Showing results by narrator "Malcolm Hillgartner" in All Categories

What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines? Perhaps the question should be, who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America's greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture the heart and soul of the Hub. In Our Boston, editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston-area writers past and present, all celebrating the city they love.

In Young Mr. Roosevelt Stanley Weintraub evokes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's political and wartime beginnings. An unpromising patrician playboy appointed assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, Roosevelt learned quickly and rose to national visibility during World War I. Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1920, he lost the election but not his ambitions. While his stature was rising, his testy marriage to his cousin Eleanor was fraying amid scandal quietly covered up. Even polio a year later would not suppress the ever indomitable Roosevelt and his inevitable ascent.

Rep and Melissa Pennyworth attend a reenactment of a Civil War battle in Missouri while seeking a case for attorney Rep - and find a corpse instead. Melissa’s friend, Linda Damon, was emotionally involved with the victim before his death, and Linda’s husband, Peter, had motive, opportunity, and a Civil War saber that is drenched in the victim’s blood. Logically, this is a job for the police, but when Rep and Melissa are involved, logic is seldom a reliable guide.

Christmas 1941 came little more than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The shock - in some cases overseas, elation - was worldwide. While Americans attempted to go about celebrating as usual, the reality of the just-declared war was on everybody’s mind. United States troops on Wake Island were battling a Japanese landing force and, in the Philippines, losing the fight to save Luzon. In Japan, the Pearl Harbor strike force returned to Hiroshima Bay and toasted its sweeping success.

Two dates burn fiercely in the memory of millions of Americans: November 22, 1963, and September 11, 2001. These two tragedies bracket Unafraid, a story grounded in a simple question: What if the fatal bullet fired on that sunny Dallas afternoon had veered three inches off target? Unafraid lays out a compelling answer, rich with the public adventures and private dramas of 20th-century icons—from J. Edgar Hoover to the Beatles—played out on a transformed world stage.

Thanks to the machinations of the right, there is no dirtier word in American politics today than "liberal". Yet public-opinion polls consistently show that the majority of Americans hold liberal views on everything from health care to foreign policy.

From the moment one of his sources takes a dive off a downtown skyscraper, a newspaper columnist is plunged into a harrowing maze of murder, intrigue, and secrets that powerful forces intend to keep hidden at all costs. The columnist joins with an aggressive young reporter to see if one explosive story can save his dying newspaper—and much more.

Patrick Henry Hughes was born with a rare genetic disorder that left him without eyes and physically disabled. But he was also blessed with exceptional musical talent, able to play the piano at the age of two. Now, at age 19, he is a nationally known pianist, singer, and trumpeter who has performed at the Kennedy Center. But he's best known for playing in the University of Louisville marching band, while his devoted father pushes him in formation in his wheelchair.

When a frat boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for piracy on the high seas, Lawyer Rep Pennyworth suspects he's being used as an unwitting accomplice in a cheap publicity stunt. Meanwhile, his wife, Melissa, the professor-half of the couple, gets caught in the middle of a conflict between two colleagues which soon escalates into burglary, theft, jury-tampering, forgery of an explosive papal document from World War II - and murder.

A comic vignette in which a carnival barker's valuable watch gets stolen during an illegal poker game. The local sheriff seems in no hurry to apprehend the thief, until a reward is offered.

For Mark Rohr, a decorated Desert Storm vet, the last 10 years have been filled with shady jobs like his current stint as a bouncer at a red-light-district bar in Thailand. When a beautiful and naïve American girl, Robin Antonucci, arrives in Phuket City from the States and hires him to help find her missing brother, Mark sees the chance to make some easy money.

This contemporary puzzle mystery features Rep and Melissa Pennyworth, a bantering, plucky couple. Rep, a trademark and copyright lawyer, has followed Melissa to Milwaukee in her quest for an assistant professorship. Then, on the night before the Army-Navy game, a midshipman is found stark naked and barely alive in a cheap motel near the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

With his heart blown to bits by a staggering loss, Sheriff Zeb Hanks falls into an abyss of drunkenness, hatred, and rage. With the help of Deputy Kate Steele, former sheriff Jake Dablo, medicine man Jimmy Song Bird, and close friend Josh Diamond, Zeb pulls himself back from the edge and turns his rage on the cause of his torment: a Mexican drug and human trafficking cartel.  

The best carnival barker in the business couldn’t have drawn a crowd like the one now gathered around the Ferris wheel on the pier. In one of the cabs, still rocking with the ocean breeze, is a dead man - a bloody knife protruding from his back. Why the notorious gambling boss Jerry McGurn was killed is no mystery. Who did it is. And there’s only one probable witness to the crime.

The expert author of Murderabilia brings a fresh new approach to the irresistible subject of true crime with this statistic-based telling of some of the most notorious murders of all time. Veteran true crime master Harold Schechter presents hundreds of chilling tales of murder and mayhem told...

Welcome, foolish mortals, to Disney Press’ spookiest series yet: Tales from the Haunted Mansion! Based on the attractions from the Disney Parks, each book tells the terrifying tales of some of the Haunted Mansion’s 999 ghosts. Tales from the Haunted Mansion: Volume I: The Fearsome Foursome...

Adopted by the U.S. Navy for issue to all new sailors, A Sailor’s History of the U.S. Navy brings to life the events that have shaped and inspired the navy of today while highlighting the roles of all sailors—from seaman to admiral. Rather than focus entirely upon such naval icons as Stephen Decatur and Chester Nimitz, as most histories do, author Thomas J. Cutler, a retired lieutenant commander and former petty officer second class, brings to the forefront the contributions of enlisted people.

Mexican author Rubirosa is attending a book fair in Tangier when he reconnects with an old acquaintance, a Moroccan artist who asks one favor of his visiting friend: to access the puzzling files on a memory card. It could help fulfill the destiny of his son Abdelkrim. It could also unwittingly draw both men into irreversible events already in motion on distant shores. In America, Abdelkrim, a brilliant aspiring astronaut deemed “too Muslim” for citizenship, has teamed up with an equally gifted young prodigy, a witness to the plight of Syrian refugees.

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

After years of dreams deferred, Josie Ballard’s life is about to change. She and her husband are off to Sorrento for a summer adventure, but on the eve of their departure, Josie discovers his infidelity. Devastated, she leaves her faithless husband, heading for the sun-drenched Italian coast. Alone, future unknown.