Showing results by narrator "Gabriel Vaughan" in All Categories

To the untrained eye, Cleopatra Gallier appears to lead a charmed life in Honolulu's paradise. She is impossibly beautiful, clever, wealthy and...trained to kill. When she enters into a love affair with the much younger, irresistibly handsome rogue, Jake Regan, she finds herself colliding with an intricate terrorist plot. Her secret past, like Hawaii's smoldering volcano, is ready to erupt. In the four days leading up to Christmas, two stunning betrayals and a terrorist attack threaten to reduce her and the island she loves to ashes.

A deeply revealing memoir of big wins and hard lessons from a seasoned executive caught smack in the middle of the trillion-dollar soft power struggle pitting China against Hollywood, the NBA, and American business....

Despite their phenomenal decades-long success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one.

Six months have passed since a devastating EMP struck the nation, forcing survivors to adapt to a dangerous new world without power. Now, winter is here. Jack and his companions are surviving at a caravan site in the wilderness. The weather is treacherous. Supplies are dwindling. Hope is running thin. But when Jack witnesses a group of helicopters passing over, sparking hopes of salvation, the group must go on a journey to seek out shelter once and for all. But Jack's group isn't the only one seeking shelter.

The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligent races in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encountered the Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy bears of Earth, the league's agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had a simpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas - such as singlehandedly stopping an interstellar war.

The early days and inexorable rise of the young Bernie Sanders, the one-of-a-kind visionary who changed American politics forever, told by a son of the People’s Republic of Burlington, Vermont In this symphonic origin story of an era-defining politician, Dan Chiasson, a Burlington native who...

Conceived in the Gilded Age, the Ferry Building opened in 1898 as San Francisco's portal to the world—the terminus of the transcontinental railway and a showcase of civic ambition. In silent films and World's Fair postcards, nothing said "San Francisco" more than its soaring clock tower. But as acclaimed architectural critic John King recounts, the rise of the automobile and double-deck freeways severed the city from its beloved structure. King's narrative spans the rise and fall and rebirth of the Ferry Building, introducing colorful figures who fought to preserve its character.

1462: an alien who feasts on the suffering of sentient beings dines off the agonies of Vlad the Impaler's twenty-thousand victims near Targoviste, Romania. 1688: a woman is framed for witchcraft and hanged by the neck in Boston. 1965: a toy store that never seems to run out of special toys is suspected of being the location of a temporal portal. 2022: a grandfather, showing his young grandchildren what remains of the Boston of his youth, is shown that portal by his granddaughters. And they're off! Off through the gate that grants wishes, off to deal with time travel.

Hood’s Defeat Near Fox’s Gap is an exceptional analysis of Confederate Brigadier General John Bell Hood’s troop movements during the battle of South Mountain. For the past 160 years, all other authors misplaced Hood’s troop positions on the Fox’s Gap battlefield by approximately a half-mile. The actual location of Hood's attack reconfigures the entire placement of the competing forces in the battle and, thus, the conclusions one makes about the struggle.

Bad Things addresses various philosophical questions about the nature and moral relevance of harm. The most basic question is this: under what conditions does an event harm a given individual? Neil Feit focuses primarily on the metaphysics of harm, and he both defends and extends the counterfactual comparative account of harm. On this account, in its most basic form, an act or event harms an individual provided that she would have been better off if it had not occurred.

In this ultimately deadly chess game stands Fiona, a striking redhead poised to kill Cleopatra Gallier. Cleo, the impossibly beautiful, clever, and wealthy former talk show host is as completely unaware of Fiona's existence as she is of Fiona's vengeful plan to kill her for taking out Fiona's love. The story unfolds in the deserts of Dubai and the beaches and gardens of Honolulu's paradise. Amidst CIA agents and a family that could explode if Cleopatra's deepest secret comes out, Cleo and Fiona finally face each other. But who is Fiona?

Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls "seeking our true home." Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen.

Dying again is not enough. Now Rueben must go to another universe with his greatest enemy. Earth-Z is ground zero for the world destroying virus. Too bad Rueben lives on Earth-A.

Rueben's life couldn't get any worse. The villain he's facing off against seems to know Rueben better than he knows himself. Buzz, Rueben's genius sidekick, has a plan. But it means that Rueben can't use his abilities to get the job done. He has to get it right the first-time round. No dying this time. As the battle rages on, Rueben and his friends are beginning to realize more is at stake than first thought. It's not just this Earth that's in trouble. All the Earths in all of existence are about to crumble. If Rueben can't stop this maniac in time, all human life will be wiped out.

Before the security fence divided them and suicide bombers and airstrikes destroyed their lives, Palestinian Jannah al-Jarbouni and Israeli Efron Oved were friends. After years of separation, Efron, now 22 and an Israeli soldier, finds Jannah being transported from an Israeli jail. He reaches out to win her trust, but with every fiber of Jannah's soul, down to the marrow aching in her bones, she has vowed that the Israelis will pay for killing her family.

It’s July 1946, and after a decade of Depression and war, life in America is returning to normal. But for Charlotte and Mary Oswald, one tumultuous summer will unearth all their secrets and upend their world, once again. Charlotte Oswald’s life is dictated by rules. Where she can go. Whom she can speak to. How she can spend her long, dull summer days. It’s a small, closeted existence, but necessary to protect Charlotte, who has suffered from debilitating fits since childhood.

The Fall brought mankind to its knees. After the world war, anarchy reigned across what was once the United States of America. For nine years, William has lived a quiet life in the West. Lamar Valley in Yellowstone is wild and beautiful, home to wolves, bison, and bears. In a log cabin on the shore of the Lamar River, William has raised his children. When Tarantula spreads further north, the tenuous peace between territories is threatened.

Is it worth losing your soul to save the world? In the sweeping conclusion of the Wrath trilogy, what is left of civilization after The Fall finds itself at war again. New America gathers its defense against the tsar's forces while four heroes embark on a journey more perilous than they ever imagined. Will mankind find a way to end the cycle of violence at last? To do so may cost William, Crystal, and Ryder everything...because evil never surrenders.

There are no holidays in the Abyss. Despite her friends' less-than-enthusiastic reception, Olivia is determined to have a wonderful Christmas - and if she has anything to say about it, Holden will, too. A brilliant idea for the perfect present to remind him of what is important at this time of year opens up more than she bargained for.

Olivia Martin's afterlife was more dangerous and confusing than her life ever was. She thought she was ready to come back, to forget about Holden and to let go of the rage consuming her. Fulfilling her destiny as a guardian was all that mattered - the past could stay hidden in the crevices of her mind. However, when guardians are murdered and the evidence points toward jinn, she has to do something. To save anyone's future, Olivia will have to confront the one person from her past she is terrified to see.