Showing results by narrator "P. J. Ochlan" in All Categories

Growing up under his punk rocker dad’s spotlight, 18-year-old Luke Greenly knows fame and wants nothing to do with it. His real love isn’t in front of a crowd, it’s on the page. Hiding his gift and secretly hoarding songs in his bedroom at night, he prefers the anonymous comfort of the locally popular podcast he co-hosts with his outgoing and meddling, far-too-jealousy-inspiringly-happy-with-his-long-term-boyfriend twin brother, Cullen. But that’s not Luke’s only secret. He also has a major unrequited crush on music blogger Vada Carsewell.

Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans-all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world? A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers.

Bobbi Rebell taps into her exclusive network of business leaders to share with you stories of the financial lessons they learned early in their lives that helped them become successful. She then uses these stories as jumping off points to offer specific, actionable advice on how you can become a financial grownup just like them. You're guided by proven examples and given the information you need to make choices that are right for you. How to Be a Financial Grownup will especially appeal to you if you're interested in new ideas to better manage your finances.

From legendary comedian D. L. Hughley comes a bitingly funny send-up of the Obama years, as "told" by the key political players on both sides of the aisle. What do the Clintons, Republicans, fellow Democrats, and Obama's own family really think of President Barack Obama? Finally, the truth is revealed in this raucously funny "oral history" parody.

Magnus "Steps" Craig is part of the elite three-man Special Tracking Unit of the FBI. Called in on special cases where his skills are particularly needed, he works as a tracker. The media dubs him "The Human Bloodhound", since Steps is renowned for his incredible ability to find and follow trails over any surface better than anyone else. But there's a secret to his success. Steps has a special ability - a kind of synesthesia - where he can see the "essence" of a person, something he calls "shine", on everything they've touched.

The Legion is a machine of war. When the gears are turning, those not in sync with the machine get pulverized in the cogs. Most of the time, it's the enemy. Unfortunately, for Lance Corporal Alerio Sisera, the gears have political and egotistical parts that are just as sharp as gladius blades. Caught in the wrong place by vindictive officers, he is sentenced to a session on the punishment post and is badly injured. Wounded and disgraced, he must now save the same Legion that sentenced him to the harsh discipline.

The only reason Ebo enlists to fight in Vietnam is because it means a free trip to O'ahu, where he can visit his younger sister, Momo. He hasn't seen Momo, who is disabled, since she became a ward of the state. During his last night before leaving for basic training, Ebo's mother lets him in on a secret, which forces him to question his future, the importance of family, and who he really is.

Twilight of the Gods is a riveting account of the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the US Navy won the largest naval battle in history; MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized. Toll's narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are gripping, but he also takes the listener into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo.

When American covert operative Chase Fulton returns home from his most recent mission battling a company providing weapons of war to the highest bidder regardless of their alliances, he finds himself haunted by a cryptic warning from the deputy director of Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency. “There is someone close to you who is not what you believe them to be.”

When American covert operative Chase Fulton and his team suppress a mass shooting attempt in the tiny coastal town he calls home, the realization of how deadly his life has become sends him on a journey to separate himself from that violence and save his relationship with the woman he loves. The laidback holiday promises to rekindle the relationship and heal old wounds, until a brutal attack leaves a beloved friend fighting for her life. Chase has no choice but to put his experience, training, and lethal skill set back into action to find and eliminate the threat.

Israel's critics in the West insist that no country founded on a single religion or culture can stay democratic and prosperous - but they're wrong. In The Promise of Israel, Daniel Gordis points out that Israel has defied that conventional wisdom. It has provided its citizens infinitely greater liberty and prosperity than anyone expected, faring far better than any other young nation. Israel's "magic" is a unique blend of democracy and tradition, of unabashed particularism coupled to intellectual and cultural openness.

For New Yorker Nick Dalca, wealth is a birthright. But his perfect life is starting to crumble. During a flight to Europe, his private jet goes missing with his wife and son aboard. They are presumed dead. Having no one left, Nick makes a shocking decision: to negotiate the sale of his business conglomerate, a deal which may turn him into one of the richest men in the world. Faced with making many decisions alone, he is drawn to his longtime secretary, Anne. She has one special gift. A gift that can radically alter his destiny.

Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity. A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from its bizarre and grisly details to the nature of the man behind the crime.

After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Christian colleges in the US seized the opportunity to begin strategic faculty and student exchanges with universities inside the Soviet Union. They could not have foreseen the doors that would open next. During a 1990 visit to Russia, John Bernbaum and his colleagues received a surprising invitation from a Russian government official: come help build a faith-based university in Moscow. Thus, after 70 years of fierce religious persecution under communism, the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) was born.

American covert operative Chase Fulton and his team of tier-one operators are ordered to find and rescue the victim, but that’s only phase one of the mission that may change the landscape of international diplomacy forever. In a tropical paradise where vacationers see nothing less than perfection in every detail, from the Bahamas to South America, Chase and the team are forced to dive beneath the flawless surface and into the depths of terroristic depravity to unravel a web of unthinkable atrocity and infiltrate and devour an evil like none they’ve ever faced.

When a bout of food poisoning strikes a residence for lively seniors blessed with generous pensions and high-ranking political connections, Dr. Zol Szabo, public health doctor turned medical detective, assembles his investigative team. But the epidemic’s source proves elusive; the death count rises and when the scourge threatens someone close to Zol, he calls in his friend and colleague Hamish Wakefield, a microbe connoisseur with a nose for exotic diagnoses.

When incidents of food supply contamination dominate the news media, two investigators - Zol Szabo, a public health doctor, and Hamish Wakefield, a young infectious diseases specialist - come under immense pressure to find the cause of a mysterious epidemic before more victims show up on the autopsy table. In a race against the clock, the two doctors must navigate the treacherous political minefields of the medical community and the media while the disease spreads.

As former American covert operative Chase Fulton struggles to adapt to life on the sidelines following a catastrophic injury, he finds himself waging a battle like none he’s ever faced.

Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography, Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaited portrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), twins conjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fused liver, who were "discovered" in Siam by a British merchant in 1824. Bringing an Asian American perspective to this almost implausible story, Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Boston in 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvy showmen who gained their freedom and traveled the backroads of rural America to bring "entertainment" to the Jacksonian mobs.

Danny Littleton feels like he is turning into a dinosaur every time he goes to the doctor's office. After all, dinosaurs don't have to be afraid of anything, including having diabetes. The doctor understands how Danny feels. He and Danny talk, and later, in school, Danny realizes that if he pretends he is a dinosaur, he can get up in front of the class and explain his diabetes.