Showing results by narrator "Joel Richards" in All Categories

One November morning, Ben Bailey walks out of his Flagstaff, Arizona, home to retrieve the paper. Instead, he finds Ricky Begay, a young Navajo man, beaten and dying in the newly fallen snow. Unable to forget the incident, especially once he meets Ricky's sister, Shadi, Ben begins to question everything, from his job as a part-time history professor to his fianceé, Sara. When Ben first met Sara, he was mesmerized by her optimism and easy confidence. These days, their relationship only reinforces a loneliness that stretches back to his fractured childhood.

Home to the giant tortoises that gave them their name, the Galapagos Islands lie one thousand kilometres off the coast of mainland Ecuador. The famous group of islands remained untouched by humanity for thousands of years, being only charted in the seventeenth century. Two hundred years later the stunning wildlife provided Charles Darwin with the perfect place to work on his theory of evolution. Darwin’s book ‘The Origin of the Species’ was partially inspired by his trip to the Galapagos.

In Bring Back the Bureaucrats, John J. DiIulio, Jr., one of America's most respected political scientists and an adviser to presidents in both parties, summons the facts and statistics to show us how America's big government actually works and why reforms that include adding a million more people to the federal workforce by 2035 might actually help to slow government's growth while improving its performance.

In the heart of South America lies the Pantanal, the largest freshwater wetland system in the world. An area the size of France, most of the wetlands lie in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Often overshadowed by its more glamorous cousin The Amazon, the Pantanal actually has the greatest concentration of wildlife in the Americas. And environmentalists say it is in just as much ecological danger as any of the world’s rainforests.

Imagine more than a million litres of water dropping each second from cliffs up to 80 metres, or 262 feet, high. Such an image may seem like an impossibility, but such is the majesty of South America’s Iguazu Falls. More expansive than both the Niagara Falls in North America and the Victoria Falls in Africa, The Iguazu Falls is a network of more than 275 falls covering many acres.

The chaos of war is a horrific background for coming of age, a trial by fire testing all who experience it, and changing them forever. Contrary to Government denial during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army regularly sent Special Forces sniper teams into Laos and Cambodia. Their assignments took them deep into enemy territory. Heirs of Honor is the memoir of Lucky, the youngest member of one of those killing teams. A hero worshipping kid awed by the more experienced men around him, he was more than willing to prove himself to them and ignore the damage to his young soul.

This audiobook includes 27 classic and contemporary poems about war and peace, covering glory; soldiers; casualties; futility; and bystanders.

This audiobook includes 29 classic and contemporary poems dealing with working, including factory work; construction; small business; farm; transportation; white collar; writing; teaching; household work; and retirement.

A gang of assassins draw Da Silva into Brazil's rugged interior. George Chaney may have been raised in the roughest neighborhoods of the United States, but he's never been anywhere quite as dangerous as Paraíso. Although booming with petrodollars, this rugged city in the Brazilian wastelands is still a frontier town at heart. On the run from the mob, Chaney comes here in search of sanctuary. He will find that though the city's name means paradise, its reality is much closer to hell.

This audiobook includes 30 classic and contemporary poems dealing with haunting, ghosts, superstition, murder, and death.

A centre for indigenous Peruvians and Bolivians and the second largest lake in South America, Lake Titicaca is probably best known for its spiritual significance to the Incas. It is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world standing almost four thousand metres above sea level and the mysteries in its depths still draw thousands each year to the sacred site.

Hilarious and heartbreaking, profane and profound, It Takes a Worried Man is the true story of a young husband and father whose life is changed forever by his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. Following Brendan Halpin’s cranky, irreverent, and lustful thoughts through the diagnosis and treatment of his wife, Kirsten, It Takes a Worried Man is an unflinching and raw look at how cancer transforms a family. It’s also the funniest book about cancer you’ll ever read.

COVID-19 was not an accident. Its successor, the highly lethal and contagious COVID-23, is not a mutation of COVID-19. China would like us to believe the passage of 19 from animal to human was random and 23 is a natural mutation of 19. The United States wants us to believe both 19 and 23 are weaponized versions of a harmless coronavirus released during a botched Chinese bioweapons experiment. It will be up to Dr. David Aaronson, the new surgeon in the desert town of Fallon, Nevada, to tell the world what really happened.

Just after 4 pm on September 6, 1901, 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz pumped two shots into the chest and abdomen of President William McKinley. Czolgosz had been on a receiving line waiting to shake the president’s hand, his revolver concealed in an oversized bandage covering his right hand and wrist. McKinley had two Secret Service agents by his side, but neither made a move to stop the assailant. After he was apprehended, Czolgosz said simply, “I done my duty.”

Best-selling author David Drake has been creating top-notch military science fiction, space opera, and fantasy novels and stories for decades. In this all-original collection, a stellar line-up of writers pays tribute to Drake with stories as broad in range as his own fiction.

"That's not my fingerprint, your honor", said the defendant, after FBI experts reported a "100-percent identification". They were wrong. It is shocking how often they are. Autopsy of a Crime Lab is the first book to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. In this devastating forensic takedown, noted legal expert Brandon L. Garrett poses the questions that should be asked in courtrooms every day....

Late-1970s Los Angeles was rampant with killers and shady characters, but all the go-getters at Space Matters saw was possibility. Richard Kasparov was handsome and charismatic; his younger associate, Jerry Schneiderman, brilliant and nerdy. When the pair hired a veteran contractor to oversee construction, the space planning firm they operated out of a hip mansion in LA's Miracle Mile district appeared poised to transform the boundless skyline into their jackpot. After the promising team imploded, however, the orderly lines on their blueprints succumbed to treachery and secrets.

Dungeon. Quest. Adventure. A journey into madness. When John Younger answered the Regent's call to find a missing prince, he thought it would be an easy way to make some coin. He was wrong. Thrust into a life-or-death battle with creatures only heard about in stories long since forgotten, John finds himself in a dungeon of elder ones and old gods. As he descends into the heart of darkness, John must use all of his brains and brawn to successfully make it through each floor of the dungeon, while saving others and gaining the favor of those within.

A cruel, hated man collects a fortune, then disappears in the desert. The Texas Rangers think it's murder and put one of their best on the job - but he'll need help. There's evil here that no one suspects.

Original story published in Lariat story magazine - July 1947.