Showing results by narrator "Peter Berkrot" in All Categories

With his trademark rock 'n' roll hair and snakeskin spandex pants, plus a hot rod and a Harley, Lüc Carl fit the part as a bar manager based in New York City's gritty Lower East Side. And life was good for this Omaha, Nebraska, transplant-a talented drummer who originally moved to the big city to pursue his rock 'n' roll dreams-until, suddenly, it wasn't. Fast forward through seven years of working long hours, binging on late-night Chinese food, and drinking excessively; life had found Lüc 40 pounds overweight and completely out of shape.

Between the end of his marriage and the excessive force complaints against him, Detective Sergeant Mickey Dolan is running out of chances. When a powerful and connected city councilman reports that his wife and two daughters have disappeared, Dolan is assigned the case - knowing full well that his career is riding on the outcome.

Miro Basinas is an experimental botanist who sells his rarefied product to a discerning clientele. Only Miro's not growing heirloom tomatoes or making organic wine - he's growing weed. And when Miro hits the big time by winning Amsterdam's famed Cannabis Cup, cannasseurs and ganjaficionados aren't the only people who want a piece of him and his mind-blowing pot that tastes like mangoes.

Gavin Greene is a hopeless romantic. He’s also a professional one: He writes the wedding column for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, covering spectacular parties from coast to coast. But there’s a thin line between being a hotshot reporter on assignment and being a single guy alone on a Saturday night at someone else’s wedding. Everything changes on New Year’s Eve when Gavin meets Melinda, a travel writer with enchanting dimples....

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

The Addisons - Julia and Tonio, 10-year-old Dewey, and derelict Uncle Robbie - are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from yet another trip to rehab. When a terrifying blizzard strikes outside the town of Good Night, Idaho, they seek refuge in the town at the Travelers Rest, a formerly opulent but now crumbling and eerie hotel where the physical laws of the universe are bent.

In Superman Is Jewish? Harry Brod reveals the links between Jews and superheroes in a penetrating investigation of iconic comic book figures. He describes how the role of each hero reflects the evolution of the Jewish place in American culture - an alien in a foreign land, like Superman; a figure plagued by guilt for not having saved his family, like Spider-Man; outsiders persecuted for being different (X-Men); a nice, smart guy afraid people won't like him when he's angry (the Hulk).

When Jake Dent's dreams of baseball glory fell apart in a drunk-driving incident, his marriage did, too. He's become an avid doomsday prepper, raising his diabetic son, Andy, to be ready for any sudden catastrophe.

You have been awakened. Floppy disk inserted, computer turned on, a whirring, and then this sentence, followed by a blinking cursor. So begins Suspended, the first computer game to obsess seven-year-old Michael, to worm into his head and change his sense of reality. Thirty years later he will write: "Computer games have taught me the things you can't learn from people." Gamelife is the memoir of a childhood transformed by technology.

Former Wall Street whiz and current convict Mickey Steinberg is nearing the end of his three-year sentence at Yankton - the cushy country club prison where he's enjoyed celebrity status - and he's ready to get out and get back on top. He doesn't have the resources he once did, but he's already hatched a new plan to sell a forgery of a stolen Van Gogh painting through the shady underground art market. He and his new partner, the smooth-talking Paul Reece, have a mark in mind: The sleazy con-man art dealer who swooped in on Mickey's beloved ex-wife after he was locked up. But with his old partner, Jack Grass, hell-bent on revenge and his pre-prison life closed to him, it won't be easy.

Benjamin Wilder grew up with sparse shelter, infested provisions, and constant abuse dealt to him by his stepfather, Jessup - aka the Rabid Dog. Without a sober mother to defend him from the Rabid Dog's wrath, Ben finds reprieve and adventure in a club of misfit boys called the Black Machetes. But the world as Ben knows it comes to an end when he witnesses an act so psychologically appalling that it forces him to run for his life. He travels as far away as he can until fate steps in and guides him to a small town.

Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens just lost his first election in 17 years. Maybe folks in the Arizona Territory were ready for a change…and then again, maybe Stringer ought to go have a look-see. The trouble is, Perry's vanished and everyone who knew him is either dead or vanished too. But when hot lead and hard knuckles start flying, Stringer's belt-buckle deep in ghostly mystery and willing women. And even if the ghosts may be hokum, the women are flesh-and-blood beauties!

In a climate of culture wars and tremendous economic uncertainty, America is often reduced to a simplistic schism between red states and blue states. In response to that oversimplification, journalist Dante Chinni teamed up with political geographer James Gimpel to launch the Patchwork Nation project, using on-the-ground reporting and statistical analysis to get past generalizations and probe American communities in depth.

What can you get with 25 dollars and a dream? Adam Shepard graduated from college feeling disillusioned by the apathy around him and was then incensed after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's famous work Nickel and Dimed- a book that gave him a feeling of hopelessness about the working class in America. He set out to disprove Ehrenreich's theory-the notion that those who start at the bottom stay at the bottom-by making something out of nothing to achieve the American Dream.

High season is coming to an end, and fishing guide Jake Trent suddenly has some time on his hands. As the ex-lawyer ponders rekindling his romance with park ranger Noelle Klimpton, a surprise call from a long-lost love lights up his phone.

It's been years since law school graduation, when Jake last saw Divya Navaysam. Now a DC lobbyist, Divya wants Jake to come to Washington for a consulting job - immediately.

Sepp Gregory, a reality-TV hunk and one of People magazine's "sexiest men alive", is on tour to promote his debut novel. Not that Sepp's actually read the book - he doesn't have to. He lived it! And everyone just wants him to take his shirt off. The book has hit the best-seller list and is even getting rave reviews from serious critics. Aside from Harriet Post, that is. One of the blogosphere's most respected literary minds, Harriet fears that the novel's reception means the end of civilization is upon us.

They say Judge Roy Bean's been up to some legal tomfoolery again. And it's MacKail's job to get the scoop on the infamous "hanging judge." But someone is out to stop Stringer…dead.

In the summer of 2012, in the dead of night, three peace activists penetrated the exterior of Y-12 in Tennessee, supposedly one of the most secure nuclear-weapons facilities in the United States. A drifter, an 82-year-old nun, and a house painter. And if they had been terrorists armed with explosives, intent on mass destruction? That nightmare scenario underlies the government’s response to the intrusion.

A loving couple - each hiding under an assumed identity unbeknownst to the other - finds their peaceful Southern California life shattered by their secret pasts as they dodge pursuers on both sides of the law.

A satirical tall tale presented as the drug and alcohol fuelled conversation of two old friends getting reacquainted over one night. It's also a boy-meets-girl story of the worst kind and a time-travel story about a future where the world is ruled by robots and humans are vermin. When timelines cross, the world as we know it bends.