Showing results by narrator "James Patrick" in All Categories

David Shields’s The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power is an immersion into the perils, limits, and possibilities of human intimacy. All at once a love letter to his wife, a nervy reckoning with his own fallibility, a meditation on the impact of porn on American culture, and an attempt to understand marriage (one marriage, the idea of marriage, all marriages), The Trouble with Men is exquisitely balanced between the personal and the anthropological, nakedness and restraint.

Four Grimstone teens are dead, the life seemingly vacuumed from their withered bodies. The lone clue, a magic residue in their blood. Convinced it’s the work of a supernatural drug, Sheriff Jackson entrusts the case to us while she’s away. I just need to keep my junior partner in line.

Bereaved and exiled from his homeland, Ganry ekes out a living as a wandering mercenary. A contract to protect a 15-year-old princess sees him embark on a quest across the kingdom. Confronted with danger at every turn, they get help from some unlikely companions. And Ganry discovers that there is more at stake than his own survival.

Colonel Jason Azoros is having a bad year. Having taken over the Argonauts’ mercenary company when its previous owner was killed, he has arrived back at Karma to find that no one will deal with him. Blacklisted by his father, Jason is forced to do a job for him to clear his name. The early days of humanity’s expansion into space was an exciting time, as the best of the race went to the stars. Unfortunately, some of the worst went, as well, and the Argonauts must hunt down and destroy the worst of the worst, Colchis Industries.

The kinds of families we see today are different than they were even a decade ago, some fantastically so, as paths to parenthood have been rejiggered by technology, activism, and law. In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. We meet a child with two mothers, made with one mother's egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met and carried by the other mother.

Pursuit, book five: Earth's mighty warship, The Behemoth, has been selected to receive the honor of formally joining the alliance. This momentous occasion opens new opportunities for the human race, a chance to help decide the fate of the universal government and participate in galactic affairs. As they prepare for the voyage and ceremony to come, not all are easy aboard the battleship. Clea An'Tufal, liaison aboard The Behemoth, wakes from a revelatory dream. Her first assignment ended in tragedy, the ship she served on was destroyed in a massive battle.

Jesse Ball has produced fourteen acclaimed works of deeply empathetic absurdism in poetry and fiction. Now, he offers listeners his first memoir, one that invites the listener into a raw and personal account of love, grief, and memory. Inspired by the memoir Édouard Leve put to paper shortly before his death, Autoportrait is an extraordinarily frank and intimate work from one of America's most brilliant young authors. Half-remembered moments are woven together with the joys and triumphs—and the mistakes and humiliations, too—that somehow tell us who we are, why we are here.

Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady and Capt. Bob Wright were on a routine combat air patrol mission in June 1995 when they were suddenly jarred by the buzz and amber flash of their cockpit missile-warning instruments. Two supersonic SA-6 SAMs, hidden by the overcast, were streaking toward them.

Written in 1954, this controversial story cracked down on the public school system and dramatized student violence as no other novel of its time did. Hunter used his own teaching experience to create protagonist Richard Dadier, who lands his first real job as an English teacher at North Manual Trades High School in New York City. Dadier knows the students here will be tough, but nothing has prepared him for the world he enters.

In Polar City - the capital of Hagar, one of the planets in the forlorn Star Republic - a human-dominated entity is caught in the power politics between the enormous Interstellar Confederation and the Coreward Alliance. The leaders of these entities keep their alien eyes on the Republic in the hopes of one day adding its territory to theirs. When an alien member of the Confederation is found murdered in Hagar's public square, the situation turns dangerous fast.

In the baking heat of a Mexican resort town, life is spare but satisfying for David Rhodes, American exile and tennis bum, who is content with his low-key existence. But when a young female American drifter is found raped and murdered at the bottom of the seaside cliffs, Rhodes, an illegal alien, is an easy target and an immediate suspect - particularly to the town's sadistic police chief. David's comfortable life explodes in a sudden hell of accusation, imprisonment, and flight that can only end in one final, nightmarish confrontation.

Captain Thomas Baldwin and the crew of Constantine have saved the Concord from the Assembly, and are tasked with bringing them to prison. With a stop at Earon, the human home planet, everyone gets a few days of well needed rest. When communication comes that the wormhole generator is ready, Constantine must return to the Statu system with a new fleet, alongside a brand-new flagship with a familiar AI. Constantine Baldwin was rumored to have ended the War 50 years ago, but its up to Thomas Baldwin to really finish the job.

Rebellion, book 7: The crew of the Earth ship Behemoth has been busy. Their latest assignment against the Orion’s Light terrorists has given them valuable insight into the workings of this new threat and boosted their already substantial credibility with Alliance High Command. Extinction, book 8: A message was received from an unknown part of the galaxy, filtered through dozens of relays before arriving at the home world. An old friend seems to be stranded and needs assistance yet they were unable to convey proper coordinates.

The Scopes trial, over the right to teach evolution in public schools, reaffirmed the importance of intellectual freedom as codified in the Bill of Rights. The trial, in a small-town Tennessee courtroom in 1925, set the stage for ongoing national debates over the separation of church and state in a democratic society - debates that continue to this day.

When Daniel Duane became a father, this San Francisco surfer and climber found himself trapped at home with no clue how to contribute. Inept at so many domestic tasks, and less than eager to change diapers, he took on dinner duty. Duane had a few tricks: pasta, stir-fry...well, actually, those were his only two tricks. But he had a biographical anomaly: Chef Alice Waters had been his preschool teacher. So he cracked one of her Chez Panisse cookbooks and cooked his way through it.

New allies. New enemies. New life. Admiral Thomas Baldwin has more to live for after the recent news. All eyes are on him as the biggest war in Concord Space history begins in earnest. Captain Treena Starling is sent to stop High Elder Wylen's allies from wreaking havoc on their already weakened partners. Ven Ittix is torn between his people and the Concord, and is offered something he could never have imagined. Lark Keen makes a decision that will affect the outcome of the Concord forever. Legacy is the end of an era. But to many, it's just the beginning....

In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.

The year is 2117. In the farthest reaches of Earth's territorial space, a spree of depraved murders has local cattle ranchers fearing for their families. A fear, they will soon discover, that is more than justified. Apparently, John Gallic's reputation proceeded his arrival to the fringe-world of Muleshoe. A reputation suggesting he be given a wide berth. As the new Territory Abettor, commonly referred to as a Frontier Marshal, Gallic would be there for the long haul.

Sorch is an orc mage in a world where orcs are cursed with stupidity every time they cast a spell. The only spell he can safely cast is Enhance Intelligence, which boosts his IQ for a second before the curse drains it all away again. Normally casting such a spell would be pointless, but Sorch's tribe has found a way to benefit. Magic that is cast near a mysterious artefact called the ‘Voodoo Engine’ causes invisible hands to appear, and these hands get work done for his tribe. Sorch is a slave to the Voodoo Engine, casting a single spell over and over again to avoid being beaten.

Thirteen incredible authors. Thirteen stories about the Depik - what they were and where their society goes from here!