Showing results by narrator "Kevin T Collins" in All Categories

Michael Ruhlman, author of best-selling books about professional cooking and chefs and best-selling cookbooks with such chefs as Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, and Michael Symon, turns his reporter's eye and engaging style on himself to answer the question "how on earth did I get here?" In an unlikely and unplanned series of chance connections, and work often motivated primarily by fear of poverty, he managed to carve a unique place for himself in the increasingly obsessive world of restaurants, chefs, and writers.

Rafe Montfort was a decorated Green Beret, the best of the best, until a disastrous mission and an unforgivable betrayal destroyed his life. Now this deadly soldier has returned to the sultry Georgia swamps to reunite with his brothers and take back all he lost. But Juliet must never know the truth behind what he's done...or the dangerous secret that threatens to take him from her forever.

Luka's carefree existence as the spoiled son of a minor noble ended the day his family was arrested and imprisoned in the Eyeless Tower. His father, a political rival to the praetor of Camdon, would never live to see freedom again. Luka should have joined his father on the scaffold but fate - or the schemes of men - intervened. Escape came. Now Luka has a chance to thwart his persecutors and avenge his family. Beginning life again in a distant province, he takes a new name - Rideon

When Rideon's scheme to rescue his brother goes horribly wrong, he forms a new plan - one that turns former allies into foes. Rebelling against the rule of the cunning thief king, he steals the dreaded Thief's Blade and leads a dangerous faction of the guild on a new mission. But the past isn't done with Rideon. A new opportunity for vengeance beckons. After the ambitious son of a noble offers a tempting deal, a deadly bargain is struck, leading Rideon down a treacherous path.

After losing his brother and being murdered by his enemies, Rideon thought there was nothing left that could hurt him. But he soon discovers life only gets more dangerous after death. Restored by magic, he must trek through a hostile wilderness while stalked by a deranged wild man. His only possessions, a cursed bow and a powerful amulet, prove as treacherous as they are necessary. Driven by the need to find his young brother before their enemies reach the boy first, Rideon must enter dangerous territory and risk the wrath of the ruthless thieves' guild.

The moment Spencer meets Hope the summer before seventh grade, it's...something at first sight. He knows she's special, possibly even magical. The pair become fast friends, climbing trees and planning world travels. After years of being outshone by his older brother and teased because of his Tourette syndrome, Spencer finally feels like he belongs. But as Hope and Spencer get older and life gets messier, the clear label of "friend" gets messier, too.

Sex, drums, and denial; three things that Ryker Jeffries excels at. Ryker buries himself in music and insignificant women, all part of his plan to keep the woman who owns his heart free from his tainted past and his darkest secret. But pretending not to want her has never been easy. Loyalty, honesty, and desire for Ryker; three things that Faith Bishop excels at. Excited about her future, Faith looks forward to finally living life on her terms.

When Jackson McKay and his daughter are kidnapped, their captors demand his research files on a devastating chemical weapon - or they'll kill his little girl. Jackson searches desperately for a way to save his daughter and also protect his country from the terrorists. No risk is too great. His daring escape sets in motion a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Since the founding of the United States, the Barbary pirates of North Africa threatened with impunity American lives, commerce, and honor on the high seas. But in 1815, Commodore Stephen Decatur led a charge to victory. The Second Barbary War, as it became known, helped define American foreign policy and consolidate its naval power. In Decatur's Wake: The Fateful Rivalry Behind the Lightning Defeat of Barbary Terror, Daniel Wattenberg shows us how.

The friendship between the Coleman and Shepherd families is as old and comfortable as the neighboring houses they occupy each summer on Cape Cod. Samuel and Sarah Coleman love those warm months by the water; the evenings spent on their porch, enjoying gin and tonics, good conversation and homemade clam chowder. Here they’ve watched their sons, Isaac and Asa, grow into fine young men, and watched, too, as Nate Shepherd, aching with grief at the loss of his first wife, finally found love again with the much younger Noelle.

San Francisco Bay Area archaeologist Davis Lowry has everything - success, a fascinating profession - but he is troubled by a bout of sleepwalking. For a change of scenery, he travels to York, England, where a bog man has been unearthed. A series of macabre accidents plague the site, and Davis finds himself enmeshed in a modern-day horror with roots in the bloody past.

With a mysterious key in hand and their only friends by their sides, the twins Malwynn and Umaryn race against the Amaranth Empire's invasion. Chased from the capital city of Varrland, branded as criminals for the murder of their traitorous aunt, they begin the trek to the forlorn wilderness of Duulan. They seek a village where their parents had nearly perished decades ago, where an abandoned mine, protected by an army of the dead, conceals the darkest secrets of Elmoryn.

A New York cop goes after an escaped prisoner with murder on his mind. For a hit-and-run with a stolen car, Lenny Cervera bought himself five to 10 in Sing Sing. When his sentence comes down, this two-bit thug vows revenge on everyone who helped put him there. He swears to kill the judge, the district attorney, and the cop who cuffed him: Lieutenant Clancy, the toughest detective in the NYPD.

In his first nine years as a teacher, Brendan Halpin goes from wide-eyed idealist to cynical, heartbroken idealist. Unique among teaching memoirs, Losing My Faculties is not the story of a heroic teacher who transforms the lives of his hardbitten students; rather, it's the inspirational and often unpretty truth about people who choose to get up ridiculously early day after day and year after year to go stand in front of teenagers.

In five years, little green men are going to invade Earth - and the only man who knows is Professor Emil Vlasov. Is Vlasov crazy? Or is something actually watching the Earth... waiting...

Fortress is America's guarantor of freedom, an orbiting arsenal of laser weapons and nuclear missiles. It was considered impregnable - until now. Former CIA officer Tom Kelley is sent to learn the secrets surrounding a dead alien found in Turkey and discovers a maze of lies and treachery that could transform America's shield into an engine of global terror.

After a stint living and working in Korea, Nebraska native Bart Schaneman sets out on a quest to live deliberately and with strength and purpose before returning to the States and figuring out what to do with his life and his writing. The only constant, his copy of The Idiot, Bart meets many eclectic characters along the way, themselves young travelers like him, and together they share adventures and experiences against the breathtaking backdrops of China, Mongolia and Russia.

As a student named Rick Starr experiences elementary school, middle school, and high school, he learns more about gender roles, psychological isolation, bullying, and apathy than about reading, writing, and arithmetic. After suffering through bad teachers, navigating the social ladder, confronting bullies, and completing countless standardized tests, he has a revelation about public school in America: It's comprised of sex, lies, and scantrons.

Dodging secret police on the daily, and haggling prices for dried fruit and vintage leathers in heroin-laced bazaars, My Kazakhy is filled with all the gems you wouldn't expect to find from a queer Latino boy serving in the Peace Corps in a third world, Muslim country.

Brand-new stories by: G. M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcalá, Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta. Early Seattle was a hardscrabble seaport filled with merchant sailors, longshoremen, lumberjacks, rowdy saloons, and a rough-and-tumble police force not immune to corruption and graft.