Showing results by narrator "A. K. Wilson" in All Categories

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality.

Emerging science is showing that cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart disease and that standard prescriptions for lowering it, such as ineffective low-fat/high-carb diets and serious, side-effect-causing statin drugs, obscure the real causes of heart disease. Even doctors at leading institutions have been misled for years based on creative reporting of research results from pharmaceutical companies intent on supporting the $31-billion-a-year cholesterol-lowering drug industry.

In big stakes bass fishing tournaments, contestants will do anything to win. Maybe that's why there is a corpse floating in Coon Bog. Now it's up to R J Decker, novice private investigator, to find out who was dying to get the biggest fish. Help comes in the unlikely form of Skink, a half-mad hermit with a taste for road kill.

Tourist season is swinging into high gear in Miami. So are the activities of a bizarre terrorist group determined to keep the hapless "snowbirds" away. Armed with bombs, weed, and jumbled credos, they move toward their grand target, the Orange Bowl Parade, with plans to bring Miami and its tourist trade to a halt.

Key West is a smuggler's paradise. All that's needed are the captains to run the contraband, and Breeze Albury is one of the best fishing captains on the Rock. He's in no mood to become the Machine's delivery boy, however. So the Machine sets out to persuade him. It starts by taking away Albury's livelihood and his freedom. But when the Machine threatens Albury's son, the washed-out wharf rat turns into a raging, sea-going vigilante.

A professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, Harry G. Frankfurt penned a surprise smash hit with his New York Times best seller On Bullshit, which insightfully and wittily captured the human capacity for, and tendency toward, BS. Now he examines the other side of the coin with this equally entertaining and provocative follow-up.

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by 'soldierboys'—indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away. Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy—and the genocidal results—are becoming too much to bear.

When Streaker - the first starship designed and crewed by dolphins - discovers a derelict ancient armada with evidence of the first sentient species ever, she sets off a war between dozens of galactic races eager to use the information for their own advancement.

Thirty-eight years ago, Dr. Sarah Halifax earned worldwide fame by deciphering a radio transmission from an unknown intelligence reaching out from deep space. Now 87, Sarah receives news that, at long last, a new signal has been received, and her services are desperately needed once again.

Maybe ninety percent of the population of Dade County, Florida, have emerged unscathed from the devastating hurricane. It's the other ten percent that are causing the trouble. It seems that all the petty crooks and ne'er-do-wells in the south have converged on Dade to reap their ill-gotten gains from the chaos. Honeymooners, Max and Bonnie Lamb attempt to record the goings-on with their video camera—but they soon wish they'd gone to Disney World instead...

For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth?

Earth has been allowed to colonize the planet Garth only because its previous occupants went berserk and wiped out virtually all life there. But now humans, chimps, and their alien allies on Garth are being held hostage in a conflict that could affect the fate of the entire Five Galaxies.

In this vital guide, Beckwith discusses the four keys necessary for successful marketing in the service industry - what he calls the "invisible touch". With real-life examples, he explains strategies for setting the correct price, creating a recognized brand, designing appealing packaging, and building lasting relationships with clients.

Expert satirist Benjamin Cheever, author of Famous After Death, uses his dark sense of humor to deliver another searing look at suburbia. Literary editor Stuart Cross and his wife Andie, a film critic, hire the talented Louise to be nanny to their two young girls. Louise’s perfection, however, begins to irritate the ambitious, but less accomplished Stuart and Andie, and soon the parents’ jealousy gets the better of them.

The debut album from award-winning comedian, K Trevor Wilson.

Richard Bessel, history professor at the University of York, specializes in the social and political history of Nazi Germany. In four compelling essays, he forcefully argues that racism made war inevitable. The Third Reich, led by "[A] band of political gangsters", came to power with a deep ideological commitment to war and racism. As the driving force behind the economics, social policy, and propaganda of Germany, racial hatred was the catalyst that plunged Europe into war.

At a time when many Americans may be seeking alternatives to current health care choices, Dr. Knope offers an option that allows patients to directly contract with healthcare providers for individualized care. Using first-hand accounts and plenty of examples of how concierge medicine works, Knope offers a plan for patients looking to make a change to a medical system that is negotiated between doctor and patient, rather than through insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

The Earth was little more than a memory for them - a memory stretching over time and the black abyss of space; a memory kept alive by the huge, three-dimensional images sent up to save them from the madness of their isolation. Everything had been arranged to protect their bodies and their minds, this family of four, alone on a tiny planet in the outer galaxy. But one day, first insignificantly, then ever more unmistakably, the elaborate machinery began to show flaws.

The Annals, the last and greatest achievement of Tacitus, records the history of the Julio-Claudian emperors from the death of Augustus (A.D. 14) to the reign of Nero (54–68). These are stories of mutiny and murder, of whole armies disappearing beyond the Rhine, of an unstable and gloomy frontier. Tacitus brings us Nero himself, whose reign saw the burning of Rome and the mass slaughter of Christians, and whose vices still captivate and startle us with their imagination and cruelty.

Winesburg, Ohio is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a cycle of short stories concerning life in a small town at the end of the nineteenth century. In the perfectly imagined world of Winesburg, an archetypal small American town, Anderson reveals the hidden passions that turn ordinary lives into fonts of unforgettable emotions. Played out against a deceptively placid backdrop, Anderson's loosely connected stories coalesce, like chapters, into a powerful novel of love and loss.