Showing results by narrator "Ted Brooks" in All Categories

Once, when young Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his classmates with endless antics, jests, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse: ''Whatever you do or say, wherever you go or stay, whether it's night or day - people will only laugh at you.'' Now, eight centuries later, people everywhere are still laughing at the immortal Mullah Nasruddin, one of the world's most beloved folk characters.

Lische, the second book by Wynn Johnson, reads like a novel but the people we meet and the events that take place were very real. The author relates in detail how his ancestor, Lische, establishes his farm after staking his claim in the wild lands of Kentucky in 1857. He marries his childhood sweetheart, Sally, in 1858 and, almost against his original idea of leading a simple, self-sufficient farming life, becomes the patriarch of a very successful family where their businesses make them very wealthy. 

It is 1953. The Anasazi are in extreme danger deep within the Restricted Area of Mesa Verde. The journal of a past Indian agent is found with entries about the Anasazi and a treasure. Now, treasure hunters threaten to discover and destroy their village. Nothing will get in their way. A spirit, befriended by the Anasazi, asks for Jack Trader's help. He joins forces with Ranger Samantha Baker to stop the threat before it's too late. As a last resort, the Anasazi will take matters into their own hands.

Legends that endured for centuries, endure for a reason. In the wilderness of Southeastern Alaska, the Kushtaka is one such legend. Known as the Land-Otter Man among the Tlingit Indians, the Kushtaka are shape-shifting, time bending, mythical creatures capable of taking your deepest fears and turning them into a nightmarish reality.

Kushtaka or Kooshdakhaa is a Tlingit word meaning “land otter man.” The Kushtaka is on one hand the nemeses of the Tlingit people, yet necessary to their Shamans who play a critical role in the survival of the Tlingits. The Tlingit people are as mysterious in their beliefs as the Kushtaka, making for strange bedfellows.

Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology recounts the rich history of the fossil site that gave the world the first evidence of the extinction of several mammalian species, including the American mastodon. Big Bone Lick has played many roles: nutrient source, hallowed ground, salt mine, health spa, and a rich trove of wonders. Stanley Hedeen presents a comprehensive narrative of Big Bone Lick from its geological formation forward, explaining why the site attracted animals, regional tribespeople, European explorers and scientists, and eventually American pioneers.

Just as the first wave of flying saucer sightings ended in the summer of 1947, the military began a project to investigate those reports. For 22 years, the Air Force attempted to learn what it could about the phenomena they called UFOs. During those years, they investigated more than 12,000 sightings including landings, occupant reports, photographs, radar cases, and intercepts by military jet fighters. In many instances plausible explanations were advanced, but nearly 1,000 sightings were marked as unidentified.

It's 2002 now and Matt's 91. Clay is 52 and his grandson, Elliott is 22. Elliott wants to be a writer and has asked grandpa Matt if he and his private eye exploits would like to be the subject of his first book. Matt agrees and tells Elliott the story of how it all began back in the 1930s. This story starts in 1934 and has Matt telling of his beginnings in the Chicago Police Department, his move to Los Angeles, his beginnings in the Los Angeles Police Department, his first marriage to Stella and life after her death.

G. Scott Graham first started practicing vipassana meditation in 1996. In addition to his daily practice, Scott joined 10-day courses twice each year, whenever possible, alternating between sitting and serving. Scott joined a course on December 11, 2019. In the early hours of Sunday, December 22, 2019, the day Scott's course ended, his husband of 31 years, Brian Stephens, burned to death in a horrific automobile accident. Two months later, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world essentially shut down.

Springville Community Christian Church is nestled in the mountains of North Carolina and is a quiet, Mayberry-esque type of town - that is until a ruthless businessman sets his sights on the town and opens the first bar in the middle of the quiet community. Pastor Daniel Whitefield seeks only to do the will of God. Nothing more, nothing less. 

These are the end times. We hear this sentiment in one way or another from various sources, from the fundamentalist preacher, to the scientist warning us of climate change. This is a time of economic uncertainty, political oppression, and cultural unraveling. Apocalypse, in the ancient world and today, is the experience of disconnection and of unraveling. It is when old gods are dying and the old stories no longer have meaning. 

Rather than as a Falstaffian figure of limited intellect, Edmund Wehrle reveals Babe Ruth as an ambitious, independent operator, one not afraid to challenge baseball’s draconian labor system. To the baseball establishment, Ruth’s immense popularity represented opportunity, but his rebelliousness and potential to overturn the status quo presented a threat. After a decades-long campaign waged by baseball to contain and discredit him, the image of Ruth that baseball perpetuated still informs how many people remember Babe Ruth to this day.

Bucky Veil was a professional baseballer who played the game in the early years of the 20th century, a time when baseball was beginning to evolve into America's national pastime. As a 22-year-old rookie with the 1903 Pittsburg Pirates, he pitched in the first world series of modern major league baseball, thus witnessing firsthand an important milestone in the history of the sport.

This meticulously researched book tells the story of Midwestern agriculture during a period of epochal change in farm technology, farm management, and farm life. The hard work, tight communities, and values that had characterized the family farm were replaced by large corporate enterprises with massive acreages, high-tech methods, and global outlooks. While many decry this change as loss, Nordin and Scott find a net gain. This is their richly detailed account of one of the great transformations in American life. 

Inspired by August Derleth’s seminal book The Wisconsin, Richard D. Cornell traveled the Chippewa River from its two sources south of Ashland to where it joins the Mississippi. Over several decades he returned time and again in his red canoe to immerse himself in the stories of the Chippewa River and document its valley, from the Ojibwe and early fur traders and lumbermen to the varied and hopeful communities of today.

When he loses his wife to a drunk driver, Richard Anthony Millay believes there will be no more brightness in his future. He may be right, for it is the darkness of an unrecalled past that pulls him away from everything he thought was real. Moving into the house that his wife had wanted so badly before she died, he soon comes to discover that it holds dark secrets, secrets that will haunt him in ways he couldn't imagine.

Carson's feud with a local crime reporter continues, and then suddenly the husband of his client is brutally murdered - a husband he's been hired to investigate. Mysterious characters weave a web of blackmail and suspense while leaving Carson with more clients than he can handle. The Memphis police have warned Carson to back off, but an employee of a friend is missing from a murder scene, and he's determined to find her and the killer.

Lizzie Moran is desperate to help her best friend’s husband recover from grief-stricken despair after her friend passes away. But their love was unlike anything Lizzie has ever seen. A love she knows will never happen for her, considering the bad choices she’s made. Jack Clark is ready to take whatever measures necessary to yank his brother out of the abyss he’s fallen into after his wife’s death. And when he meets the lovely Lizzie who has the same goal, he is perfectly willing to put aside their differences, for the sake of his brother.

On a cold winter morning, Jeff Power was lighting a fire in his remote Arizona cabin when he heard a noise, grabbed his rifle, and walked out the front door. Someone in the dark shouted, “Throw up your hands!” Shots rang out from inside and outside the cabin, and when it was all over, Jeff’s sons, Tom and John, emerged to find the sheriff and his two deputies dead and their father mortally wounded. Arizona’s Deadliest Gunfight describes an impoverished family that wanted nothing to do with modern civilization. 

Kay Sullivan Lynch, reinstated to the Chicago Police Department after two years as a widowed mom of four, not only plans to excel on the force, but to show her brothers - who opposed her return to "the job" - that she's up to the challenge. Captain Flynn Dowd, battling demons of his own, empathizes with Kay's struggles - but Sidewalk Santas collecting for the hungry are dropping dead all over Chicago. No apparent motive, no identifiable MO. It's up to Kay and Flynn to stop the "Santa Slayer." As they race against time to stop the killer, Kay's grief-deadened senses awaken to Flynn's overwhelming sexual magnetism.