Showing results by narrator "David Stifel" in All Categories

A gold medal wrestler, Reza's inspiring life celebrates honor, family and freedom. After he leads bloody battles in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and serves in the Air Force, Reza desires a fate beyond the suffocating suppression of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran. On the last night of the 1982 Military World Wrestling Championships, he grips his gold medal, knowing American wrestlers wait minutes away to help him defect.

For 14 years during the golden age of sports, Paul Gallico was one of America's ace sportswriters. He saw them all - the stars and the hams, the immortals and the phonies in boxing, wrestling, baseball, football, golf, tennis, and every other field of muscular endeavor in which men and women try to break hearts and necks for cash or glory. Then in 1937, at the height of his game (and the height of the payroll), Gallico suddenly and famously called it quits and left the New York Daily News.

All credit cards have stopped working. Today. This morning. What cash you have in your wallet is it. ATMs and bank systems are down. You can't get gas, or groceries. Commerce has essentially come to a halt. Such is the backdrop of The Back Door Man. Our society is computer centric. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. We're plugged in. Managing our finances online. Downloading apps for our iPhone. Reading the WSJ on our Kindle. There are things out there on the cutting edge we don't even know we need to fear. The Back Door Man takes us there.

Ricardo Pierce's two young daughters are kidnapped by a man from his past.

Homicide detective Ricardo Pierce suspects that many of the city's missing persons are actually victims of a serial killer. When Pierce goes on a quest to find the killer, he discovers not one, but two monsters stalking the night. Pierce is the right man to stop them, however, the detective has his own demons that he struggles against. Will Pierce stop the night predators that threaten the city or will he ultimately become one himself?

Herschel Cobb's moving account of his relationship with his legendary grandfather reveals a side of Ty Cobb that few people ever saw, that of loving nurturer. A baseball icon and arguably the best player who ever lived, Ty Cobb's infamously cold, competitive nature allowed him to excel on the ball field but undermined his relationship with his children. Devastated by the untimely death of two of his sons, Cobb relished the opportunity to reconnect the broken family ties when young Herschel and his siblings visited him during the summers.

The master of adventure, Edgar Rice Burroughs, tackles the Frankenstein myth. A demented scientist discovers how to create human life - not perfect but improving steadily with each attempt. He is forced to flee to remote Borneo to continue his gruesome experiments; each experiment becomes one of the Monster Men. Add a beautiful young daughter, a scheming criminal as assistant, head hunters, and wild jungle terrain, and you have The Monster Men!

Enala is surrounded, trapped on the blood-soaked sands of Malevolent Cove. Desperate and alone, she faces the sky, watching as the Gold dragons circle. Yet it is not the beasts she fears – but the men and woman encircling her. They promise their protection, but they are only words, and she has already lost everything to betrayal. Swamped by grief, she teeters on the edge of madness. Meanwhile, Eric is close to mastering the curse of his magic. The perilous force writhes within him, desperate for freedom, but he refuses to bend to its will. Instead, he is determined to wield it for good, to right the wrongs of his past.

Expertly weaving a cast of compelling characters with a moody, multilayered plot, Sally Beauman once again shows why she’s the reigning mistress of drama and suspense. Part mystery, part allegory, and part love story, Sextet reveals the yearnings and dangerous desires of the human heart as it hurtles to a stunning climax.

Deep within the volcanic rock of Mt. Kilamanjaro lie the Catacombs, the enormous hidden burial caves of a vanished African society more sophisticated and technologically advanced than ours. A civilization that has left the formula for present-day domination by a world power etched into blood-red diamonds - the rarest gemstones known.

Taking his lead from his subject, Gershom Scholem - the 20th-century thinker who cracked open Jewish theology and history with a radical reading of Kabbalah - Prochnik combines biography and memoir to counter our contemporary political crisis with an original and urgent reimagining of the future of Israel.

Someone is murdering high-ranking Vietnamese government officials, so the head of Saigon's homicide division, Captain Chyang Fang, a troubled Chinese Vietnamese man, is given the task of finding the killer. Hated by almost everyone in Saigon and an outcast in both Chinese and Vietnamese circles, Fang has to rely on his wit, biting sarcasm, and not-so-capable assistant, Sergeant Phan - a man who would rather play on his smartphone than work - to find the killer who leaves toy cobras on the bodies of his victims.

The Three Nations are crumbling. Darkness is gathering. Only one remains to stand against it. Eric stumbles through the wilderness, searching, hunting - desperate for sign of his sister. But the girl is gone, stolen away by the power of the Soul Blade. With each passing hour its hold on her tightens, her spirit fading before the onslaught of its magic. If he cannot save her soon, it will claim her soul. And he will have to kill her.

I am not going to complain to you about my life. We’ve got zombies. They are not the brainless, rotting creatures we’d been led to expect. Unfortunately for us, they’re just as smart as they were before they died, very fast, much stronger than you or me, and possess no internal editor at all. Claws. Did I mention claws? I kill them for a living, but it’s as much a vocation as a freelance career choice. It helps me, helps my neighborhood, and the people I consider to be my family of choice. What’s more?

John Potts Slough, the Union commander at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, lived a life of relentless pursuit for success that entangled him in the turbulent events of mid-nineteenth-century America. As a politician, Slough fought abolitionists in the Ohio legislature and during Kansas Territory's fourth and final constitutional convention. He organized the 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry after the Civil War broke out, eventually leading his men against Confederate forces at the pivotal engagement at Glorieta Pass.

Simmering racial tensions inflamed by discriminatory punitive measures sparked a violent confrontation aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while it was engaged in air strikes off the coast of North Vietnam. The US Navy charged Black sailors with rioting and assaults on White sailors in an incident referred to as a race riot, while totally ignoring violent unprovoked assaults committed by White sailors and Marines.

The story of the man who won the battle of Midway and avenged Pearl Harbor for the United States. During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, US Navy dive bomber pilot Wade McClusky proved himself to be one of the greatest pilots and combat leaders in American history, but his story has never been told - until now.

From the legendary antagonism between Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War to the Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars of the twentieth century, the past is littered with long-term strategic rivalries. History tells us that such enduring rivalries can end in one of three ways: a series of exhausting conflicts in which one side eventually prevails, a peaceful and hopefully orderly transition, or a one-sided collapse. However, in spite of a wealth of historical examples, the future of state rivalries remains a matter of conjecture.

A straightforward and fact-based exploration of how weather happens, how it relates to climate, and how science answers major questions about Earth as a system.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops began firing on Fort Sumter, beginning the bloodiest conflict in American history. Since that time numerous historians have described the attack in many well-regarded books, yet the event still remains overlooked at times in the minds of the public. The Cannons Roar seeks to remedy that. Rather than providing a third-person, after-the-fact description, acclaimed author Bruce Chadwick will tell the story of the attack from the people who were in the thick of it.