Showing results by narrator "Eric Jason Martin" in All Categories

Death. It happens to everyone, yet most of us don't want to talk about this final chapter of existence. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde intimately understands this reticence and fear. The son of an undertaker, he hesitated to embrace the legacy of running his family's business. Yet he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones profoundly changed his faith and his perspective on death - and life itself.

The stakes have never been higher, and it all falls upon the three friends to save the day. Their trip to the Void will prove to be as harmful as lucrative. Their hope? To gain enough power so they can break the Ranking itself. What they haven't thought of is the effect that the absolute and total despair of the Void will have on them. Or even if they will be able to prevail if they ever manage to return.

There he was in his sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic, all alone and loving it. Well, there was a US Navy carrier group on his southern horizon, but he was a Navy guy himself, so he didn't mind. Then came the UFOs, hurtling in from the Outer Black to overfly the carriers at Mach 17. Their impossible aerobatics were bad enough—but then they started shooting at each other, and at the Navy, with nukes. Little ones at first, but winding up with a 500 megatonner at 90 miles that fried every piece of electronics within line-of-sight.

What happens when you pack almost a dozen jails, bulging at the seams with society’s cast-offs, onto a spit of landfill purposefully hidden from public view? Prize-winning journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau have spent two years interviewing more than 130 people comprising a broad cross section of lives touched by New York City's Rikers Island prison complex—from incarcerated people and their relatives, to officers, lawyers, and commissioners, with stories spanning the 1970s to the present day. The portrait that emerges calls into question the very nature of justice in America.

Father Patrick Desbois documents the daunting task of identifying and examining all the sites where Jews were exterminated by Nazi mobile units in the Ukraine in WWII. Using innovative methodology, interviews, and ballistic evidence, he has determined the location of many mass gravesites with the goal of providing proper burials for the victims of the forgotten Ukrainian Holocaust. Compiling new archival material and many eye-witness accounts, Desbois has put together the first definitive account of one of World War II's bloodiest chapters.

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the "mouth of hell" of 18th-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos.

Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist. We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization - the Middle East - is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate associations with humans.

The curse of the lost goddess Inanna would not allow Lukas Aguilar to hide out in obscurity for long. To become the conquering invader, the protective monster, and the selfish Outsider who would risk the end of the world itself, he must instead embrace audacity.

The ancient portals have been unlocked, restoring fast travel to Isle of Mythos. No longer the outsider, Chod enjoys his newfound acceptance as a hero and troll. New lands and adventures await with the promise of gold and glory. But every opportunity offers the chance of misfortune. Several portals still remain closed, hiding dire threats behind their veils of dark energy. Enemies have disappeared into parts unknown, and rumors of the return of the greatest villain Mythos has ever known grow louder by the day. Chod has one goal - unite the heroes of Mythos.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you’ve never heard of - Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world.

In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden.

Obsessive and compulsive, Valerie Mayberry is the FBI’s counterintelligence expert on domestic terrorism. Brett Garrett is a dishonorably discharged ex-Navy SEAL coming off a secret opioid addiction and a gun for hire working as a security contractor in Eastern Europe. When a high-ranking Kremlin official with knowledge of a plan to attack the US must be smuggled out under the nose of a kleptocratic Putin-like Russian president and a ruthless general, Mayberry and Garret are thrown together to exfiltrate him and preempt a deadly poisonous strike.

Welcome to Cachalot, a planet made almost entirely of water, an ocean refuge for Earth's marine mammals, rescued from near extinction at the hands of humans thousands of years ago. Free from predators and human impact, the whales thrive in their new home, growing in size and intelligence. Everything is perfect. Until humans decide to establish floating towns on Cachalot, drawn by the planet's abundant natural resources.

Daniel Chai only ever wanted to be an Adventurer. Born with a Gift of Healing that steals his memories and past experiences as its fuel source, Daniel must weigh his heart's desire with his gift as he attempts to clear his first ever dungeon. Along the way, he'll meet true friends like the Catkin Asin and the Northerner Omrak as he learns what it truly takes to be a professional Adventurer in Brad.

Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more.

When Max Cromwell joined the military for a year of service, he didn't think he'd become a soldier on an alien world. But then the Zoos Collective had kidnapped him along with other humans to be their army in the Cosmic Games, a conflict between the four godlike civilizations of the Intergalactic Consortium of Civilized Beings. Trapped on the planet Alpha Ludus, Max and his people have been struggling to survive, while simultaneously learning to cultivate mana and develop supernatural abilities. But unlike his fellow humans, Max wields extraordinary powers no one else has been able to channel.

When Joe Biden assumed the United States presidency, he brought with him a team of all-star talent, perhaps the most experienced ensemble of policy experts in modern U.S. history. Their mission: repair America’s damaged reputation abroad and decide the course of its global future. The challenges and risks could not have been greater. Acclaimed national security reporter Alexander Ward takes us behind the scenes to reveal the struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies in a time of global crisis.

The Grove is a perilous wound on the face of the planet, home to the most fearsome creatures in all of Rock. Death himself has trod these paths, leaving in his wake freakish mutants who still bear within themselves a piece of his morbid nature.

Not too long ago, Lukas Aguilar believed only what he could see and feel for himself. Then an earthquake destroyed his home and cast him into a dangerous dungeon world. He fought to survive, gaining experience and levels but losing the goddess Inanna who inhabited his mind. And he wants her back.

In China and the World, one of the world's leading China specialists, David Shambaugh, has assembled 15 leading international authorities on China to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly assessment of China's foreign relations and roles in international affairs.