Showing results by narrator "Tom Taylorson" in All Categories

For today's 20-somethings, the possibilities and opportunities are exhilarating, limitless, and sometimes confusing, with no clear-cut paths for the major life choices one must make after college graduation. In this new gift book, inspired by a commencement speech she gave in 2014, former first lady of Massachusetts Ann Romney puts forth eight key life lessons - the pieces of advice she wishes someone had given her when she graduated from college.

When a lanky, unpretentious, incredibly gifted 23-year-old Texan took Moscow by musical storm in 1958, it launched a sensational career that began at the age of 13 and was to span over four decades. At the height of the Cold War, this friendly, openhearted pianist enchanted the hearts of Americans and Russians alike with playing that was more about "personal communications than exhibitionistic virtuosity".

Edward Darby has everything a man could hope for: meaningful work, a loving wife, and a beloved daughter. With a rising career as a partner at an esteemed gallery, he strives not to let ambition, money, power, and his dark past corrode the sanctuary of his domestic and private life. Influenced by his father, a brilliant Romantics scholar, Edward has always been more of a purist than an opportunist. But when a celebrated artist controlled by her insecurities betrays him, he finds himself unmoored.

Mass violence committed by young people is now an epidemic. The reasons behind this escalating violence and the cultural forces that have impugned a generation is the subject of this important new book. The Spiral Notebook is full of interviews with Generation Z, a group dogged by big pharma and antidepressants and ADHD drugs, by a doomsday/apocalyptic mentality present since birth, and by an entertainment industry that has turned violence into parlor games.

The Barrons like to think of themselves as a typical American family. Never mind the fact that Todd drops bombs on Afghan targets one minute and sits down to dinner with his wife and kids the next. A drone pilot stationed in Nevada, he manages to compartmentalize the conflicting demands of combat and family life - until their son, Max, is diagnosed with autism

Psychologist and police consultant Daniel Rinaldi's new patient - a former Hollywood starlet now married to a ruthless business tycoon - is kidnapped right outside his office. Through a bizarre sequence of events, he's forced to deliver the ransom demand himself, drawing him into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a brilliant, lethal adversary. Complicating things is the victim's own family, whose members have dark secrets of their own and whose loyalties are suspect.

Though they contemplated a final suicide mission of blood, guts, and glory, the Exts knew their warrior super skills were no match for the LAW - Legal Annexation of Worlds - who were sent into space by the mighty Periapt potentates to colonize new populations against the evil, alien Roke. Among the Ext draftees bound for Periapt were Allgrave Burning, his techno-wizard cousin Lod, and beautiful, death-scarred Ghost, all sworn to a greater purpose, destined to fight in a star-torn war like none other.

Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy have brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which Los Angeles may be the worst. Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who - with the help of a couple of very gutsy women - survived being anonymous players in a "live-action" film in which death on-screen meant death in real life. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to escape the post-apocalyptic hell that LA has become. But their survival was not what Panoply Studios CEO Val Margolian had in mind

In the midst of a brutally cold winter in Pittsburgh, Daniel Rinaldi is asked to treat Lyle Barnes, a retired FBI profiler whose terrifying nocturnal visions cause him to wake up screaming. Barnes, after 20 years spent inside the minds of the nation’s worst serial killers, is not only falling apart psychologically but also finds himself the target of an unknown assassin, whose mounting list of victims is paralyzing the city. Hidden for his own protection by his former bureau colleagues, Barnes secretly escapes, drawing Daniel and a joint task force of the FBI and the Pittsburgh Police Department into a desperate manhunt. They must try to find the missing agent before the killer does.

Found as a babe amidst the dead and dying in the wake of a great battle, raised as the beloved son of blacksmith and warrior Hagar Hammersmith, Logan always knew that he was different. And with curses and stares and sometimes with fists, the villagers of Solan Bay did their best to makes sure he would never forget it. But on that day, the day the slavers came to Solan Bay and left him for dead in a pool of his own blood, everything changed. Logan learned the truth of his existence, of his destiny.

A school shooting in snowbound Vermont; an American journalist beheaded in war-torn Syria; a passenger jet exploding in the Thai jungle - everything connects to Kate Swift, CIA assassin turned whistle-blower, on the run from a sinister intelligence unit. With her six-year-old daughter, Suzie, she flees across the Canadian border to begin a perilous journey to Berlin and then Thailand in search of the only man who can keep them alive: Harry Hook, a disgraced ex-CIA case officer living rough in the wilderness, battling the bottle and ghosts from his past.

What shapes our sense of place, our sense of time, and our memory? How is technology changing the way we make sense of the world and of ourselves? Our screens offer us connection, especially now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are certain depths of connection our screens can’t...

Framed as a terrorist, the mild-mannered stay-at-home dad, desperate to find his child, has to evade both law enforcement and killers in the pay of shadowy vulture capitalist Victor Fabian, whose influence reaches deep into the White House. Fabian, battling political enemies and the creeping dementia that has him in its grip, is determined to silence Ash who has linked him to his wife's murder. As he tracks his son through an American heartland scarred by poverty and opioid addiction, Ash has to confront a dark secret from his past even as he fights to save the boy's life.

This bundle includes You Spin Me, Child of Mine, and Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes.

Indomitable marine biologist Chris Black arrives in Florida intending to assist young aquanauts on an internationally funded mission to Calypso, the new undersea laboratory deployed on the edge of a coral reef. But as online trolls jeopardize the integrity of the mission and mysterious attacks suggest that someone would prefer that Calypso never come up for air, Chris is called upon to join the underwater team. Already embattled by financial, political, and scientific skepticism, the mission goes awry when a tropical storm builds and threatens the safety of the scientists onboard.

Chris Black has spent two decades searching for answers deep within the world’s oceans and is no stranger to the risks of undersea life. Alongside Mac Johnson, his childhood friend and former Navy SEAL, Chris has cheated death above and below the ocean’s surface more times than he can count. But nothing has prepared him for the violence he and his team encounter in their own backyard of Carmel-by-the-Sea, violence which will change the team forever.

Giving in to their attraction could fracture their connection with their adult children. But staying apart might mean they miss their last chance at love…

To get a break from my family, I decide to move out and answer an online ad for a roommate. What could go wrong? For starters, my roommate turns out to be…not a dude. A smoking hot finance chick. But this is fine. We can be friends who live together. I just need to ignore the simmering lust that clouds my vision.

I am tired of people asking me how hard it is to be a woman in engineering. My career is the least of my worries. Dealing with my family and personal relationships? That's the hard part. I proposition a hottie, just to tune it all out for a bit. The fling blows my mind, but leaves me with unexpected consequences. By the time I meet the guy again, he's a different person, and I'm carrying a huge secret.

Zack Brady doesn’t do relationships. He does calculations. Her name is Nicole Kennedy. She’s loud and crass, and has no time for nonsense. She certainly doesn’t have time for a mysterious trench swallowing her yard. To make matters worse, the grouchy engineer who shows up to fix it is the same jerk she’s forced to run beside during the corporate relay race her boss insisted she run.