Showing results by narrator "Michael Kramer" in All Categories

Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She'd been left to die in a field on the day she was born.

More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Chosen by the Master in a mysterious inception ceremony, Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity’s only defense against the Wild Chalklings - merciless creatures that leave mangled corpses in their wake. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles. As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students study the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing....

Skylan Ivorson is the gods-chosen Chief of all Vindras clans. But the gods from whom the Vindrasi draw their earthdwelling power are besieged by a new generation of gods who are challenging them for the powers of creation. The only way to stop these brash interlopers lies within the Five Bones of the Vektia Dragon, which have been lost for generations. Calling upon the ogres to fight their common foes, the Vindrasi soon find themselves in the middle of an even larger war.

At the gates of a forgotten prison, Wulf Rome discovers a powerful artifact lost for eons. Now he has a weapon he can’t control, a war he can’t win, and an ally he doesn’t trust. Who knew seizing the crown was going to be the easy part? Netra is a headstrong young acolyte who is certain she has been chosen by the goddess. While the other women in the sisterhood she belongs to are cowering in their rooms, she wants to fight in the war.

TV evangelist scandals. More varieties of Christianity that Baskin-Robbins has flavors. These are times of pluralism and disenchantment with organized religion. How do Christians today know which leaders and companions in faith to trust? For help, Gerald McDermott returns to the work of Jonathon Edwards, the 18th century preacher and college president widely regarded as the greatest American theologian ever.

A deadly strain of flu has mysteriously mutated, causing the deaths of millions throughout Ireland and beyond. But the infected don't stay dead for long, rising up to become flesh-eating monsters. In a quarantined lab just outside Belfast, lab worker Ellis and security guard Abe fight their way through corridors of the living dead, determined to expose a gruesome truth. And aging conspiracy theorist Tom wracks his brain to figure out what went wrong....

T.C. Boyle has crafted a captivating tale with memorable characters and a rollicking plot that will delight both his longtime devotees and a legion of new fans. The Inner Circle is a love story narrated by John Milk, a virginal young man, who in 1940 accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a charming professor of zoology at Indiana University who has just discovered his life's true calling: sex.

This collection gathers James Salter's thoughts on writing and profiles of famous writers, observations of the changing American military life, evocations of Aspen winters, musings on mountain climbing and skiing, and tales of travels to Europe and Asia which first appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, People magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, the Aspen Times, and many other publications.

Year 10 of the new republic, in the remote port city of Masalia: Dun-Cadal, once the greatest general of the empire, has been drinking his life away for years. Betrayed by his friends and grief stricken at the loss of his apprentice, he's done with politics, with adventure, and with people. But people aren't finished with him - not yet.

We don't understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today's political dramas are unintelligible to us. The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe.

With the blood of a Dragon on his hands, Anuka Sandbar and his friends flee from the horde of Dragons hunting them. Desperate for a weapon to use against the Dragons, Anuka assembles a band of professional thieves and thugs to infiltrate a secret dungeon.

ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - has taken on the mantle of being the single most dangerous terrorist threat to global security since al-Qaeda. In Defeating ISIS, internationally renowned intelligence veteran, author, and counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance gives an insider's view to explain the origins of this occult group, its violent propaganda, and how it spreads its ideology throughout the Middle East and to disaffected youth deep in the heart of the Western world.

The Orcs of Scell live a hard and dangerous life. Plagued by constant infighting among the clans, outside raiders and pirates, and worse. It is a life that allows no growth as a people. One Orc sought a way out of the cycle of social decay, but at great cost.... His head was taken, and his eldest son, Thun, was sent off to learn with humans. Now Thun, trapped between and shunned by two worlds, returns to find his clan near ruin and his kind living worse than ever. Driven by his father's dream, Thun will fight to unite the Orcs and save his people. No matter what it takes.

Politics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. In Congress, the media, and academic debate, opponents from right and left, the Red and the Blue, struggle against one another as if politics were contact sports played to the shouts of cheerleaders. The result, Ronald Dworkin writes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Can the hope for change be realized?

Most people know Ted Danson as the affable bartender Sam Malone in the long-running television series Cheers. But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe---the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the complete collapse of the world's major commercial fisheries.

The expanded version of this authoritative biography of Wallenberg discusses previously sealed prison records and archives; reports of recent sightings of Wallenberg; the Wallenberg family's historic multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the former Soviet Union; and the worldwide activities in honor of this great man who could not be a bystander.

When scientists discover how to fold space and teleport men to planets that are light years away, spaceships will soon become obsolete. Humankind will soon spread throughout the galaxy. Dan Jensen is a self-made man - an entrepreneur, an adventurist, never satisfied with what he has or where he's at. When an accident during the first attempt at interstellar teleportation puts him on an alien world, he finds himself marooned with a geologists, a flower shop owner, an old man and an RPG playing high school geek...total deadweight.

Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. At a time when the supernatural world is in upheaval and spilling over into the mundane reality of the living, his skills have never been more in demand. A good exorcist can charge what he likes - and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle - but there's a risk: sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. After a year spent in 'retirement', Castor is reluctantly drawn back to the life he rejected and accepts a seemingly simple exorcism case - just to pay the bills, you understand.

Buck, a huge 4-year-old Scottish Shepherd-Saint Bernard cross-breed, lived a life of ease at Judge Miller's Santa Clara Valley estate. This is the story of Buck and how he was thrust into the life of a sled-dog in the savage Klondike during the Gold Rush, and how he ran with the wolves. Jack London, born in San Francisco on January 12, 1876, is well known for his stories involving men and animals and their struggles in the environment.

Cal Claxton is determined to reinvent himself as a small-town lawyer in the aftermath of his wife's suicide. Once a hard-charging Los Angeles prosecutor, he nowlives in solitude in an old farmhouse overlooking Oregon's wine country. When a scruffy, tattooed kid shows up asking for help in solving a cold case - that of his mother's murder - Cal wants to say no. Times are tough, and he's no private eye, anyway. But the kid, who calls himself Picasso, has ridden a bicycle in the rain all the way from Portland, and something about his determination touches Cal.