Showing results by narrator "Ray Porter" in All Categories

After 25 years serving as the human Monitor of the Interstellar Ark, Hermes, Orion is scheduled to be placed back into hibernation with the other crewmembers. Knowing he'll die there and be replaced before the ship's voyage is over, he decides that he won’t — can’t — accept that fate. Whatever it takes, Orion will escape Hermes and see what's beyond, even if it means defying the regulations of his only friend — the ship-wide artificial intelligence known as Dan.

When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of US airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill.

Like it or not, your every move is being watched and analyzed. Consumers' identities are being stolen, and a person's every step is being tracked and stored. What once might have been dismissed as paranoia is now a hard truth, and privacy is a luxury few can afford or understand. In this explosive yet practical book, Kevin Mitnick illustrates what is happening without your knowledge - and he teaches you "the art of invisibility".

Most people think that being prepared for catastrophe means stocking up on MREs and building a bunker in their backyard, but this approach leaves you vulnerable in the real world of car accidents, natural disasters, grid failures, and global pandemics. Prepared overturns today’s paranoid survival wisdom and teaches the foundational skills of preparedness that will not only help you build situational awareness and achieve greater mobility but that will also help you build resilient mental habits.

At 24 years of age, U.S. Army Ranger Sean Parnell was named commander of a forty-man elite infantry platoon - a unit that came to be known as the Outlaws - and was tasked with rooting out Pakistan-based insurgents from a mountain valley along Afghanistan's eastern frontier. Parnell and his men assumed they would be facing a ragtag bunch of civilians, but in May 2006 what started out as a routine patrol through the lower mountains of the Hindu Kush became a brutal ambush.

Kagen Vale is the trusted and feared captain of the palace guard, charged with protection of the royal children of the Silver Empire. But one night, Kagen is drugged and the entire imperial family is killed, leaving the empire in ruins. Haunted and broken, Kagen is abandoned by his gods and damned forever. He becomes a wanderer, trying to take down as many of his enemies as possible while plotting to assassinate the usurper, the deadly Witch-king of Hakkia. While all around him magic—long banished from the world—returns in strange and terrifying ways.

Deep in the Afghan mountains, Sergeant Michael Pitcher discovers an object with powers that defy explanation. After interacting with it, he suffers a traumatic seizure and is flown home for evaluation. Cleared by the doctors, Michael goes home to his relieved wife, Josie. But he’s a changed man. The once-loving husband is now coldly withdrawn. When a team of scientists connected to Sergeant Pitcher vanishes without a trace, CIA agent Dean Ninemeyer comes to him for insight - only to find that the recovering soldier has also disappeared.

For years the Department of Military Sciences has fought to stop terrorists from using radical bioweapons - designer plagues, weaponized pathogens, genetically modified viruses, and even the zombie plague that first brought Ledger into the DMS. These terrible weapons have been locked away in the world’s most secure facility. Until now. Joe Ledger and Echo Team are scrambled when a highly elite team of killers breaks the unbreakable security and steals the world’s most dangerous weapons.

When a rogue military faction in China kidnaps a CIA case officer, global tensions ignite. Desperate to forestall the looming firestorm, the United States deploys an elite team of Navy SEALs to rescue the agent, protected by nothing but their training and a single pilot providing air cover from his FA-18E Super Hornet—normally, it wouldn’t be enough. But these aren’t normal times…and this is no ordinary pilot.

You can’t have a good tale of monster hunting without monsters. And sometimes the monsters don’t need to be hunted. Sometimes it’s fun sitting back at minimum safe distance and watching the mayhem.

Beyond the personal discovery and instant relief that Working Genius provides, the model also gives teams a remarkably simple and practical framework for tapping into one another’s natural gifts, which increases productivity and reduces unnecessary judgment.

When a former teammate of Chunk’s is killed in a shocking ambush, rumors begin to fly that the Lion of Ramadi, the infamous Iraq War sniper who racked up dozens of American kills, has returned with a mission to target American SEALs. Chunk and his core team—Saw, a skilled and lethal sniper; Riker, who has an uncanny ability to escape death; and Whitney Watts, a former CIA analyst who sees patterns everyone else seems to miss—are mobilized to prosecute the threat.

After a shootout in Dubai left Hamza al-Saud dead and elevated brilliant aeronautical engineer Qasim Nadar to hero status in England, everyone assumes the terrorist threat from al Qadar has been eliminated. Everyone except JSOC counterterrorism analyst Whitney Watts. But when she decides to help MI6 penetrate Nadar’s secret network, Watts gets a little too close to the truth and finds herself in a deadly situation not even her teammates from Tier One can save her from.

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies—and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.

More than 60 years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, two novice writers at the dawn of their careers, sat down to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. Alternating chapters, they pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and obsession, art and violence.

Under a previous sun, Athas teemed with life. The sorcerer-king, after obtaining immortality for himself, united all lands under the power of his magic. But power-hungry overlords have carved the lands into pieces - setting themselves up as sorcerer-kings--and survival depends on the optimism of three steadfast people.

Terrorists-for-hire have created a weapon that can induce earthquakes and cause dormant volcanoes to erupt. One terrifying side effect of the weapon is that prior to the devastation, the vibrations drive ordinary people to suicide and violence. A wave of madness begins sweeping the country beginning with a mass shooting in Congress. Joe Ledger and his team go on a wild hunt to stop the terrorists and uncover the global superpower secretly funding them. At every step the stakes increase as it becomes clear that the endgame of this campaign of terror is igniting the Yellowstone caldera.

Unwitting time traveler Joseph Bridgeman is adjusting to life in the present and wondering if his traveling days are behind him. But when he’s contacted by the Continuum, an organized group of time travelers based in the future, he learns his career is just getting started. The Continuum needs Joe’s help. One of their operatives is missing, last seen in 19th-century Paris, and they believe Joe’s ability to see the past might be the only way to find him. Teamed up with Gabrielle Green, an acerbic, wisecracking traveler, Joe heads back to 1873 on his most dangerous mission yet.

In the year 2243, the Moon belongs to the dead. The largest graveyard in the solar system, it was the perfect solution to the overcrowding and environmental problems that had plagued mankind for centuries. And the perfect place for Cali Washington to run away from her past. But when a mysterious meteor crashes into one of the Moon’s cemeteries, Cali and her fellow Caretakers find themselves surrounded by a terrifying enemy force that outnumbers them more than a thousand to one. An enemy not hindered by the lack of air or warmth or sustenance. An enemy that is already dead.

This surreal fable, set in America's Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: the Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; the Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and the Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim Carsons, a homosexual gunslinger who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America and fight for intergalactic freedom.