Showing results by author "A. Leon" in All Categories

More than a decade since Michael Jackson’s death, his legacy remains complicated and unresolved.

In 1984, as a New York City subway train made its way downtown, a white man named Bernhard Goetz shot four unarmed Black teenagers he believed were going to rob him.

ADHD may be the defining diagnosis of our time. According to the latest data, more than 10 percent of American children (that’s 7.1 million kids) have been diagnosed with ADHD. And the number of stimulant prescriptions for adults in their 30s has shot up nearly threefold since 2012. In recent years, this explosion in demand has combined with other factors to create a widespread stimulant shortage in the US. In the second installment of Backfired, cohosts Leon Neyfakh and Arielle Pardes look at the unintended consequences of the ADHD industry, and trace the surprising path that brought us here.

Murdered spirits find Atlas Bishop wherever he is. By day, he works the streets of Dublin as a Private Detective plagued with anxiety and anger issues, living with his dead mother. By night, he works on behalf of the “Sacred”—angels, saints, and God Himself—binding murdered souls to those who stole their lives so Hell can claim its dues.

From the source, where Assyrian kings had their images carved into stone, McCarron and his small team journeyed through the Turkish mountains, across north-east Syria and into the heart of Iraq. Passing by historic cities like Diyarbakir, Mosul and Baghdad, McCarron kept the company of fishermen and farmers, but also artists, activists and archaeologists who rely on the flow of the river. Occasionally harassed by militias, often helped by soldiers, McCarron rode his luck in areas still troubled by ISIS and relied on the generosity of a network of strangers to reach the Persian Gulf.

They say that by the age of 40 you should have gained the skills and experience to have a better life. But the only thing I've gained is a job promotion to permanent desk jockey until retirement. I thought I escaped my mediocre destiny when I met my husband...until he died on our honeymoon and a series of unfortunate events left me with a strange mark on my body and my husband's corpse stolen right out of the funeral home!

Oregon, summer 1983. A series of mysterious deaths shakes the coastal town of Harmony Bay from its peaceful sleep. Shortly after the death of his wife, Sheriff Cody is called upon to investigate numerous murders which all exhibit strange puncture wounds. Cody and his team expect the murders are committed by a serial killer, but it soon becomes clear something more sinister lurks behind this idyllic town, which becomes his worst nightmare.

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most cataclysmic events in world history, profoundly shaping politics, international relations, social patterns, economics and science in the century that followed. It created long-lasting aftershocks which travelled far beyond its geographical borders. How did it happen? What were the sequence of events that led, following the shocking upheaval of the old Romanov order, to a fierce and violent rivalry between a variety of revolutionary factions and the ultimate victory of the Bolsheviks?

By Its Cover is the much anticipated twenty-third instalment in Donna Leon's bestselling crime series, where Commissario Brunetti is better than ever as he addresses questions of worth and value alongside his ever-faithful team of Ispettore Vianello and Signorina Elettra. When several valuable antiquarian books go missing from a prestigious library in the heart of Venice, Commissario Brunetti is immediately called to the scene.

Vivian Barrera, a professional woman focused on her company's success, doesn't know what to think when her sometimes-lover and long-time business partner Jack hires someone without her permission. The only thing she does know is that she doesn't like the newcomer. April Hawkins is determined to make her new job work. Left as the sole provider for her niece, she just wants to keep her head down and collect her paycheck. That proves to be difficult when one of her bosses seems to hate her and the other seems to like her a little too much.

Blake was searching for simplicity, but fate had other plans. After an unexpected turn of events lands him in the fantastical world of Ylege, he's endowed with extraordinary physical abilities and inherits an unclaimed farmstead at the world's edge. Things seem to be falling into place until he encounters the gorls—beautiful, magical, sentient slimes.

In Uniform Justice, a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. Brunetti's sorrow for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivalled only by his contempt for a community that is more concerned with protecting the reputation of the school, and its privileged students, than with finding the truth.

When one of his wife Paola's students comes to visit him, with a strange and vague interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, Commissario Brunetti thinks little of it, beyond being intrigued and attracted by the girl's intelligence and moral seriousness. But when she is found murdered, clearly stabbed to death, Claudia Leonardo is suddenly no longer simply Paola's student, but Brunetti's case ...

When Anna Maria Giusti returns from holiday to find her elderly neighbour Constanza Altavilla dead, with blood on the floor near her head, she immediately alerts the police. Commissario Brunetti is called to the scene and it seems the woman has suffered a fatal heart attack. Patta, the Vice-Questore, is eager to dismiss the case as a death from natural causes, but Brunetti believes that there is more to it.

It was a time of crisis, a time of tragedy - and a time of transcendent courage and determination. Leon Uris’s blazing novel is set in the midst of the ghetto uprising that defied Nazi tyranny, as the Jews of Warsaw boldly met Wehrmacht tanks with homemade weapons and bare fists. Here, painted on a canvas as broad as its subject matter, is the compelling story of one of the most heroic struggles of modern times.

Teresa Barrera has finally moved back home after running away when she was 15. Things are better for her than they were then. She's out as a trans lesbian, has a good job, and is in the promising start of a new relationship. To top it all off, she's back in contact with her sister, who has completely accepted her. She's not ready to tell the rest of her family, but that's okay.

Originally published in 1953, Leon Uris’s Battle Cry is the raw and exciting story of men at war from a legendary American author. This is the story of enlisted men - Marines at the beginning of World War II. They are a rough-and-ready tangle of guys from America’s cities and farms and reservations. Led by a tough veteran sergeant, these soldiers band together to emerge as part of one of the most elite fighting forces in the world. With staggering realism and detail we follow them into intense battles - Guadalcanal and Tarawa.

Au Campo Santa Margherita un doux soir d’été, deux étudiantes américaines partent en balade dans la lagune avec deux beaux Vénitiens et sont grièvement blessées dans un accident de bateau. L’incident semble anodin, mais la curiosité du commissaire Guido Brunetti est piquée par le comportement des garçons, qui ont abandonné les victimes à l’entrée de l’hôpital. Le commissaire en est certain, ces deux suspects ont un secret à protéger. Aidé par sa collègue Claudia Griffoni, Brunetti découvre un vaste réseau de corruption où des bateliers véreux sont impliqués dans un sinistre trafic nocturne.

Quand le médecin d’un hospice vénitien appelle la police car une patiente en fin de vie souhaite témoigner, le commissaire Brunetti et Claudia Griffoni se rendent aussitôt au chevet de la jeune femme. Ses derniers mots évoquent son défunt mari Vittorio qui selon elle, a été assassiné. Brunetti lui jure de mener l’enquête. Il découvre alors que Vittorio, qui travaillait pour une compagnie chargée de vérifier la qualité des eaux vénitiennes, est officiellement mort dans un accident de moto.