Showing results by narrator "Shawn Compton" in All Categories

For over 100 cycles, the Marshals of Rhea have defended their strongholds against the wastelands’ many dangers, from vicious raiders to mechanical beasts. Anticipation is high as they gather for a major hunting expedition. So when disaster strikes and House Omega is left leaderless, it falls to no-nonsense Head Cook Xanthe to investigate. She’s not alone, however, and is aided by an unlikely group of individuals - including a haughty young noblewoman, a world-weary Armorer, a fastidious bodyguard, and a whimsical assassin.

A photo in the New York Times on June 10, 1942 depicted a naval officer, John Duncan Bulkeley, and his wife in the back of a car as they were being treated to a New York ticker tape parade. Hundreds of thousands of people were cheering him in a hero's welcome. The thirty-year-old Bulkeley was back from the Philippines, where he had pulled off one of the most spectacular rescues in United States naval history by taking General Douglas MacArthur out of the besieged islands aboard a PT boat.

Authors Imran Rashid and Soren Kenner have sparked an international debate by revealing the "mind hacks" Facebook, Apple, Google, and Instagram use to get you and your children hooked on their products. In Offline, they deliver an eye-opening, research-based journey into the world of tech giants, smartphones, social engineering, and subconscious manipulation. This provocative work reveals how digital devices change individuals and communities for better and worse. 

A strange, foreign world. Mysterious judges with capricious rules. Thousands of gamers find themselves split into factions and pitted against each other at the whim of an unknown higher power, with no idea how they got there or why they were chosen. Dying in this world hurts, but it's not the end: dead players always respawn to fight again.

Douglas Webster was a young pilot from Ohio, newly married and with 17 combat missions under his belt. On December 5, 1965 he strapped into an A-4 Skyhawk bomber for a routine weapons loading drill and simulated mission. After mishandling the maneuver, the plane and its pilot sunk to the bottom of the South China Sea, along with a live B43 one-megaton thermonuclear bomb. A cover-up mission began.

A Devastating Plan. The Undead Rising. Worlds Ending. I’d barely had time to recover from Elsbeth Wyght’s vicious game when the call from Detective Haskins came. This time a bank robbery with a difference... and of course nothing as it seemed. With this turn of events I found myself thrust onto a shadowy trail that would lead me back to the asylum of my deepest nightmares and a desperate hunt for the truth amid a growing, cataclysmic danger.

Knowledge was never truly lost—only forgotten. When Syntech prepares to activate its next-generation AI system, NEXUS, strange anomalies begin surfacing across the globe. Signals that shouldn’t exist. Data that reads like memory. Shadows that move before the machine ever powers on.

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans.

The Empire is in danger, with a weak sybarite on the throne and rebellion rising in outlying regions of the Galaxy and on Earth itself. Then the Emperor is assassinated, and General Ivar Brady-Schiovana is forced to declare himself Emperor. But hope appears in the persons of two men and a woman who are rumored to be legendary heroes.

Afterwards, Basil Castellan was always certain that it had all begun the day he'd been rescued by the dragon. Oh, it hadn't been a real dragon, of course, or so he hastily assured everyone to whom he told the story. Only...it had been a real dragon....The Empire had preserved peace and order throughout human-inhabited space, but it had grown weak with the passing of the centuries, and now the self styled New Humans were rising in open rebellion, striving to seize control and impose their fanatical grand design on all humans everywhere.

The Freedom Shield brings together stories of veterans of the 191st Assault Helicopter Company, who were tasked with carrying troops into battle, attacking enemy positions, and evacuating the wounded in their UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" helicopters. The unit was assembled from a hodgepodge of hand-me-down aircraft, used equipment, and overlooked personnel-its appearance belied the invaluable work the crews of the 191st would undertake during the Vietnam War.

Echo has landed on his feet after finding himself in a mysterious other world with tens of thousands of gamers, and forms a close-knit unit of people like him. Echo's fighters quickly level up and get ahead of everyone else. But much remains unclear. Where is he, and what is this world? Who are the mysterious "arbiters" enforcing the rules of the game? What role does the local population play in all this? How deep can he delve into the underground realm full of unspeakable monsters? Complicating matters, the rules of the game suddenly start to change.

Nothing is at all what it seems, and for four strangers, they'll have to discover why before they're driven over the edge of madness. Within them are the keys to free themselves. They'll need to traverse a landscape of horrors and fettered secrets. Unknown to these prisoners, another four desperately hunt for their own freedom - a freedom denied them by the tormenting existence of a monster. They will have to rely on all of their talents and each other to defeat the beast.

After months on the run for an assassination they call justice, David Shaw and Natalie Hale have built a new life in the shadows. But when a hit squad tracks them down in the Caribbean, it's clear their enemies aren't done with them yet. Someone with deep connections wants them dead—someone with the power to erase them for good. That someone is Connor Roark. A dirty CIA officer with everything to lose, Roark has spent years operating in the darkest corners of international crime. Now, with his illicit enterprise crumbling, he's tying up loose ends. 

For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit.

With a new century and a new enemy came a new kind of war: low intensity and civilian-dominated, blending austere rural and dense urban environments alike. Into this new kind of war, the American military launched two invasions against terrorist networks and military rivals, relying on airpower—close air support (CAS)—at a scale never before seen.

A homeland security agent is found dead. Shocking evidence reveals the cause of death is the simultaneous collapse of the man's blood vessels. When a second body sharing the same gruesome symptoms is found, the hunt is on for a frightening new kind of killer. A vicious assault on his leading genetics researcher puts Dr. Ronni Saar, the CEO of Double N, and his friend Gadi, a former military police investigator, on the trail of a sophisticated killer. The deeper Gadi digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes.

After repelling invaders in the south, President Latham and the newly formed government direct attention toward enemies in the north. As war-torn survivors cling to life, Will and Isabella are assigned to an Army cavalry unit tasked with a special mission. With the aid of new friends from Evening Shade, Missouri, they battle to save the country from Dempsey and his sinister forces bent on total control. Torn between protecting family and defending the nation, Will makes agonizing choices that place him in the center of the war and the fight of his life.

North Carolina represents a perfect distillation of the promise and peril of modern American democracy: hyperpartisanship, gerrymandering, dissatisfaction with the two-party system, the urban-rural divide—these issues are all brought into sharp relief in the Tar Heel State. For that reason, North Carolina politics and government are increasingly of interest not just to North Carolina citizens but to journalists, political observers, and people across the country. 

The Overdrive Corporation has announced another Selection, the exclusive tryout process for aspiring Fortress Masters. Designing maps for the Mech-battling virtual-reality RPG is Julian's dream come true, but a brutal defeat against superstar sniper called Dynamic has destroyed his confidence. Hoping to find a stronger machine, Julian enters an immensely challenging map that promises ultra-rare Mech frames. During the ill-fated mission, he finally learns what it takes to get better. It's not the strength of the machine that matters most, it's the skill of the pilot.