Showing results by narrator "Jeff Cummings" in All Categories

Baby Boomers are reinventing retirement just as they have so many other aspects of their lives. They will live longer and be healthier than their parents and grandparents, and they plan to remain relevant, be fulfilled, and leave legacies. Many will continue to work well into their 70s and 80s, some because they want to, others because they need to.

A young man falls instantly for a woman he spots at a summer backyard party. He knows nothing about her except that she's wearing a T-shirt of his favorite band but his imagination runs wild with the life he hopes they might share. The young woman ends up changing the course of his life as dramatically as he thought she would upon first sight, but in none of the ways he had hoped.

Sent to live with a wealthy family on a West Indies plantation, Rachel carries with her a past shrouded in mystery. Drawn to her grit and fortitude, charming widower and fanciful inventor Henry is willing to overlook the vague explanations about her history. But after years of marriage, Rachel leaves Henry and their oldest son without explanation and sets off for New York City with their other four children. Is her flight the ultimate act of betrayal or one of extraordinary courage? Using real family letters, Laurel Saville reconstructs the secrets, tensions, and longings surrounding Rachel in this densely layered, poignant novel.

Since Andrew Hudgins was a child, he was a compulsive joke teller, so when he sat down to write about jokes, he found that he was writing about himself — what jokes taught him and mistaught him, how they often delighted him but occasionally made him nervous with their delight in chaos and sometimes anger. Because Hudgins’s father, a West Point graduate, served in the US Air Force, his family moved frequently; he learned to relate to other kids by telling jokes and watching how his classmates responded. And jokes opened him up to the serious, taboo subjects that his family didn’t talk about openly — religion, race, sex, and death. Hudgins tells and analyzes the jokes that explore the contradictions in the Baptist religion he was brought up in, the jokes that told him what his parents would not tell him about sex, and the racist jokes that his uncle loved, his father hated, and his mother, caught in the middle, was ambivalent about. This audiobook is both a memoir and a meditation on jokes and how they educated, delighted, and occasionally horrified him as he grew.

Overcoming Fake Talk explains why we often fail at our most important communications and offers proven advice for turning challenging confrontations into rewarding exchanges that foster collaboration, improve performance, and achieve results. You'll develop an understanding of the skills for holding a REAL conversation, including both the "said" and the "unsaid" elements present in any conversation; discover the framework for preparing and holding difficult yet meaningful conversations; and learn to no longer avoid the tough conversations they need to have.

An attractive sous chef at the famous L’Elfe is murdered and half of the employees are suspect. Lacking confidence in the police to solve the murder, Chef Jean Bouvier seeks a quicker solution. He hires private eyes James Lessor and Skip Moore to go undercover and discreetly investigate his restaurant staff. But their investigation turns up far more than they bargained for. Skip’s girlfriend, Emily, confesses that the murder victim and she had been close friends at one point in their lives and had shared a very dark secret.

John Lincoln needs a hot best seller, and finds his salvation in Amy O’Malley, a recent University of Chicago grad who’s worked on the school’s famous sex survey. With Lincoln’s prodding, Amy writes an erotic thriller that draws on her research experience. Her book indeed opens doors for Lincoln — but not in the way he imagined. Meanwhile, Tony Buford, a “professor of happiness studies” at a local college, gently blackmails him into publishing his fantastically mundane poetry.

Discover Venice through the vibrant and personal observations of Gore Vidal. Listen as he walks the storied streets, recounting the city’s rich history and exploring his own family ties to the area. Filled with insightful impressions of Venice’s culture, fine art, and architecture, this audiobook is an unforgettable adventure by one of America’s most significant writers.

Death seemed to be part of Garrett Wilson's life. Both of his parents had died by the time he was in his early twenties. So friends shrugged when sadly, an infant daughter, and then a son, succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Six years later, after he divorced his wife, Missy, and married another woman, his former spouse became convinced that their child's passing was anything but natural. Was it cold-blooded murder by Garrett, or a quest for revenge by his ex-wife? Missy's own investigation that led to Garrett Wilson's arrest and eventual trial will keep the listener guessing until the final sentences. Havill takes us through each stage of this intricate and chilling story all the way to the courtroom, where the jury's stunning verdict is given.

Two years after the end of World War II, a director sets out to mimic real life by creating a film without a script, where the actors learn the story and their part in it as they go. The tale unfolds of a young couple on the run during the Nazi occupation, but soon the characters they play begin to take on lives of their own. As the lines between fiction and reality blur, the Secret Police become convinced that the director holds information that could compromise the nation’s security, and they decide to interrogate him about his fictional plot.