Showing results by narrator "Robert Petkoff" in All Categories

In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, D.C., intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA's counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs.

Rise the dark. These were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant anything to the police or to her husband, investigator Markus Novak. Now the man he believes killed her is out of prison and draws Markus to the place he's avoided for so long: the lonely road where his wife was shot to death beneath the cypress trees and Spanish moss in a town called Cassadaga.

Markus Novak just wants to come home. An investigator for a Florida-based death-row defense firm, Novak's life derailed when his wife, Lauren, was killed in the midst of a case the two were working together. Two years later her murderer is still at large, and Novak's attempts to learn the truth about her death through less-than-legal means and jailhouse bargaining have put his job on the line.

Willy and Marianne’s farmhouse in Maine has acres of meadow and fresh air, and a lonesome bridle path in the forest along which Willy daydreams and ambles. When he’s loaned a decrepit old baby stroller to cart his groceries home, the rickety squeak of the wheels comforts him. So do the sweet coos of a baby Willy knows can’t be real. Can it? In this twisted thicket, wishes come true—with a price.

Research has proven that mindfulness improves well-being and reduces stress, anxiety, and pain. But for some, the practice itself feels challenging and inaccessible. That’s where the A.W.E. Method comes in. In The Power of Awe, therapist Jake Eagle and chronic pain specialist Michael Amster, MD, share their extraordinary yet simple mindfulness practice that turns ordinary moments into awe-inducing experiences, helping you effortlessly achieve a heightened state of consciousness usually reserved for seasoned practitioners of mindfulness—all within a matter of seconds.

It began four years ago with a worldwide uptick of bacterial infections. Although the outbreaks spread aggressively and proved impervious to our drugs of last resort, public health officials initially dismissed them as unrelated. They were wrong. Antibiotic resistance soon roiled across the globe. Diseases long thought beaten came surging back. The death toll skyrocketed. Then New York City was ravaged by the most heinous act of bioterror the world had ever seen, perpetrated by a new brand of extremist bent on pushing humanity to extinction.

They fight without conscience or remorse. Their only job is to kill. They are the most ruthless enemy we have ever faced. And they are one millionth our size. When Dr. Lou Welcome fills in last minute for his boss at a national conference in Atlanta he brings along his best friend, Cap Duncan. But an accident turns tragic when Cap injures his leg while running. Surgeons manage to save the leg, but the open wound is the perfect breeding ground for a deadly microbial invader committed to eating Cap alive from the inside out.

The planet Vok is holding its first free elections after years of oppressive military rule. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise have been dispatched by Starfleet to serve as impartial observers, but remaining neutral proves a challenge, as Kirk confronts a tangled web of scandal, conspiracy, and assassination plots - with the stability of an entire sector at stake. To make matters worse, Dr. Leonard McCoy has vanished while on a mission of mercy to Braco, a nearby planet only a system away.

With decades of hindsight, the peaceful end of the Cold War seems a foregone conclusion. But in the early 1980s, most experts believed the Soviet Union was strong, stable, and would last into the next century. Ronald Reagan entered the White House with no certainty of what would happen next, only an overriding faith in democracy and an abiding belief that Soviet communism—and the threat of nuclear war—must end. The Peacemaker reveals how Reagan’s White House waged the Cold War while managing multiple crises around the globe.

Returning to the now-renowned locale of Kindle County, Scott Turow gives us Mack Malloy, ex-cop, not-quite-ex-drunk, and partner-on-the-wane in one of the country's most high-powered law firms. A longtime ally of the wayward, Mack is on the trail of a colleague, his firm's star litigator, who has vanished with more than five million dollars of a client's money.

An ISIS-style beheading of a journalist, carried out by a New York City group pledging fealty to that rogue state, becomes more than just another case for NYPD Captain Nikki Heat when the killers announce their next target: her husband, magazine writer Jameson Rook. Meanwhile, Heat is haunted by a fleeting glimpse of someone she swears is her mother, a woman who has been dead for nearly 20 years.

The world is being shaken by the collision of energy, climate change, and the clashing power of nations in a time of global crisis. Out of this tumult is emerging a new map of energy and geopolitics. The "shale revolution" in oil and gas has transformed the American economy, ending the "era of shortage" but introducing a turbulent new era. Almost overnight, the United States has become the world's number one energy powerhouse. Yet concern about energy's role in climate change is challenging the global economy and way of life.

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his strained relationship with Freddy to confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons.

In the New York Times bestseller Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb, the longest serving Chair of Harvard’s Astronomy Department, presented a theory that shook the scientific community: our solar system, Loeb claimed, had likely been visited by a piece of advanced alien technology from a distant star. This provocative and persuasive argument opened millions of minds internationally to the vast possibilities of our universe and the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth.

Derrick Storm, the guy the CIA calls on when it wants something investigated domestically, is 33,000 feet in the air, returning from a rock-climbing vacation in the Swiss Alps, when the plane spirals into a nosedive. Storm uses his climbing gear to tether himself to the wing and heroically save the plane and all the people onboard. Sadly, Storm is not available to come to the aid of the three other planes that have crashed under similar circumstances, killing everyone onboard.

While attempting to settle in as commandant of Starfleet Academy, Admiral James T. Kirk must suddenly contend with the controversial, turbulent integration of an alien warrior caste into the student body - and quickly becomes embroiled in conflict when the academy controversy escalates to murder. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the USS Enterprise and Commander Pavel Chekov of the USS Reliant are investigating a series of powerful cosmic storms seemingly targeting Federation worlds - unstoppable outbursts emitting from the very fabric of space.

The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection, and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen almost entirely under the control of a very small group of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In Read Write Own, tech visionary Chris Dixon argues that the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn’t have to die and can, in fact, be saved with blockchain networks.

It started with a beautiful woman and a challenge. As a gift for her husband, Alyssa Bradford approaches Eric Shaw to make a documentary about her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, a 95-year-old billionaire whose past is wrapped in mystery. Eric grabs the job even though there are few clues to the man's past—just the name of his hometown and an antique water bottle he's kept his entire life. In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history—a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled.

A unique burden was inherited by the children of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his celebrated siblings, Senators Robert and Ted Kennedy. Raised in a world of enormous privilege against the backdrop of American history, this third generation of Kennedys often veered between towering accomplishment and devastating defeat. In his revelatory new audiobook, acclaimed Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli draws back the curtain on the next generation of America’s most famous family.

Travis McGee never shies away from damsels in distress. But this Eurasian beauty was different. When Travis and Meyer rescued her from the water, she had a block of cement wired to her feet, and she wasn't so much grateful as ready to snare them in a murder racket to end all murders.