Showing results by narrator "Peter Berkrot" in All Categories

David Sparrow is an awesome stay-at-home dad. He gets his kids ready for school while his wife, Amy, commutes to New York City, where she was recently promoted to deputy district attorney. In fact she just inherited a major case: prosecuting crime lord Dante Payne. Meanwhile David is content chatting with the moms at school drop-off, making dinner at night, and doing housework.

What started as a military coup in Pakistan has ignited South Asia and threatens to spread to the world's largest democracy in India. American and British allies struggle to rescue Western civilians who have been cut off in Islamabad. What starts as a desperate race turns into a grim siege. But the fate of a few innocents pales in comparison to one inescapable fact: Pakistan is a nuclear power and some of those weapons are unaccounted for.

Bestselling author Loren W. Christensen served as a Military Policeman in Saigon, Vietnam, "the most dangerous city in the world," as it was called at the time. Shortly after returning home, he joined the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon, serving for twenty-five years. As a street cop, there were times he was dispatched to dead body calls so frequently that other officers teasingly called him the "Death Car."

Being a University of Michigan football fan should be joyful. Michigan is an elite academic institution whose football team boasts 43 Big Ten championships. But these days, college football is complicated. The NCAA is corrupt and exploitative, and Michigan keeps losing to Ohio State. It’s hard not to wonder, as Ben Mathis-Lilley does in this book: why are we doing this? The Hot Seat is a chronicle of one of the wildest years in Michigan football history, but also a search for the truth about fandom, from the pages of history books to the wilderness of online forums.

Benjamin Wilder grew up with sparse shelter, infested provisions, and constant abuse dealt to him by his stepfather: Jessup — a.k.a. the Rabid Dog. Without a sober mother to defend him from the Rabid Dog’s wrath, Ben finds reprieve and adventure in a club of misfit boys called the Black Machetes. But the world as Ben knows it comes to an end when he witnesses an act so psychologically appalling that it forces him to run for his life.

Where do writers go when they die? The forgotten ones, at least, go to the Café of Minor Authors where they drink endless cups of cappuccino, self-obsess, and nurse their shattered dreams. Some authors, it’s rumored, can escape Oblivion if they try hard enough to write something the universe can’t ignore, even after death. This is the story of one ambitious writer stuck in Oblivion who not only risks upturning his own fate but also the fate of his literary hero and that of his great grandmother, Hanna, an aspiring actor in the Yiddish theater in the Prague of 1911.

Award-winning novelist Michael Pronko examines Tokyo as a place, a culture, and a series of intense experiences, with humor, delicacy, and enchantment. More than just a setting for novels and films, Tokyo is a lively, interactive space that constantly pops up questions: How do you sweat politely, in Tokyo’s sweltering summers? How do you glance sideways, on crowded trains? How do homeowners transform a sliver of space into an impeccable garden? The answers are not what one might expect.

Whether contemplating Tokyo’s odd-shaped bonsai houses, pachinko parlors, chopstick ballet, or the perilous habit of running for trains, the short, personal writings in Beauty and Chaos explore Tokyo from the inside to reveal the city’s deeper meanings and daily pleasures. Part travelogue, part comparative culture, and packed with insights, these sharply observed vignettes tap into the daily mysteries of Tokyo life to reveal what’s beneath the gleaming, puzzling exterior of the biggest city in the world.

Set over the course of one Sunday, The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue is a collection of interconnected vignettes that takes the listener through the streets and across the sidewalks of Cypress Avenue - an unkempt afterthought, just a place that sits at the neighborhood border edge of Ridgewood Queens, New York.

It’s September 1944, and the US is poised to launch Operation Frantic, a shuttle bombing mission to be conducted by American aircraft based in Great Britain, southern Italy, and three Soviet airfields in the Ukraine. Tensions are already high between the American and Russian allies when two intelligence agents - one Soviet, one American - are found dead at Poltava, one of the Ukrainian bases. Billy is brought in to investigate, and this time he's paired, at the insistence of the Soviets, with a KGB agent who has his own political and personal agenda.

Five years ago, Robert Clarion was immersed in that perilous world of double-crosses, late-night drug deals, and constant glances over his shoulder. A dispute with a drug supplier culminated in the kidnapping of Clarion's daughter Rachel. He made a promise to his wife that, if they got their daughter back, he would get out of the drug business and never let anyone stand in the way of his family's safety again. With the help of FBI agent Jack Paris, Clarion's daughter was rescued, but the person who carried out the kidnapping was never identified or captured.

General George S. Patton was America's antihero of the Second World War. Driven by an innate sense of duty, both to his family’s great military tradition and to his country, he was fixated on the notion of reaching the status of a military legend and driven by outdated notions of honor. Simultaneously brilliant and deeply flawed, he could be daring and noble and then petulant and cruel, lacking in the diplomatic grace and tact that defined many of his contemporaries.

It was 1945, and Romek Wajsman had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a brutal concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured and had no idea where his family was - let alone if they were alive. Along with 472 other boys, including Elie Wiesel, these teens were dubbed 'The Buchenwald Boys'. They were angry at the world for their abuse and turned to violence: stealing, fighting and struggling for power. Everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation.

The "meat" of The Mueller Report is contained in his summaries of the report. Did the Russians interfere in our 2016 election? Did the Trump campaign collude with the Russians? Did Trump attempt to obstruct the investigation? Mueller presents the evidence but does not make judgments.

In this new anthology offered by Blunder Woman Productions, you’ll take a trip down twisty roads into forests, back alleys, and even across the border between life and death. Together these tales are funny, creepy, weird, contemplative, traditional, and speculative. The characters in these stories might take a wrong turn, but it’s the right move for any fan of thrillers and mysteries.

Bryan LeBlanc worked his way up into a plum position on Wall Street as the boy genius of the foreign exchange desk. Surrounded by "the few, the proud, the completely full of themselves", he decides to give Wall Street a taste of its own medicine and hatches an intricate plan to disappear permanently with just enough misappropriated money - and sailing classes - to spend his golden years cruising the Caribbean. Bryan quickly learns that being a criminal, even a really smart one, is more complicated than he thought. He finds himself on the run in the Cayman Islands, wanted for murder.

Today's business environment looks dramatically different than it did even a decade ago, and it continues to evolve at an increasing rate; macroeconomic shifts, consumer trends, technological advances, and changing competitive dynamics are accelerating the pace of change. A handbook for how to succeed in the age of big data, Optimizing Growth provides insightful guidance, real-world success stories, and practical tools to achieve growth in this new era, utilizing big data to achieve a deeper understanding of demand, customers, competitors, and opportunity.

Laying out the nine common hazards that trip up otherwise well-prepared retirees to encourage you to think through your decisions and set a course aligned with your values and your ultimate goals, Retirement Fail helps you identify potential pitfalls and teaches how to safeguard your hard-earned retirement assets. Contrary to what most people think, it is not poor portfolio performance that usually busts your retirement accounts. Rather, it's the emotional decisions you make that can cause major problems.

The 2018 Winter Olympics will be the stage for many compelling stories. Athletes like Ashley Wagner and Sven Kramer are windows into hidden social phenomena, from figure skating's eating disorders to the Dutch obsession with speed skating. Controversies like the Russian doping scandal, the NHL player ban, and the question of whether North Korea will compete or disrupt are creating human drama that affects thousands of athletes.

For every child who has ever looked up at the stars and asked, "What are they?" comes the story of a curious boy who never stopped wondering: Carl Sagan. When Carl Sagan was a young boy he went to the 1939 World's Fair and his life was changed forever. From that day on he never stopped marveling at the universe and seeking to understand it better.