Showing results by narrator "Gary Bennett" in All Categories

It is April 1 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the Chinese blockade to deliver it?

September 1962: On a moonless night over the raging Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles from land, the engines of Flying Tiger flight 923 to Germany burst into flames, one by one. Pilot John Murray didn't have long before the plane crashed headlong into the 20-foot waves at 120 mph. As the four flight attendants donned life vests, collected sharp objects, and explained how to brace for the ferocious impact, 68 passengers clung to their seats. They all expected to die.

It was looking like Lady Luck had quite a grudge against him. In fact, at this point merely crashing the multi-billion-dollar ship he had helped design would have felt like winning the lottery compared to his current dilemma. If only he were so lucky. Things had started off all right - that is, until a freak wormhole unexpectedly swallowed his ship, leaving him stranded on an unknown planet far, far from home.

The Elemental Accords. A tournament that Earth has been chosen to take part in whether they want to or not. As a result, the entire planet is now a giant game. With people gaining access to skills and levels. For most, this is nothing short of a nightmare. For others, it is their chance to grab everything and claim the world as their own. Aurum Lockfeather has been chosen as a champion by one of the many gods taking part in the tournament. First, he just has to survive the week with monsters of all shapes and sizes popping out from every hole in the city.

Hope is much more than wishful thinking. Science tells us that it is the most predictive indicator of well-being in a person's life. Hope is measurable. It is malleable. And it changes lives. In Hope Rising, Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman reveal the latest science of hope using nearly 2,000 published studies, including their own research. Based on their findings, they make an impassioned call for hope to be the focus not only of our personal lives, but of public policy for education, business, social services, and every part of society.

After everything that has happened to him, Zee was looking forward to a little peace and quiet once he and his friends were behind the sheltering walls of Corvin. But, having been branded as one of OVR World Online's Most Wanted, that might have been a pipedream. The moment he shows his face, the gold rush begins, only in this case Zee is the gold.

FUEL YOUR ADRENALINE WITH THE NEXT THREE EXPLOSIVE PROSECUTION FORCE THRILLERS.

Backed by Russian airpower, Syria has begun an operation to push Turkish troops out of Northern Syria. Despite US efforts not to get dragged into the conflict, the US 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines "Lava Dogs", find their hilltop combat outpost encircled and their Kurdish allies under siege. Further west, a Syrian armored advance across the border into Turkey pivots, threatening US troops at the Turkish and NATO airbase of Incirlik. But will Syria be satisfied with reclaiming its northern border region, or is the operation just the first move in a bolder plan to regain lost territories?

In the bleak, not-too-distant future, most people who could fled to the virtual reality OVR World Online. Zachary "Zee" Jones will never be able to afford to become a player of the game. After committing a crime in order to save his mother's life, he was arrested and included in the Inmate Player Program. Even without perception filters to limit his pain, it was better than the alternative. He has the opportunity to earn more money in a five-year sentence then he could have in his entire life as a hospital janitor.

Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson’s beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad.

Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others.

With President Lewis desperate to save his biggest donor's assets and protect his deepest secret, he orders Director of National Intelligence Camille Banks to deploy her secret team to recover the asset. Garrett Knox, along with his hand-picked team members of elite operatives, must attempt the impossible: infiltrate the treacherous Yemeni mountains and bring the asset home alive. Battling hostile terrain and relentless attacks, Knox and company close in on their target only to have the tables flipped on them as a far deadlier plot emerges.

Woods that hide thousands of ferocious beasts in their shadow. A place where adventures, fights, and dangerous secrets await. The desire to reunite his family and a dream so similar to his father's. A teen who hides his secrets, not wanting to become a valuable prize for those who are hungry for profit. What is he willing to do to earn money for his family? Will he be able to risk their lives for their own sake? And will this be enough to cope with all that the Heavens have in store for him?

Silence Jones is the legendary assassin feared by the criminal world, a righteous vigilante backed by a covert group hidden deep within U. S. government. Yet even legends have their beginnings… Silence’s previous world is shattered in a single night—his fiancée murdered and his body destroyed. Left for dead, clinging to life, his brutal revenge leaves a long and bloody trail. But when his employers discover that the people who killed his fiancée have much bigger plans in mind—plans with deadly implications for national security—will Silence be able to refocus his rage?

Remote and hybrid workplaces are here to stay, and they pose formidable obstacles that complicate managing projects and launching new products. Against this backdrop arrives Project Management in the Hybrid Workplace. In his inimitable style, Simon adeptly fuses critical research and concepts from a slew of diverse and seemingly unrelated fields, including Agile software development, human resources, supply-chain management, organizational behavior, cognitive psychology, and labor economics. Brimming with case studies, insights, and practical advice, the book is a tour de force.

Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House - classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe - Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty. Soon after her untimely death in 1965, Jackson’s children discovered a treasure trove of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, many of which are brought together in this remarkable collection.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with classes, magic, and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.

Over the past five years, organizations adopted Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams in droves. Think of COVID-19 as pouring gasoline on the fire. The pandemic didn't start a trend, as much as it accelerated an existing one. Unfortunately, far too many of us mistakenly view these applications as Email 2.0. As a result, we are missing out on extraordinary opportunities to create more collaborative work environments, increase organizational transparency, reduce manual work, make our work lives less stressful, simplify core business processes, and much more.

After a decade of teaching writing using the same methods he'd experienced as a student many years before, writer, editor, and educator John Warner realized he could do better. Drawing on his classroom experience and the most persuasive research in contemporary composition studies, he devised an innovative new framework: a step-by-step method that moves the student through a series of writing problems, an organic, bottom-up writing process that exposes and acculturates them to the ways writers work in the world.

Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted. As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson’s children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother’s papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion.