Showing results by narrator "James C. Moore" in All Categories

Released not long after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, in the run-up to the 1964 national election, Eugene Burdick's blockbuster political novel, The 480, foresaw the rise of social media and 21st century analytical data manipulation, the use of computer-generated voter profiles to shape-for better or for worse - the outcome of a major national election. Burdick - coauthor of The Ugly American and Fail-Safe - was a true socio-political visionary, ahead of his time by more than half a century.

Written first as a series of stories in the late 19th century and published later as the quintessential Western novel in the early years of the 20th century, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister contains elements of breathtaking adventure, courage, grit, conflict, humor, and heartfelt emotions that continue to resonate in the 21st century.

Valgolia, a planet in the Epsilon Eridani star system, conquered Earth generations ago, but their conquest was incomplete. While Valgolians made possible greater prosperity, universal health, and interstellar trade for all Earthlings, the factional frictions of Earth - race against race, religion against religion, culture against culture - continue to bedevil the Valgolian's vision of a peaceable world for all mankind.

When Red, a young boy living on a vast country estate owned by his father, a world-renowned industrialist, finds and captures two small and strange-looking animals, he hides them away in an old bird cage in the loft of his father's barn. He has dreams of making big bucks in a circus sideshow featuring the two unusual creatures.

When Ben Hewitt met Erik Gillard, he was amazed. Here was a real-life rebel living happily and comfortably in small-town Vermont on less than $10,000 per year. Gillard's no bum. He has a job, a girlfriend, good friends, and strong ties to the community. But how he lives his life - and why - launches Hewitt on a quest to understand the true role of money and mindless consumerism in our lives. By meeting and befriending people like Erik Gillard, Hewitt realized that their happiness was real. What was he - and the rest of a deeply unhappy population - missing?

The Russians were playing Donald Trump and his allies long before the 2016 election - and continue to do so to this day. That much, and more, is made clear in this masterfully narrated audiobook.

"Pillar of Fire", a great Ray Bradbury short story, is one of those horror tales that is guaranteed to raise goosebumps at every step of the bizarre way...from the graveyard to, well, a golden box launched into forever.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is more than one of America's most-read, taught, and debated novels. Gatsby represents a paradigm shift in the novel form, a deep dive into the intimacies of the dark and selfish aspects of human nature. The novel is an over-the-top display of the Jazz Age as seen through the eyes of a staid and - by his own account - honest Midwestern man, Nick Carraway.

As tense, short story Westerns go, W.C. Tuttle's "Spawn of the Desert", set in the 1850s rugged Southwest mountains, is a splendid, fast-paced example of the classic genre of tales of gold and silver mining towns run by ruthless men, and inhabited by an eclectic population of miners, gamblers, gunmen, drunks, hardscrabble women, and the obligatory "colorful" characters. Tuttle (1883-1969) was one of the most prolific Western writers of his day, with more than 40 novels and short stories to his credit.

"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", published by Henry David Thoreau in 1849, speaks eloquently and personally about one man's desire to live a peaceful, government-free life. In this short essay, Thoreau lays out his philosophy best summed up by the author as, "That government governs best that does not govern at all." Thoreau takes on the key issues of his day: slavery and the Mexican war.

Old Judge Anderson feared the inevitable - he was to be replaced by a Cyber, a lightning-fast, softly-speaking machine that deals out decisions from its cyber-bench free of human errors and motions. The District Attorney has a surprise up his sleeve for the Judge, a case against a man who claims he can outwit any Cyber, and is willing to prove it in Judge Anderson's court room. As the trial gets underway, Judge Anderson must come to grips with a future he wishes would just go away. What would his judicial and ethical hero, Justice Holmes, think?

By the end of the 21st century, a deep-state human-systems organization, the Psychotechnic Institute, has begun melding neuroscience and psychoanalytics to create the foundation for generations of more peaceful, more powerful, more "sensitive" human beings. In Poul Anderson's 1954 science-fiction thriller, The Sensitive Man, one such human, Simon Dalgetty, is on the trail of brutal men who kidnapped Michael Tighe, keeper of the keys to the Institute's secrets, and, thus, to the fate of world order.

Romance, intrigue, jewels, gold-laden tombs, ancient curses, Egyptian princesses, a dysfunctional British family, a heroic archaeologist, a conniving thief, a wicked and vengeful heir to a 4,000-year-old line of Egyptian kings all come together on the Nile in 1900s Cairo in a tale only L. Frank Baum - creator of the Oz stories - could tell with his adventure-tipped and action-filled pen. And no finer adventure and action-packed tale came from Baum's quill than The Last Egyptian: A Romance of the Nile.

This is a remarkable book. It tells the story of an apparently ordinary American who happens to be born in extraordinary times and who is, therefore, forced to live an exceptional life. Edgar Brown is a member of that generation which fought both the Great Depression and World War II, and prevailed! Thus, this story of one man's life becomes the story of the history of our country through some of its most dramatic and significant times in microcosm.

In the late Cretaceous period, about 80 million years ago, vast stretches of the North American continent were under water, between what is now the central Rocky Mountains and the eastern Appalachians, and extending south from the Canadian provinces to the Gulf of Mexico (as we know it today). We've all read about, and maybe even had in our hands, seashells and other fossils originally deposited on the shores and floor of that ancient inland sea.

Riordan, a ruthless and wealthy hunter, needs one more kill to fill out his bucket list. He's faced down and brought home the wildest beasts on Earth, Venus, and even Neptune. But what he really craves is the hide of a Martian, and he'll pay any price, endure any obstacle, to hang that trophy on his wall.

It is 1934. Red-headed Henry Cook, fresh out of Amherst and excited about working on his first book at an infamous writers' colony, arrives at the Vermont island retreat at the invitation of its owner, Thaddeus Hulbert, a boisterous, bellowing, bloviated curmudgeon, whose reputation as a novelist, columnist, and radio commentator has vaulted him to national prominence.

It is summer, in the probably distant future, and Artie Lindstrom - the wizard behind a remotely-triggered jar lid opener that became the weapon that defeated the Martian invasion, a water desalinization machine that inadvertently produced gin, and a death ray gun that obliterated Venus during the Three-Day War - has sketched out plans for an anti-gravity machine not much bigger than a mini-fridge.

The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 novel, introduced Fitzgerald fans to 22-year-old Gloria Gilbert, a drop-dead gorgeous, selfish, gumdrop-addicted beauty from Kansas City, and 25-year-old Anthony Patch, a handsome, heir-to-a-fortune, careless, spoiled Harvard graduate and New York bon vivant. The novel opens in 1913, a time of flappers, jazz clubs, silent movies, and, for those who could afford it, a 24/7 world of parties, booze, and social extravagances.

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us Amory Blaine, who, from boyhood through his early 20s, is on a quest for his identity, his philosophy, and his sense of place in a world never quite his own, a world in which he moves with barely concealed ego-fueled disgust and contempt. Fitzgerald's breakthrough novel, written in 1920 when the author was 23, manages to be both a thinly veiled autobiography and a sincere attempt by Fitzgerald to get into the head of the young, privileged personages of his time.