Showing results by narrator "James Conlan" in All Categories

A young brawler from Montana finds work as a security guard on the railroad. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

Meet Simba II, a playful white Labrador puppy brought home by accident. As he grows into an enormous ninety-pound dog with a huge personality, Simba cements the bond between two families and enriches their lives in countless ways. When the family moves from San Francisco to New York, the author is charged with the ultimate animal rescue−bringing Simba to the family’s new home. He and his best friend, Erick, load Simba into the back of a station wagon and set out on a 3,300-mile once-in-a-lifetime road trip across America.

In the lonely expanse of Northern Australia lies the second biggest national park in the world. It is a place where fire transforms landscapes, floods drown flatlands, and ancient writing haunts cliffs. In this tropical wilderness, ancient fish spit water at passing insects, unnamed waterfalls tumble into vast gorges, and giant crocodiles rule the dark rivers. This is Kakadu National Park - Australia’s natural and cultural treasure.

Uluru is the indigenous Australian name for an enormous rock formation found in central Australia. Made from sandstone, Uluru is a rock monolith or an ‘island mountain’, a formation that geologists refer to as a monadnock. It stands 318 m (986 ft) high and has a circumference of 8 km (5 miles). It is located 335 km (208 mi) south west of the nearest rural centre, the large town of Alice Springs.

The Great Ocean Road extends 400 kilometres, or 248-and-a-half miles, along the southwest coastline of Victoria, which is Australia’s most southern mainland state. It takes the traveller through sandy coastal villages and glitzy holiday towns, from dramatic beach cliff-faces to old-growth rainforests and from surfing havens to waterfalls. To drive the length of it takes about four hours from near Victoria’s capital city of Melbourne to the impressive coastal rock structures known as the Twelve Apostles.

Millions of people appear to be living normal lives yet they are secretly numbing their emotional pain with alcohol, drugs, food, and many other lifestyle addictions. The good news is that there is hope, and author Michael Cartwright knows this firsthand, both personally and professionally. Hooked on drugs and alcohol as a teenager, Cartwright landed in a psychiatric hospital in a catatonic state in his early 20s. Despite completing the typical recovery programs and mandatory counseling, he continued in a downward spiral until he had an epiphany that would ultimately set him free.

In this classic Twain tale, a poor commoner and a young prince each find out how the other half lives. Tom Canty is a young man from a laboring family who bears a striking resemblance to Prince Edward, the son of King Henry VIII and heir to his throne. Tom and Edward meet by chance, and they decide to exchange places briefly as a lark; Edward will get to live as an ordinary boy, and Tom will enjoy the perks of royalty. But the two are separated before they can let everyone in on the joke....

The global story is one that is 7.6 billion authors strong. It is rich and complex, and as of today, it is also perilously close to bringing about the destruction of our planet. Why do we continue to live in a bad story? In his latest work, Moritz Davidesko presents a compelling analysis of human storytelling and explores how that behavior has informed our present understanding of the world. In chronicling our species’ collective powers of narration, Davidesko ushers us from the distant past, to the present state of global affairs—the story of our world as we know it!

After two tours in Vietnam and 25 years as a police officer, Thomas Chisolm is looking forward to a quiet retirement. That hope is quickly shattered when Mai, a ghost from his past, finds him and demands justice for the horrors she suffered during the Vietnam War…horrors Chisolm couldn’t save her from. Now Chisolm must find the man responsible and bring him to justice to repay an old debt and in the hopes of putting his own demons to rest…once and for all.

Paddy Moran, a former cop from Brooklyn, is a newly licensed attorney in Houston with dreams and aspirations to make it big. He survives early rough bumps and ethical challenges. Then, through networking, he lands two high-profile clients. With his brash moxie and brilliant legal strategy, he gets outstanding outcomes that put him on the success trajectory to the upper echelons of the city's divorce bar. But faced with difficult choices in high-stakes litigation, will he balance his thirst for recognition and respect with his sense of right and wrong?

A science fiction masterpiece that will keep you locked in suspense and entertained throughout each chapter until the very end, which leaves you wanting more. Life sometimes reveals secrets that were meant to be buried forever. The old saying is true that the worst things happen when we least expect it. Good can come from the worst things that ever happen to us.

‘Conflict diamonds’ are precious gems that have been sold on the black market to finance violent rebel groups, terrorists or oppressive governments. They almost always originate from poor, underdeveloped countries located on the African continent. It is estimated that conflict diamonds account for up to 15 percent of the world’s traded diamonds.

Do you want to grow your business? Have you struggled to realize the desired outcomes of your strategy? Do you feel that you’re making all the right business moves but are still coming up short? In Outsizing, author Steve Coughran assembles decades of research, hundreds of interviews, and multi-industry consulting experience to identify the strategic factors that dictate the difference between exorbitant success and bankruptcy. This helpful guidebook walks you through crafting and implementing proven strategies to outgrow your limitations to achieve extraordinary results.

Carl Fremdling is a 19th-century romantic living a 21st-century life. His consulting practice evaporating, he faces a bleak old age when a friend finds him a new gig: fly to San Diego to tutor a reclusive businessman on the history of money. He is soon the man's prisoner, threatened with death unless he forges old D-marks bearing Clara Schumann's image. Each night, locked in his room, the engraver confides in the pianist as he plans a daring escape from a captor, whose twisted motives are buried in the wounds of childhood.

With the necessary demise and death of antique cosmologies and traditional religious paradigms dependent on external deities and devils, the modern religious challenge involves two simultaneous sacred endeavors: to eulogize, bury, and grieve the theistic and monotheistic god-images and the religions dependent on them; and, secondly, to bring fresh imagination to the meanings of god and religion, which will satisfy both the modern mind and ancient soul.

This audiobook is for men and women who may not choose a four-year college degree but hope to earn over $40,000/year and find careers not just jobs. An in-person career coach may be the most helpful way to resolve confusion about career choices, but if that's not an option, this book is the next best bet. The conversation starts with eight key strategies for being successful at work. Next up is a practical discussion about how to figure out what career options make the most sense for one's abilities and interests.

Jim Nagle was beset with more problems than any 54-year old investment executive could handle. His ex-wife had her lawyers on him, his estranged son was in jail, and the California State Franchise Board was chasing him for back taxes. It seemed that everyone was against him. The topper of it all was that his business was growing so fast he was mismanaging it. Then, in a single moment of a heartbeat, his life was changed forever. A freak accident thrust Nagle back 145 years in time.

Join Lenny, son Barry, girlfriend Portia, and hacker Emma Meripol as they connect the dots that lead them on a carnage-strewn chase that will set you on edge and keep you guessing to the very end. It begins early one Christmas morning at a local Starbucks as Lenny, an ex-securities trader turned sleuth, watches a curly haired barista add a suspicious packet of white powder to a woman's coffee. And, well, I hate to spoil the fun....

The Beech Tree introduces you to the lives of those who visited the tree and shared their lives, their loves, their hopes and dreams, beneath the tree's dark green canopy...and their curious, inexplicable connection to one another. The listeners are introduced to Johnny and Margo, the first characters to visit the tree, just before Johnny ships off to fight in The Great War in 1918.

Five years ago, Mark Landry retired from an exceptional career in special operations and returned home to suburban Massachusetts with the hopes of starting a new life. He now balances his new role as husband and father with a position in the private security sector - a job that offers plenty of action and more money than he ever imagined. Life is good. That is, until a deadly encounter with mysterious Russian operators in downtown Boston sets off a chilling plot.