Showing results by narrator "Collins" in All Categories

Will Darling came back from the Great War with a few scars, a lot of medals, and no idea what to do next. Inheriting his uncle's chaotic secondhand bookshop is a blessing...until strange visitors start making threats. First a criminal gang, then the War Office, both telling Will to give them the information they want, or else. Will has no idea what that information is, and nobody to turn to, until Kim Secretan - charming, cultured, oddly attractive - steps in to offer help. As Kim and Will try to find answers and outrun trouble, mutual desire grows along with the danger.

In Making it Personal, Blake Davis, in-the-closet CEO of Trinity Publishing, celebrates his 30th birthday by hiring an escort - only to have him turn up the next day to be interviewed as Blake’s PA. It’s about to get a lot hotter in Blake’s office....Personal Changes is the story of Rick, who decides he’s had enough of being casual - he’s looking for love - and he finds it in the shape of Angelo. Unfortunately, Angelo’s traditional Italian family isn’t too happy to learn he’s gay.

A lot had changed in "The Holy Sky" School during the six weeks that Hadjar Darkhan was away. Everyone who was in the capital at the time became much stronger, thanks to the regular skirmishes along the Imperial road. By the emperor's decree, all the disciples of the Imperial martial arts schools were allowed to visit the infamous and highly coveted Wastelands. "The Holy Sky's" disciples were especially fortunate - they'd been given a two-week head start to find the map leading to Emperor Decater's tomb, as well as the key that would allow them to enter his chambers.

Ten years after the worldwide best seller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another ground-breaking work, this time to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague, Morten Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.

Jude's drowning when he can't save his family business single-handed. The last person he expects to throw a lifeline is Rob, a rival chef who once beat him to first place in a cooking contest. Two chefs working together won't be easy. Not when Rob is everything Jude isn't - popular, extroverted, and a one-time hookup. What's worse is that Rob wears his heart on his sleeve while Jude's still in the closet.

There’s no place like home...but they’re not headed to Kansas. The Sanctuary is the hidden home of the Golden Circle-a sect of powerful mages. It’s a sacred place of learning, magic, and deep secrets. When Tristan discovers his father, Connor Montague is being held prisoner, he vows to return to the Sanctuary and release him. There’s only one problem. The Sanctuary has been taken over by Mage Oliver. An Elder who has unleashed the magistrates and promises to destroy Tristan the moment he steps foot on the mountain.

What do a psychiatrist, a mother, and an expert hit man have in common? Their time is running out in these three fast-paced thrillers from the world's number one best-selling writer James Patterson.

From out of the clear blue sky, an unknown chunk of rock from the frozen void strikes the Earth with unimaginable force, gouging a wound into the very crust of the planet. Millions die in an instant, and millions more await the end as the looming catastrophe unfolds...Thousands of miles away from the disaster, a call comes in the middle of the night. Families act, and react, and while panic spreads, the world keeps on spinning. Maybe a little slower, and perhaps with a teeny bit more of a tilt, but such things are a mere trifle to the existence of a planet.

From a remote corner of the galaxy, a message is being sent. The continuous beats of a pulsar have become odd, irregular, and artificial. It can only be a code. Frantically, a research team struggles to decipher the alien communication. And what the scientists discover is destined to shake the foundations of empires around this world - from Wall Street to the Vatican.

Join Winnie, Piglet, Christopher Robin, and the whole gang as they explore the boundaries of imagination. Your children will love this first set of classic stories, and the grown-ups will have a grand time as well.

"Children don't fail, the adults around them do - and it is up to us to light the candle of excellence within each one we know and love," begins Marva Collins, one of America's foremost educators, in her important work, Values. This practical guide is for those of us who strive to be role models, who want to know the important values, live them, and teach them to our children.

For fans of the oral history genre phenomenon World War Z, a worldwide plague of insomnia creates a devastating new apocalypse. Sleep Over is collection of waking nightmares, a scrapbook of the haunting and poignant stories from those trapped in a world where the pillars of society are crumbling, and madness is slowly descending on a planet without rest.

When Tom is invited to the reading of a will of a great-uncle he’s never heard of, there’s no way to know what to expect. But on the long list of possible things to inherit, a travelling carnival ghost train is the very last on the list. To get his full $10 million inheritance, all Tom has to do is run the antique ride until his 18th birthday. Easy. Except for a strange caped-creep he’s never met, who’s trying to con him out of the money...and the actual ghosts and ghouls who call the ride home.

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters...Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost - how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers...to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small.

Robin Loxleigh and his sister Marianne are the hit of the Season, so attractive and delightful that nobody looks behind their pretty faces. Until Robin sets his sights on Sir John Hartlebury's heiress niece. The notoriously graceless baronet isn't impressed by good looks, or fooled by false charm. He's sure Robin is a liar - a fortune hunter, a card sharp, and a heartless, greedy fraud - and he'll protect his niece, whatever it takes.

In "Cahoots," a backroom poker game turns deadly when a cheater is exposed. In "Mulholland Dive," a man who deciphers the hidden codes of accident scenes investigates a fatality off L.A.'s most fabled roadway. In "Two-Bagger," an obsessed cop tails an ex-con he believes is about to carry out a contract killing.

Montague and Strong have left the building. In fact, they’ve left the continent. When a teleportation circle sends them to London, The Penumbra Consortium - and older, darker version of the Dark Council - requests Montague an Strong look into the murder of the leading demonologist Mage Nigel Warrenton.

Nathaniel Bainbridge is used to hiding, whether it's concealing his struggles with reading or his forbidden desire for men. Under the thumb of his controlling father, the governor of Primrose Isle, he's sailing to the fledging colony, where he'll surrender to a respectable marriage for his family's financial gain. Then pirates strike and he's kidnapped for ransom by the Sea Hawk, a legendary villain of the New World. Bitter and jaded, Hawk harbors futile dreams of leaving the sea for a quiet life, but men like him don't deserve peace. He has a score to settle with Nathaniel's father.

Local contractor Tuck Shelby has been a friend of Liddy’s forever. He’s made himself indispensable in the rehab of her shop - and in her life - but now he wants out of the friend zone. Then Jim returns with a long-overdue apology, hoping for forgiveness and a chance to start over, and Liddy has a life-changing choice to make.

Pacifism will always be a powerful moral force, even - perhaps especially - to the Dorsai. For those of this planet of warriors born and bred are not as other men; once a Dorsai’s heart is given he holds nothing back, and does not count the cost. Even if that cost be the very planet of his birth, and he becomes a Lost Dorsai.