Showing results by narrator "Paul Bellantoni" in All Categories

In the aftermath of a violent storm, a collective obsession is rapidly developing among the people of this quaint suburban neighborhood. Random, everyday items left scattered upon the lawns, the streets, and the shoreline all seem to call out to them. There is an item for almost everyone, and each item has a certain hold over the person who finds it—a hold that soon turns into unwavering infatuation. They hide their items from each other, obsess over them, and they will do anything—anything—to protect them.

Gone are the days of static organizational charts and staffing based on the manager's rolodex and intuition. Now you can recruit any expertise you need from a global online network within minutes: an on-demand, on-the-spot expert at the exact moment that you need their help. You can right-size their involvement, too; some of those experts give a second opinion or a moment of brainstorming, whereas others join as full-fledged team members for a sustained collaborative effort.

In a world where virtual addiction kills, Kennedy Stark is paid to pull the plug. A professional halter—part detective, part counselor—he trawls the world's darkest surrogate-reality feeds in search of the lost. When he isn't working, he's dreaming of a one-way ticket to Mars, where a new colony has been established as a hopeful alternative to an Earth in the early stages of climate collapse.

Seren Colburn's had nothing but bad luck her entire life, so she's not surprised when Dave, a possible buyer for her family mansion, mistakes her for a vagrant squatting in the unfurnished home. If she wasn't about to lose her movie-star grandmother’s house to the bank, she wouldn't even be selling it. But after he realizes Seren’s the owner, Dave has an idea. He suggests they work together to turn the mansion into an inn, capitalizing on her grandmother's graceful and timeless image.

Legendary writing coach Jack Hart spent 26 years at The Oregonian and has taught students and professionals of all stripes, including bloggers, podcasters, and more than one Pulitzer Prize winner. Good writing, he says, has the same basic attributes regardless of genre or medium. Wordcraft shares Hart’s techniques for achieving those attributes in one of the most broadly useful writing books ever written. Originally published in 2006 as A Writer’s Coach, the book has been updated to address the needs of writers well beyond print journalists.

Shame Flynn is one of the most powerful Death magic users in the world. He has pushed himself and magic to the limit, even though there's hell to pay. But he's finally miscalculated and pushed magic too far. The price for breaking magic? Death magic is eating him alive. The only thing stopping it from slipping his grip and killing everything in a hundred mile radius, is the Life magic user, Terric Conely. Bad news: Terric is losing his own battle with magic.

July Tate is a force to be reckoned with—a big, strong blonde with a heart the size of her whole town—but beneath her capable exterior lie the scars of a devastating lost love. To July, love equals vulnerability, and she can’t afford either. Joe Anderson knew from the first moment he saw her that July was The One. Now, after years apart, he’s back, driven by the need to explain his disappearance. In search of the girl who filled his teenage dreams, he finds instead a powerhouse woman who steals his heart and soul.

When the enemy strikes on the eve of her wedding, Wren has no choice but to fight. Captured, she's dragged before the elvish king and given an ultimatum: death or marriage. She submits, biding her time as she plots and spies, determined to strike at the heart of the elvish royalty and take back her family's throne once more. But the more time she spends with her dangerous and achingly handsome husband, the more she finds herself wavering.

When a Quaker pastor unknowingly officiates a wedding between two women, he uses the fallout as an opportunity to shake things up—but can he find a sense of belonging in small-town Indiana? When Quaker Pastor Sam Gardner is asked by the ill Unitarian minister to oversee a wedding in his place...

As new forms of lie detection gain momentum in the present day, Tremors in the Blood reveals the incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph, through gripping true-crime cases featuring explosive gunfights, shocking twists, and high-stakes courtroom drama. Touching on psychology, technology, and the science of the truth, Tremors in the Blood is a vibrant, atmospheric thriller and a warning from history: beware what you believe.

Time Rider follows Bowie, an agent from a post-democracy future state known as the Design—where humanity is stratified into genetic castes, and emotional connections have been engineered away. Sent to 1963 on a mission to preserve a lynchpin moment of history from temporal terrorists: the assassination of the American President. Baffled by what he finds in Dallas, Bowie soon discovers that something far more strange and sinister is at work.

In 1992, at the dawn of the age of technology, disgraced ex-game show host Manny di Martini schemes for a comeback with a deep-sea television special in the South Pacific. He quickly finds himself in over his head, attracting the attention of a cosmic being who will lead Manny to a television broadcast event much bigger than the entire planet bargained for: evidence of a slumbering alien in a ruined city at the bottom of the ocean. One look at the monster on TV, and humans collectively freak out.

This is not CSI. What you encounter as a true bomb detective-or "Bomb Doctor," as some in the FBI call me-are fields of twisted metal containing soot-covered fragments intermingled with human remains. You have carnage and chaos. As you wade into that sea of wailing sirens and screaming survivors awash with the stench of diesel fuel and decaying bodies, your job is to ferret out forensic clues in a type of macabre scavenger hunt to ultimately reconstruct the scene and the explosive device and determine what happened and what the bomb looked like before it was torn asunder.

Shamus "Shame" Flynn is a Death magic user with a smart mouth and a bad attitude. His job riding a desk while keeping an eye on the city's humdrum magic users isn't making his mood any better. Sure, the most dangerous magic was locked away for good three years ago, but that doesn't mean people have stopped trying to access the old, deadly powers.

Vincent Van Gogh arrived in the French capital on the last day of February 1886, a month short of his thirty-third birthday. He was a man beaten down by life, half-starved, and nearly broken psychologically. He was saved by his brother Theo, who provided him with room, board, and, most crucially, emotional support while he attempted to master the difficult craft of painting. Thus far, Vincent's crude scenes of peasant life rendered in murky shades of brown and gray were both hackneyed and amateurish. 

Ava Graham's ducks are in a row as she heads off to Italy to complete her final law school credits and fulfill a promise she made to her late mother five years ago. Ava expects her long-term boyfriend to propose before her trip, but instead of giving her a ring, he suggests they use her time abroad as a "break" before settling down. When James Massini arrives—late—to the airport to pick up Ava as a favor to his aunt and uncle, he's surprised to find that she's not a young coed, but a fascinating woman approaching thirty with a superiority complex and a habit of underestimating him.

The Quozl just need somewhere to call home. A gentle race of extraterrestrial rabbits, they have a propensity for reproduction that has left their home planet, Quozlene, dangerously overpopulated, and in their search for greener and less-crowded pastures, they have discovered the perfect place to start over: the third planet away from a healthy, warming sun.

Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899-1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. In this exciting biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.

Three former Chosen Ones have joined together to spend their retirement in peace and quiet, running Second Life Books and Gifts in Salem, MA. A calm, peaceful, tourist-filled oasis, where they never have to worry about saving the world. Until some of the locals start summoning ancient creatures best left where they were . . . and they discover that their bookstore basement just may be the portal to the underworld. These ex-heroes may have thought they were done . . . but if they want to finish their retirement in peace, they’ll have to join together to save the world one last time.