Showing results by narrator "Robert Fass" in All Categories

They came from one street, but death found them in many places: in a distant jungle, a frozen forest, and trapped in the flaming wreckage of a bomber blown from the sky. One died going over a fence during the greatest paratrooper assault in history. Another fell in the biggest battle of World War II. Yet another, riddled with bullets in an audacious act of heroism during a decisive onslaught a world, and a war, away.

A fascinating and insightful examination of the life and times of the victorious Civil War general who became a controversial American president. In U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bruce Catton explores the life and legacy of one of the nation's greatest and most misunderstood heroes before, during, and after the terrible War Between the States that violently split the country in two.

Haunted by the sudden death of her grown son, Countess Zigana Nadazdy-Hauke is as unhappy as she is elegant. But is she miserable enough to drown herself in the bath? That’s the conventional wisdom in Vienna. But Rheinhardt and Liebermann have another idea after meeting the poor soul’s much younger widower: Oktav Hauke is handsome and dashing, but also callous to the point of pathology, admittedly abusive, in debt up to his ears, and a serial surviving spouse: He’s lost two other rich older wives....

Adam Gorozpe, a respected businessman in Mexico, has a life so perfect that he might as well be his namesake in the Garden of Eden - but there are snakes in this Eden too. For one thing, Adam's wife, Priscila, has fallen in love with the brash director of national security - also named Adam. Another unlikely snake is the little Boy-God who's started preaching in the street wearing a white tunic and stick-on wings, inspiring Adam's brother-in-law to give up his job to follow this junior deity and implore Adam to do the same.

One day Arthur Friedland piles his three sons into the car and drives them to see the Great Lindemann, Master of Hypnosis. Protesting that he doesn't believe in magic even as he is led onto the stage, Arthur nevertheless experiences something. Later that night, while his family sleeps, he takes his passport, empties all the money from his bank account, and vanishes. In time, still absent from his family, he begins to publish novels and becomes an internationally renowned author.

1943. The supernatural alchemy for the ultimate weapon, encoded in an ancient biblical text, has fallen into the hands of the most ruthless secret society known to man---the Nazi SS. Present Day. Dishonorably discharged from the armed forces after the events of The Promised War, Sam Deker is trying to build a new life in Los Angeles.

When the celebrated Russian-born architect Roman Guttman is injured in a bus bombing, his perceptions become heightened and disturbed, leading him on an ill-advised journey into Palestinian territory. His odyssey alternates with the bittersweet diary of his teenage daughter Anyusha - on her own perilous path - and the startlingly alive observations of Amir, the young Palestinian who pushed the button and is now damned to watch the havoc he has wrought from a shaky beyond.

Brooke Grant has been waging war against terrorism since her parents were murdered during 9/11, keenly aware that violence transcends borders. But after a coordinated attack on the president at a Washington power broker's funeral, she realizes that the enemy is closer than she'd ever imagined, hiding in plain sight. The Falcon has gained a weapon no terrorist has ever wielded before: An American-born traitor burrowed inside the US Government itself. Major Grant's deadly chess match with the Falcon turns personal when he issues a fatwa against her and those she loves.

The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history

The banners waved, the crowd cheered, the reporters rushed toward the candidate as he made his way to the speaker's platform. And then a shot rang out. The candidate clutched at his chest, screamed, and fell dead. It was a pretty kettle of fish for Tim Corrigan, the crime solver with the eye patch and the stainless-steel nervous system. The suspects included the candidate's voluptuous widow, his handsome bodyguard, and a breathtaking young thing with every reason to want the candidate dead.

Jimmy Cusack is the tough kid from a blue-collar neighborhood who made good on Wall Street. Well, almost. After a sterling start to his career, things have soured. His hedge fund has collapsed. The bank is foreclosing on his condominium. And his wife is three months pregnant. When Cusack takes a "must-have" job with Leeser Capital, a fund impervious to the capital-market woes, his real troubles begin. Forget Bernie Madoff or Gordon Gekko - there's a new villain on Wall Street, and his name is Cyrus Leeser.

Ida Rosenkranz is top diva at the Vienna Opera, but she’s gone silent for good after an apparent laudanum overdose. Learning of her professional rivalries and her scandalous affairs with older men, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann suspect foul play instead. Their investigation leads them into dark and dangerous conflicts with Gustav Mahler, the opera’s imperious director, who is himself the target of a poison pen campaign, and Karl Lueger, Vienna’s mayor.

When mere accusation takes the place of evidence, freedom is in peril. What happens after the murder is the story of what Johnny Shinn—late of Army Intelligence and veteran of two wars—in spite of himself, does about it. The tense lynch trial that is the focus of the action is really the trial of Johnny Shinn as an American.

In early 1939, few Americans were thinking about the darkening storm clouds over Europe. Nor did they have much sympathy for the growing number of Jewish families that were increasingly threatened and brutalized by Adolf Hitler's policies in Germany and Austria. But one ordinary American couple decided that something had to be done. Despite overwhelming obstacles - both in Europe and in the United States - Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus made a bold and unprecedented decision to travel into Nazi Germany in an effort to save a group of Jewish children.

In a small town in the American South, it is night in the middle of the 20th century. Carter, a high-school teacher and football coach in the newly desegregated schools, is awaiting news of two of his students who have been in a serious altercation. Outside the building where Carter has kept his vigil, a crowd of townspeople have also gathered to keep watch. Carter must choose how much he wants to participate in the spectacle and how much he can afford to keep his distance.

"I glanced out the window as my train pulled into the station and saw the girl who killed my son." So begins Josh Rolnick's powerful debut collection of eight stories, which utilizes a richly focused narrative style accenting the unavoidable tragedies of life while revealing the grace and dignity with which people learn to deal with them. The stories - four set in New Jersey and four in New York - span the wide geographic tapestry of the area and demonstrate the interconnectedness of both the neighboring states and the residents who inhabit them.

Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.

When Tess Devlin runs into her ex-husband, Nick, on a Boston sidewalk, she's furious at him for pretending he doesn't know her. She calls his cell to have it out with him only to discover that he's in New Hampshire with his current girlfriend. But if Nick's in New Hampshire...who did she encounter on the street?

During the harshest year of the Great Depression, Lorena Hickok, a top woman news reporter of the day and intimate friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, was hired by FDR’s right-hand man Harry Hopkins to embark upon a grueling journey to the hardest-hit areas of the country to report back on the degree of devastation. Distinguished historian Michael Golay draws on a trove of original sources - including the moving, remarkably intimate, almost daily letters between Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt - as he re-creates that extraordinary journey.

History has not been kind to Jefferson Davis. Many Americans of his own time and in later generations considered him an incompetent leader, not to mention a traitor. Not so, argues James M. McPherson. In Embattled Rebel, McPherson shows us that Davis might have been on the wrong side of history, but that it is too easy to diminish him because of his cause’s failure. Gravely ill throughout much of the Civil War, Davis nevertheless shaped and articulated the principal policy of the Confederacy—the quest for independent nationhood—with clarity and force.