Showing results by narrator "Michael David Axtell" in All Categories

You are no one. Level zero. Empty of mind and memory. Even your past has been stripped from your brain by the inscrutable System. A long, difficult road lies between you and remembering any part of who you are. A road punctuated with one death after another. You are too puny to survive by might alone. Information is the single resource that might keep you alive, but the brainless “digis” have none of it. Only those with experience can give you what you need, but most care nothing about you or your plight. In fact, some make it their mission to kill you.

In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal.

The Tutorial Zones have converged. Humanity was caught unprepared and must now deal with new challenges. Now, Liam must get the situation under control once more before it is too late. Novel enemies emerge while deprivation of resources becomes a real issue due to the number of people. In the meantime, a mysterious organization's plans brew beneath the surface. In order to stand up to them and protect humanity at the same time, Liam will have to push himself to his limits. Left with no other choice, he must become exponentially stronger than before at a much faster rate.

Galaxy 'Alex' Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime, Alex was hoping for a fresh start. But a free ride to one of the world's most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch. Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale's secret societies - well-known haunts of the rich and powerful. Now there's a dead girl on campus and Alex seems to be the only person who won't accept the neat answer the police and campus administration have come up with for her murder.

Within each of us is an ancient mechanism that eliminates toxic materials, initiates fat burning, and protects cells from becoming dysfunctional - or turning cancerous. It’s called autophagy, and when it’s turned on, the complex operation not only can slow down the aging process, it can optimize biological function as a whole, helping to stave off all manner of diseases and affording us the healthy life spans we never thought possible. It’s the body’s ultimate switch to life.

Some $65 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale.

As multiple worlds and dimensions converged, humanity was met with the Unknown. A mysterious System forces it to play its part in a death game, and through the workings of a higher power teleports every human to a deadly Tutorial Zone. In order to save himself and others, Liam must reach his full potential as the last hope. This is the story of a man's desperate attempts to save humanity from certain extinction, as well as find out who's behind it all. He dreams of creating a fairer, more just reality and through the System, finds a ray of hope.

Harbor Lights is a story collection from one of the most popular and widely acclaimed icons of American fiction, featuring a never-before-published novella. These eight stories move from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons, and trailer parks across the South, weaving together love, friendship, violence, survival, and revenge

Some fall prey to those holding a gun for the first time. Others cannot be defeated even by the most experienced shooters in the world, unless their luck comes to save the day. Cheater’s accuracy is unparalleled, and Lady Luck is on his side. He has all the marks of a champion, and champions never miss. The true aim of his heart, though, is not one that can be hit with a single fortunate shot. No, she is far to the west, beyond several of the Continent’s most dangerous locations: the bleak boundaries dividing regions from one another.

Galaxy 'Alex' Stern is determined to break Darlington out of hell—even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. But Alex is playing with forces far beyond her control, and when faculty members begin to die off, she knows these aren't just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if Alex is going to survive, she'll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university's very walls.

Best-selling historian Andrew Nagorski takes a fresh look at the decisive year 1941, when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.

The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is in large part the story of wealth flowing upward. Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative “Davos Men”—members of the billionaire class—chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization.

Off the beaten path, following unmarked trails, we are wired to explore. More than just a need to get outside, the search for the unknown is a primal urge that has shaped the history of our species and continues to mold our behavior in ways we are only beginning to understand. In fact, the latest neuroscience suggests that exploration in any form—whether it’s trying a new restaurant, changing careers, or deciding to run a marathon—is an essential ingredient of human life. Exploration, it turns out, isn’t merely a hobby—it’s our story.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a political strategist who rose to prominence as an intellectual architect of US foreign policy during the Cold War. As National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and a trusted advisor to US presidents from John F. Kennedy onwards, Brzezinski’s expertise helped shape global strategy at critical moments—most significantly as a key figure in the downfall of the Soviet Union.

On his shoulders, he carries a heavy rifle that digs into his burned flesh. Worse still is his load of loot. In mass, it amounts to dozens of pounds. But in worth, it is weightier than a palace. Only the luckiest of geniuses could manage to escape a dangerous wilderness, where he is hunted with every step, with such riches on his back. Luck, of course, is something Cheater has plenty of. Genius, though, is less clear. He watches his haul grow with each new place he visits, adding to the physical and emotional strain of his pilgrimage.

After 40 years in San Quentin, Luke Palmer leaves with a state-issued suit, $100 dollars to buy a bus ticket, and a map that will lead to a promise and into the heart of a dark forest. College graduate student Molly Monroe is about to release rare butterflies not far from where the FBI used 4,000 bullets in a shootout to kill Ma Barker and one of her gangster sons in 1935. Molly snaps a picture that will frame something she never sees coming.

Isaac Frost is an assassin. Raised in the Graveyard of the cruel and mysterious Undertaker, he has mastered the deadly art of the knife and the skill of survival, together with scores of others just like him—young men taken from their families to become the most infamous killers throughout the realms of elves and humans. But Isaac is unique: a single drop of another’s blood can confer upon him the knowledge and power of friend and foe alike.

Meet Michael Skelly, the man boldly harnessing wind energy that could power America’s future and break its fossil fuel dependence in this "essential, compelling look into the future of the nation’s power grid" (Bryan Burrough, author of The Big Rich).

Three years ago, a car accident landed him in a wheelchair. After two experimental surgeries, he still can’t walk. Now broke and living as a ward of the state, Jason Morgan wants nothing more than to walk again and to get out of this hellhole of a hospital. Enter Games For Life, a gaming company that runs a massive VRMMORPG system. They invite Jason to test their groundbreaking pod technology. In their gaming world, destiny, time, and reality are not what they seem. There, he can even walk again! What could possibly go wrong?

In How the World Ran Out of Everything, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman reveals the fascinating innerworkings of our supply chain and the factors that have led to its constant, dangerous vulnerability. His reporting takes listeners deep into the elaborate system, showcasing the triumphs and struggles of the human players who operate it—from factories in Asia and an almond grower in Northern California, to a group of striking railroad workers in Texas, to a truck driver who Goodman accompanies across hundreds of miles of the Great Plains.