its former glory. But most importantly, he must eliminate the Daat and cancel the deal that Prometheus struck with the treacherous demon many centuries ago . . .

Once Grey's true identity becomes known, the giant shadow of his past spreads its wings behind his back, summoning the immortal troops onto the Esplanade in order to fulfil the ancient oath of the First Legion.

Someone’s killing the top real estate agents in Palm Beach, then posing them as figures from famous paintings. And homicide cop Charlie Crawford’s on-again, off-again girlfriend could be next. Crawford is up to his eyeballs in suspects, but way short on clues. There's the polo playboy with the sketchy past. The ex-con who’s murdered before. The husband of one of the richest socialites in town. Or someone who might not show up on Crawford’s radar screen until it’s too late.

A year after destroying the wormhole generator in France and thus blocking the way to Earth for an allied AI, she lives with AcesAzrael in Switzerland. She fights alongside the last free humans against the approaching Forum and its unstoppable troops. There is still no trace of Janika, but when the Swiss make a dangerous plan shortly before their final defeat, there is only one hope for June and Ace: to find Janika and uncover the secret of a new, mysterious place in the metaworld.

Every survivor dreams of one day making it to the City. Humanity's last hope, it boasts the best resources and the greatest minds, bringing together the creme de la creme of the surviving civilization. Behind its unassailable walls and impregnable protection dome, the City bustles with life almost indistinguishable from the state-of-the-art culture of the fabled Utopian era. Grey sets off on a journey to the City in order to solve the mystery of his past.

A woman, her cat, and a murder. Who will crack the case? Sheila and her amateur sleuth friends or Whiskers and his animal friends?" Paradise Cove is, well, paradise. Pretty cottages line the quiet beach where waves wash gently onto sugar-white sand. Sunsets paint the sky each evening and gentle sea breezes blow across the dunes into the quaint downtown. Whiskers wears a shiny police badge on his pet collar, and he earned it, but when he tries to tell humans what he’s uncovered in his investigations they think he wants food or a belly rub.

Rosgard has become the owner of a unique spell that can blaze a trail to the lost continent, thus leaving himself with no choice in the matter. His character will have to become a great deal stronger before the Great Expedition begins, or he'll have to forfeit the spell and pass it on to somebody else. However, the game's presented Rosgard and his team with a new challenge - now they have to accept the ultimatum of an aggressive underwater race known as the crabbers and set off on a difficult and dangerous quest which they dare not fail for fear of horrible repercussions.

From 1976 to 1978, the Cornell men's lacrosse team went on a tear. Winning two national championships and posting an overall record of 42-1, the Big Red, coached by Richie Moran, were the class of the NCAA game. Christian Swezey tells the story of the rise of this dominant lacrosse program. Pulling from interviews with more than ninety former coaches and players from Cornell and its rivals, We Showed Baltimore paints a vivid picture of lacrosse in the 1970s and how Moran and the Big Red helped create the game of today.

Rosgard is in dire need of leveling up and acquiring new skills to use his unique spell. And yet Waldyra thwarts his efforts by offering him another temptation. How could one fail to use the opportunity of visiting a mysterious and unexplored location known as The Great Beyond? Even though the most powerful clan in Waldyra—The Sleepless Ones—is joining him, the journey is bound to be a rough ride. Still, Rosgard hardly has any choice in the matter.

Born and raised in rural Mississippi and the even balmier climes of central Florida, Red Barber, at the age of thirty-two, became one of New York City's most influential citizens as the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers. But behind all the base hits, balls, and strikes lies a compelling story that dramatizes the shifting expectations and roles of a public figure—the sports broadcaster—as he adapted to complex cultural changes throughout the course of twentieth-century American life.

Integrated with a superdreadnought, the artificial intelligence known as Reynolds has recruited a humanoid crew to help search the universe for the elusive Kurtherians.

Upon its release in 2008, Matt Reeves's Cloverfield revitalized the giant creature, a cinematic trope that had languished for over a decade. The film addressed the attacks of September 11, 2001, trading the jingoistic rhetoric of retributive military aggression for serious engagement with personal and collective trauma. It applied the horror genre's fascination with personal stories captured by found footage to the grand violence of history. Innovative and intense, Cloverfield represented blockbuster filmmaking at its best.

Major Jacob Berger’s career takes the next step when he becomes captain of the Revenge, a reverse-engineered Xeno starship. When the starship is attacked in hyperspace, Jacob is given a gift from beings from another realm. Jacob finds himself stranded on an alien planet with only one task: find the Revenge’s missing crew members. To do that, he’ll need to survive a world filled with hostile aliens. Luckily, he’s the most powerful human the universe has ever seen.

On the anniversary of his wife's passing, Jefferson Shaw—ex-cop, retired Marine, and grieving widower—packed a duffle bag and climbed into his pickup truck to take the road trip they had been planning together before she died. Now, when engine trouble temporarily strands him in Rosewater, Texas, an impulsive act of chivalry toward a battered young woman lands Shaw in more hot water than he ever could have anticipated.

Once again, Superdreadnought Reynolds is caught between a rock and a hard place. But this time, it might involve the powerful long-lost Kurtherians.