Showing results by narrator "Stephen Bowlby" in All Categories

The year 1942 is a bad time to stage Madame Butterfly. Although Puccini's masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension in the dark months following Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against the cast and crew. When the first workman dies, the maestro calls Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who works discreetly for Hollywood's rich and famous.

Dan Fortune’s girlfriend, Marty, asks him to pawn her diamond ring in order to buy them a few weeks by the seashore. Fortune does as told, but picks up some business while at the pawnshop. There he meets Claude Marais, brother of the pawnbroker and veteran of the humiliating French defeats in Vietnam and Algiers. Fearing that someone is trying to kill her husband, Claude’s wife hires Fortune to guard him against a mysterious German with a years-old wartime grudge.

Thomas Tessler, devastated by a tragedy, has cloistered himself in his bedroom and shut out the world for the past three years. His wife, Silke, lives in the next room, but Thomas no longer shares his life with her, leaving his hideout only in the wee hours of the night to buy food at the store around the corner from their Manhattan apartment. Isolated, withdrawn, damaged, Thomas is hikikomori. Desperate to salvage their life together, Silke hires Megumi, a young Japanese woman attuned to the hikikomori phenomenon.

The Polish monarch has outlawed a portion of the Jewish funeral rite, and none of the community’s lawyers, judges, or scholars will come forward to defend the custom before the crown. Only one man dares challenge the sovereign: The spindly old Rabbi Eliezer of Rimanov, whose eccentric habits conceal the mind of a dreamer and the curiosity of a child. The rabbi is reduced to laughter at the sight of the king, for the country’s ruler is but a boy - and Rabbi Eliezer knows how to speak to youngsters.

May Laval was as brilliant as a ten-carat diamond - and just as cold. As the calculating ruler of a social set, she influenced generals, politicians, and big businessmen. Slowly and shrewdly, she learned the intimate details of everyone's life and recorded the seamy facts in a diary so as not to forget a single sordid detail. One day, May Laval threatened to publish her diary. Now it’s up to PR man Jake Harrison to find out who killed May and - while he’s at it - why his wife left him.

In these end-times, compulsions, obsessions and addictions are at epidemic levels. Satan uses compulsions, obsessions and addictions to force his slaves to build up his kingdom. Satan also uses compulsions, obsessions and addictions to prevent Christians from living the abundant life. As compulsion, obsession or addiction becomes too painful, people reach out for help.

In 1916, Mexican bandit Pancho Villa raided the southwestern border town of Columbus, New Mexico. Three hundred American soldiers fought four hundred attackers in a battle that ended with one of the last cavalry charges in U.S. history. Outraged, Congress ordered the U.S. Army to invade Mexico in pursuit of Villa. For the first time, trucks and airplanes accompanied U. S. cavalry into combat, practicing for America’s entry into World War I. Influenced by Sam Peckinpah, Rambo-creator David Morrell dramatizes this epic era in American history through the eyes of a civilian scout old enough to have been in the Civil War, the Indian wars, Cuba, and the Philippines. Knowing that his ways are finished, he teaches a young recruit about the past, at a cost he never expected to pay.

A novel of high adventure in the pioneer West.

Returning home from Germany eight years after commiting a brutal murder that remains unsolved, an American soldier erupts into an uncontrollable rage when he discovers his ex-wife has remarried and his child is being raised by a stranger, and embarks on a diabolical scheme of revenge.

Traveling to 20 towns in 20 weeks, author Theron Hopkins examines the magic of high school football in America. He finds that, in a world of spectacle and drama, the Friday night lights are not the most important part of what makes high school football so loved by those who play it, coach it, and watch it.

Historian Doug Rossinow examines how the cooperation and the creative tension between left-wing radicals and liberal reformers advanced many of the most important political values of the 20th century, including free speech, freedom of conscience, and racial equality. Visions of Progress chronicles the broad alliances of radical and liberal figures who were driven by a particular concept of social progress - a transformative vision in which the country would become fundamentally more democratic.

When it comes to living life to its fullest, Rosalind Russell's character Auntie Mame is still the silver screen's exemplar. And Mame, the role Russell will always be remembered for, embodies the rich and rewarding life Bernard F. Dick reveals in his biography, Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell. Drawing on personal interviews and information from the archives of Russell and her producer-husband Frederick Brisson, Dick begins with Russell's childhood in Waterbury, Connecticut.

When his mom decided it was time for them to leave for good, Thomas knew they better get far away or he'd come and find them. It was Christmas Day, with Mom sweating in a tiny room over a tiny stove, and Dad watching college basketball and drinking with a vengeance. "Thomas, I want you to get your sister and go out to the car, okay?" Mom had promised them that they would be getting a special Christmas present today. Just the two kids. They couldn’t mention it to Dad. This is her present, Thomas thought....

Traditional business structures love stability and predictability. Yet many organizations believe the two essential ingredients for long-term success are creativity and innovation. Kirsten May and Alex Varricchio, founders of the marketing agency UpHouse, call the relationship between these two opposing expectations the Proximity Paradox - the belief that those who are closest to a subject are best-qualified to innovate for it, when, in reality, intense proximity limits creativity.

July 20, 1969. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin left humanity’s first footprints on the Moon. The plaque they left behind reads, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” But was the Apollo 11 moon landing mission really a global endeavor? How did people outside the United States view these “rocket men”? Against the political backdrop of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, was it, indeed, “For all mankind”?

Are you ready to get your faith in shape? A 40-Day Spiritual Workout for Catholics is designed to bring about deeper transformation and conversion in your life. Rice challenges his listeners to spend 40 days developing a habit that will last a lifetime. Each of the 40 days includes a Scripture quote, a quote from a saint or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a short reflection, thought-provoking questions, and a prayer. Your spiritual workout borrows concepts from physical training, including stretch, cardio, muscle-building, hydration, fat-burning, and cool down.

We are in a period of unknowns unlike any in a generation or more. As educators, we need new pathways and ideas that can help us educate children for the world to come. Reimagining the Classroom: Creating New Learning Spaces and Connecting with the World provides practical steps and examples that parents and educators can use to begin to create new learning spaces, approaches, and outcomes. Dr. Richards's provocative book asks us to reconsider some of our basic assumptions about teaching and learning.

More relevant than ever to our everyday lives, the US Constitution, the foundation of our democratic republic, comes alive in this simple and easy-to-understand short audiobook. Originally published for high schools in the City of New York in 1924, The Constitution of Our Country combines the original document, narrated by Hillary Huber, and clear teaching text, narrated by Stephen Bowlby. Its straightforward language cuts through today’s partisan politics, and takes us back to the true original meanings. Hear what the US Constitution really says … and does not say.

In late December 1776, the American War of Independence appeared to be on its last legs. General George Washington's continental forces had been reduced to a shadow of their former strength, and the British Army had chased them across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Desperate times call for desperate measures, however, and George Washington responded to this crisis with astonishing audacity. On Christmas night 1776, he recrossed the Delaware as a nor'easter churned up the coast, burying his small detachment under howling sheets of snow and ice.

Thirty-five-year-old Amelia Garcia, a veteran Air Force drone pilot who’s sacrificed much of her adult life to protect others by doing the unspeakable, has traded her Reaper for a deepwater remotely operated vehicle. It reminds her of flying the Reaper, minus the killing. It’s a job that allows her to escape the barren realities of her life onshore. But when her hobby of collecting lost items from the deep-sea floor uncovers a strongbox two hundred miles off the Virginia coast, people she loves start to die.