Showing results by narrator "Rob Shapiro" in All Categories

"Imagine if a Martian showed up, all big ears and big nose like a child’s drawing, and he asked to be baptized. How would you react?" Pope Francis posed that question - without insisting on an answer! - to provoke deeper reflection about inclusiveness and diversity in the Church. But it's not the first time that question has been asked.

Joel Simon, who in nearly two decades at the Committee to Protect Journalists has worked on dozens of hostages cases, delves into the heated hostage policy debate. We Want to Negotiate is an exploration of the ethical, legal, and strategic considerations of a bedeviling question: Should governments pay ransom to terrorists?

Some stories are all about the crime. These stories are about the maelstrom of what happens afterward. A hard-bitten crew of professional thieves pull of the score of their lives, coming away with millions in cash, enough to change their lives, make new identities, start fresh. But that's when the real trouble begins. In this linked anthology, we follow each member of the crew of culprits after the heist and watch as this perfect score ends up a perfect nightmare.

A woman in her forties is a victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market. Her body lies nameless in a hospital morgue. She had apparently worked as a cleaning woman at a bakery, but there is no record of her employment. When a Jerusalem daily accuses the bakery of "gross negligence and inhumanity toward an employee," the bakery's owner, overwhelmed by guilt, entrusts the task of identifying and burying the victim to a human resources man. He's at first reluctant to take on the job, but as the facts of the woman's life take shape—she was an engineer from the former Soviet Union.

After twenty-two years together, Danielle and Alex are getting a divorce. Once fiercely in love, they can barely stand the sound of each other’s voice. Instead of shuttling the kids between two broken homes, Alex and Dani decide to share a nesting apartment while swapping days with their two teenage boys at the family home. In the apartment, Dani and Alex, on their own, begin to reflect on the last two decades—why they fell in love and why the marriage fell, spectacularly, apart.

Once a year, a road appears in the woods at midnight and the ghost of Lucy Gallows beckons, inviting those who are brave enough to play her game. If you win, you escape with your life. But if you lose...It's almost a year since Becca went missing. Everyone else has given up searching for her, but her sister, Sara, knows she disappeared while looking for Lucy Gallows. Determined to find her, Sara and her closest friends enter the woods. But something more sinister than ghosts lurks on the road and not everyone will survive.

A chill inducing and masterful collection of vampire tales, culled from the dark recesses of the nefarious and world renowned Vampires Archives. Coffins, the third volume in the mass market series, contains some of the best of the best of vampire fiction. Including Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Edgar Allan Poe, and F. Paul Wilson, it takes its listeners deep inside the crypts of the living dead, in all their supernatural splendor.

It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto on the state of American work, historians of technology Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell argue that our way of thinking about and pursuing innovation has made us poorer, less safe, and — ironically — less innovative. Drawing on years of original research and reporting, The Innovation Delusion shows how the ideology of change for its own sake has proved a disaster.

In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world’s most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional.

Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers.

I have limits. Rules. No attachments allowed, because I don't love. But, with her smart mouth and quick banter, my office manager creeps past my defenses.

Goldblum has become one of Hollywood’s most enduring actors, someone who only seems to grow more famous, more heralded, more beloved through the decades, even though he’s always followed his own, strange muse. The guy primarily plays jazz music these days, but is more famous than ever. Actor, pianist, husband, father, style icon, meme. Goldblum contains multitudes, but why? What does he mean?

All is lost. All. I don't recognize myself in the mirror anymore. My thoughts are filled with hatred and dripping with rage. I've lost my soul. She took it to the depths of hell with her and haunts me with images of what could have been. Sixty lives are mine to take. Sixty lives stand in the way of my vengeance. Sixty lives, plus one more. Mine. When the last drop of blood falls - mine will be spilled.

General George Patton needed a miracle. In December 1944, the Allies found themselves stuck. Rain had plagued the troops daily since September, turning roads into rivers of muck, slowing trucks and tanks to a crawl. A thick ceiling of clouds had grounded American warplanes, allowing the Germans to reinforce. The sprint to Berlin had become a muddy, bloody stalemate, costing thousands of American lives. Patton seethed, desperate for some change, any change, in the weather.

The Shibumi Strategy is a little book about a big breakthrough. It tells the story of a hardworking family man who finds himself in crisis when his company closes. Through his struggle, and guidance from unlikely sources, he learns subtle lessons in the form of "personal zen" principles, coming to understand that it is often the involuntary challenge, the setbacks, that harbor the power to transform. When approached as an opportunity - no easy task when simple survival is the first order of business - unforeseen trials can sometimes result in an altogether new lease on life.

It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolf (Rudi) Vrba has made up his mind. After barely surviving nearly two years in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, he knows he must escape. Even if death is more likely. Rudi has learned the terrible secret hidden behind the heavily guarded fences of concentration camps across Nazi-occupied Europe: the methodical mass killing of Jewish prisoners. As trains full of people arrive daily, Rudi knows that the murders won’t stop until he reveals the truth to the world―and that each day that passes means more lives are lost.

Former US Air Force officer Nick Flynn joined the clandestine Quartet Directorate to continue its long-standing mission: to act decisively against serious threats to the free world. And with the backing of Russia’s authoritarian president, no threat is more deadly than that of Pavel Voronin and his mercenary Raven Syndicate. Twice they have almost succeeded in bringing the United States to its knees, only to be stopped at the last moment by Flynn and his team of highly trained operatives.

Julie Jones has left her suffocating marriage. With her teenage daughter, Jess, she’s starting over. Their new house in Oceanside is the first step toward a new life. Even if it does come with the unexpected. The previous owners, a pastor and his wife, have left something - or rather someone - behind. Tom Dean has a bitter hatred for the father who considers him a lost cause, and for the woman who’s moved into their family’s house. The only home he’s ever known. He’s never going to leave. She thinks he’ll be gone in three days, but Tom has the perfect plan.

After conquering a life-threatening disease, Dr. Robert Zembroski challenged himself to thrive in the wake of devastating illness. Now in Rebuild, he offers a comprehensive plan developed from years of both personal and professional experience. As Dr. Z says, “What I did for myself, and my patients, this book can do for you.” Rebuild provides simple yet proven guidelines to ensure that what you eat and how you exercise and manage other aspects of your lifestyle contribute to your personal recovery and the level of health you want to achieve.

Bear is leather and lawless. Thia is prim and proper. It will never work between them. It's a lie they almost believe.