Showing results by narrator "Gary Dikeos" in All Categories

Latin America has often been condemned to failure. Neither poor enough to evoke Africa’s moral crusade nor as explosively booming as India and China, it has largely been overlooked by the West. Yet this vast continent, home to half a billion people, the world’s largest reserves of arable land, and 8.5 percent of global oil, is busily transforming its political and economic landscape.

In the months before the 2008 financial meltdown, bankers and hedge funds perverted the market to keep their lavish bonuses flowing. Their machinations made the collapse much worse. This Pulitzer Prize-winning series reveals how they did it.

Superheroes soar in this promising debut—and they’re kids! Twelve-year-old Daniel, the new kid in town, soon learns the truth about his nice—but odd—new friends: one can fly, another can turn invisible, yet another controls electricity. Incredible. The superkids use their powers to...

The Rossi family received only a handful of letters after their son shipped out on the supertanker Aurora Victorious. The first dispatches were from Harold himself, describing the blend of tedium and excitement that defined life onboard the ship. The last communication came from the ship's owners: four brief sentences informing them that their son had died and been buried at sea.

A genderless alien from Ellipsia, a planet whose inhabitants have no concept of individuality, comes to Earth on an intergalactic exchange program to learn how to become human. To live here, the traveler must study and understand our inclinations for seeing people as distinct beings - the nature of gender, and at the heart of identity, the word I. At once funny and serious, Journal from Ellipsia offers a starkly objective view on our own humanity.

Ancient legend tells of an army of knights that will remain sleeping until the last days. The knights are waking up. A homeless man is stalked by a pale, wraithlike creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. Maimed animals and a host of suicides cluster around a mountain in Scotland. And deep beneath the cobbled streets of Oxford, a malicious hoard besieges a hidden city. Freya Reynolds is a university student with a touch of OCD and an obsession with myth and folklore.

Considered a master of the short story, Saki was best known for his witty and mischievous stories that satirized the culture and society of Edwardian England. In "The Open Window" his best-known vignette, a teenage girl regales the tale of an eerie family tragedy to a high-strung visitor, who receives something of a shock.

The powerful story of an unlikely friendship and a doctor’s re-education on the battlefields of the Vietnam War. Fresh out of medical school and planning to enter academia, David pragmatically applies to serve in the US Army, thinking he would rather work in a stateside military hospital than get drafted. But when he gets reassigned to Southeast Asia, he suddenly finds himself on a base in Vietnam. He joins a civilian aid mission on a supposedly secure plateau, and spends his days dispensing pills to villagers.

Three against the stars! A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention.... First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets.... The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System.... These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey.

San Francisco jazz pianist Evan Horne takes a gig in Los Angeles, where he’s offered his most unusual job yet. Movie megastar Ryan Stiles hires Evan to teach him to look like he’s playing piano for an upcoming role. Evan stays at Stiles’ lush Malibu home for the tutoring, but things suddenly go wrong for the arrogant, spoiled star. Stiles’ adversarial relationship with the paparazzi explodes when a photographer is killed. Was it an accident, or is Stiles himself a suspect? Evan wants out.

The alien spaceship was unthinkably huge, enormously powerful, apparently irresistible. It came from the void and settled on Earth, striking awe into the hearts of all who saw it. Its mission, however, was not conquest - but a call for help!

Wrecker is an abandoned child for whom life turns around in most unexpected ways. It's June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, Wrecker's birth mother, is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single parent in a city she can barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she's in prison, and Wrecker is left to bounce around in the system before he's shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County, California.

Judy: A Legendary Film Career tells the story of Garland’s movie work in unprecedented detail. Hundreds of never-before-published photos, newly-assembled contemporary reviews, insight from her costars and coworkers, and production histories are provided for each film in which she appeared. Highlighting and complimenting the feature films is a definitive biography; an examination of Judy’s short subjects; details of the movies she did not complete; and an enthralling compendium of film projects for which she was considered or rumored.

Deep beneath the streets of England lies another realm...one few in our modern world know exists. Daniel and Freya, however, know it all too well. Eight years ago, these friends first journeyed through portals into the hidden land of Niðergeard - discovering a city filled with stones, secrets, and sleeping knights that serve to protect the world they call home. But Niðergeard has fallen to dark forces, overrun by its enemies. Gates are being opened between the worlds that should have been kept closed. The battle lines for the war at the end of time have been drawn.

The dark side of humanity is explored in this electrifying science fiction thriller in which an epidemic virus terrorizes the Earth. Causing its inhabitants to strike out on murderous rampages, the virus is caught through conversation and, once contracted, leads its host on a strange journey - into another world where the undead roam the streets of the smallest towns and largest cities, hungry for human flesh.

The juniors at Paloma High School all have their secrets, whether it's the thespian who hides her trust issues onstage, the closeted pansexual who cares only about his drug-dealing profits, or the neurotic genius who's planted the seed of a school scandal. But it's Juniper Kipling who has the furthest to fall. No one would argue that Juniper - obedient daughter, salutatorian, natural beauty, and loyal friend - is anything but perfect.

By 2084, global warming has proven worse than even the worst-case projections of scientists at the turn of the century. No country and no individual has escaped. Through interviews, this book of oral history captures the effects of the Great Warming on various countries and individuals, as reported in the year 2084.