Showing results by narrator "Brian Hutchison" in All Categories

In Kidding Ourselves, Joseph Hallinan offers a nuts-and-bolts look at how this penchant shapes our everyday lives, from the medicines we take to the decisions we make. It shows, for instance, just how much the power of many modern medicines, particularly anti-depressants and painkillers, is largely in our heads. Placebos in modern-day life extend beyond hospitals, to fake thermostats and "elevator close" buttons that don't really work… but give the perception that they do.

In the sandy Mojave Desert, Madison is a small town on the road between nothing and nowhere. But Eldon wouldn't want to live anywhere else because in Madison, everyone gets one wish - and that wish always comes true. Some people wish for money; some people wish for love. But Eldon has seen how wishes have broken the people around him. And with the lives of his family and friends in chaos, he's left with more questions than answers. Can he make their lives better?

Will Summers is a horse trader with a reputation that intimidates the most lawless of men. When the coldblooded Bendigo Brothers make off with his horses, they don't know what they're in for. Summers has a history of tracking down animals, and when he finds them he'll be sure to give them his own special brand, and let them live long enough to feel the burn....

Trouble follows horse trader Will Summers as soon as he sets foot in Dark Horses, Mexico. A party of men is intent on hanging Summers, believing him to be a horse thief, but not before they take him to their boss - Ansil Swann, the very man Summers is delivering four horses to. Will is saved from the hangman's noose when the men are waylaid by Ansil's beautiful wife, Bailey. Only Bailey has an agenda of her own, one that lands Will right in the middle of a deadly shootout.

Three hundred thirty-three fatalities and no survivors. So begins Pulitzer Prize finalist Jean Heller’s chilling hard-boiled saga, as a flight crashes on takeoff when one of its engines explodes in midair. After that, it’s a toss-up—you may or may not be able to catch your breath as the thriller loops and careens to a twisty climax.

After a child is accidentally killed in a shootout, Art Catlin decides to give up his life of bounty hunting and finds a new career as a drover, working for the Bar X ranch. The trail is 770 miles from Santa Fe to Independence, Missouri, and Art isn't fool enough to think it'll be an easy journey. As they head east, they seem to come upon countless threats, from environmental to personal. If they're to make it all the way with the herd intact, Catlin will need to use all of the skill and knowledge he's acquired over his long and violent career.

Unlike many books on this topic, Boynton doesn't outline a complicated system of exercise and nutrition. Instead, he leads you through a gentle conversation that deals with your unique desires, fears, and inner challenges.

In the city of New Lyons, Detective Jason Campbell is investigating a vicious crime: a female body found mutilated and left in the streets. Once the victim is identified as a Synth, the crime is designated no more than the destruction of property, and Campbell is pulled from the case. But when a mysterious stranger approaches Campbell and asks him to continue his investigation in secret, Campbell is dragged into a dark world of unimaginable corruption. One that leaves him questioning the true nature of humanity. And what he discovers is only the beginning....

In these otherworldly landscapes, characters resort to extreme survival strategies to navigate the terrors of adulthood, one opting to live in a lightless cave and another methodically setting out to recover total childhood innocence; an automaton discovers love and has to reinvent language to accommodate it; filial loyalty is seen as a dangerous weakness that must be drilled away; and the distance from a cubicle to the office coffee cart is refigured as an existential wasteland, requiring heroic effort. In these piercing, brilliantly observed investigations into human vulnerability and failure, it is often the most absurd and alien predicaments that capture the deepest truths.

What if our legends are older than we think? All the Stone Age has left behind are rocks and bones; all other materials have rotted away, leaving no trace. But what if "cave men" never existed, and the Stone Age was a time of great sophistication still preserved in our oldest stories? In a brilliant and dangerous brain hacking experiment, Harv Leonel and Tara Mukherjee are about to discover entire lifetimes of human memory coded in our genes, and reveal ancient legends - from knights and trolls, to flood myths, to the birth of humanity itself - that are as real as they are deadly.

Pulitzer Prize-nominee and USA Today best-selling author Ralph Cotton pens stories that follow in the sacred code of the Old West. In Incident at Gunn Point, horse trader Will Summers dons a sheriff’s badge after the town lawman is grievously injured during a shootout. But when the band of cutthroats rides back into town, guns blazing, Will knows that he needs to outshoot - and outwit - these vicious adversaries or the next place he goes will be the Great Beyond.

The term war porn refers to videos and images brought back from combat zones - IED explosions, air strikes, firefights, images of death and gore largely shorn of context, at times even evidence of potential war crimes (most famously, the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib). War porn is also, in Scranton's searing debut, a metaphor for the fragmentation and confusion of modern combat, the broken shards of experience that form the wartime experiences of soldiers and civilians alike.

In 2015 and 2016, Baltimore was reeling after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody and the protests that followed. In the midst of this unrest, the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) roamed the city, robbing people, selling drugs and guns back onto the same streets they were supposed to be policing, and dividing the loot and profit among themselves. Created to trace guns back to the criminals responsible for Baltimore's high crime rates, instead, on March 1, 2017, all members of the GTTF were arrested on federal racketeering charges.

Born out of the grit, sweat, and drive of a cattle ranching empire, US Marshal Chet Byrnes is turning the savage and lawless Arizona desert into a homeland. To some, he's the hero that the West needs. To others, he's a moving target. Chet is spearheading a stage line from Gallup to the Colorado River. It'll be a boon to Navajo trading posts and lay out the territory for new settlements. Unfortunately, it's not Gerald Hall's idea of progress - killing Chet is.

Back then Tommy had been separated from his sisters after he stood up to their abusive father. Jim was by Tommy's side through it all. But one winter night, a chance event on a frozen lake forever changed the balance of their friendship. Now Jim fishes alone on a bridge as Tommy drives by in a new Mercedes, and it's clear their fortunes have reversed. Over the course of the day, the life of each man will be irrevocably altered.

Magic: To some, it's spectacle. To others, it's proof that there's more to life than meets the eye. To Jonah, it means one simple thing: money. A shaman for hire, Jonah knows how to tap into his powers as easily as he can turn on a light switch, but the real money is in putting on a show. That is, until a mysterious woman makes him an offer he can't afford to refuse: $20,000 all if he finds a little thing called the Ledberg runestone, legend of Norse mythology. With debt collectors like the Carver brothers breathing down his neck, the offer should be tempting, but when they threaten his father's life, it becomes a mission Jonah must take.

Gork isn't like the other dragons at WarWings Military Academy. He has a gigantic heart, two-inch horns, and an occasional problem with fainting. His nickname is Weak Sauce, and his Will to Power ranking is Snacklicious - the lowest in his class. But he is determined not to let any of this hold him back as he embarks on the most important mission of his life: Tonight, on the eve of his high school graduation, he must ask a female dragon to be his queen. If she says yes, they'll go off to conquer a foreign planet together. If she says no, Gork becomes a slave.

Lauren, who changes the man in her bed even more often than she changes course, is dating Victor but sleeping with Sean. Sean - cool, ambivalent and deeply cynical - might be in love with Lauren, but he’s not going to let that stop him from bedding Paul. Paul, as shrewd as he is passionate, is Lauren’s ex-lover and the final point in this curious triangle. From the author of American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction is a breathtaking tale of sex, expectation, desire and frustration.

A friendly, rotund cat visits six diverse people in an busy urban neighborhood, receiving snacks and love. When a near-accident threatens the cat, the neighbors pull together as a community. Told from the point of view of each of the neighbors, this heartfelt story reflects the universal desire for connection and companionship.

A landmark feat of innovation is about to change the American West forever. With electric cables stretching from the Colorado River to Gallup, New Mexico, a new telegraph system will connect the settlers of the Arizona Territory to rest of the country - a dream come true for rancher Chet Byrnes and his family. But laying 400 miles of steel wire can be a deadly task. Chet has to face off with hired henchmen who would kill to sabotage the project. And Chet's nephew JD has his hands full with cutthroat rustlers on the Mexican border.