Showing results by narrator "Alan Carlson" in All Categories

Some people will do anything for money. Take Brian Zembic, recipient of the world's most notorious boob job. After a fellow gambler bet $100,000 that Brian wouldn't subject himself to the breast implants he so admired in women, Brian found himself going under the knife to become a 38C - and $100,000 richer.

Life can seem to be a serious business. We could also look at it as a game—or a series of games. They include survival, love, power, pleasure, courage, creativity, and the Master Game! In this insightful book, Richard Smoley gives a lively but profound account of these games. He talks about how we play them, the mistakes we make, and how we can play them best. The culmination is the Master Game. Richard explores practices from the great spiritual traditions to show how to reach this mastery. If you play this game, you will reach new heights of wisdom, courage, kindness, and performance.

Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. This book leaves us with new knowledge of and insights into what we might hope for, and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.

James L. Leloudis and Robert R. Korstad tell the story of race and voting rights, from the end of the Civil War until the present day. They show that battles over the franchise have played out through cycles of emancipatory politics and conservative retrenchment. When race has been used as an instrument of exclusion from political life, the result has been a society in which vast numbers of Americans are denied the elements of meaningful freedom: a good job, a good education, good health, and a good home.

After 25 years on the job, Detective Roscoe Conklin trades his badge for a pair of shorts and sandals and moves to Bonaire, a small island nestled in the Southern Caribbean. But the warm water, palm trees, and sunsets are derailed when his long-time police buddy and friend back home is murdered. Conklin dusts off a few markers and calls his old department, trolling for information. It's slow going, but no surprise there; after all, it's an active investigation, and his compadres back home aren't saying a damn thing.

I was supposed to be a wife. A mom. A business owner. And I was...until an armed robber sticks a gun into my face. The man who saves me? Javier Mondello. My former high-school crush. A tattooed-troublemaker-turned-Adonis overnight. A blast from the past too good-looking for his own good. There's no denying it; the chemistry between us is all-consuming - electric. But when danger finds me again, when a crime of opportunity takes a twisted turn, I can't decide which fate is worse: falling into the arms of my hero...or finding out what he's really up to.

On the laid-back island of Bonaire, every day is paradise until a seaweed-entangled human leg washes ashore. Combing the beach, retired cop Roscoe Conklin examines the scene and quickly determines that the leg belongs to the nephew of a close friend. The island police launch an investigation, but with little evidence and no suspects, their progress comes to a frustrating halt. Then, thanks to a unique barter with the lead detective, Conklin finds himself in possession of the case file. He can now aggressively probe for his own answers.

Everyone at Redstone High is talking about the strange Brock kids. How they keep to themselves at school—and spend way too much time in the woods. But Noble, Argus, Harlan and Tora aren’t normal teens—they were born with the power to become wolves. And the more the siblings try to hide their secret identity, the greater they struggle to fit in. Then Noble falls mysteriously ill, leaving the pack without a leader just when he’s needed the most…

I planned everything…or so I’d thought. I had a contingency plan for my contingency plan, but that was before I met them. The few members of the crew who’ve already irrevocably changed my life. I thought I knew what I wanted, and I still do want that, but if getting my vengeance means ruining my future—our future—how can I live with that?

High school is hard enough for most teens but for Noble, Harlan, Argus and Tora, some days can be a real howl. Born wolves, the shape-shifting siblings have spent most of their lives in human form, taking to the woods to enjoy their animal strength in secret. But all that could change at any moment… For it’s only a matter of time before Harlan pounces on his high school nemesis, revealing his feral nature to all. Before Tora shares the pack’s secret with the classmate she’s got a major crush on.

When Jason returned home from competing on Beached he'd lost weight, couldn't sleep, and felt more alone than ever. But, he expected those changes. Jason had no way to predict that one of his fellow competitors would fling himself from a cliff. Unless he didn't. Jason can't believe it, but the network broadcasts the alleged suicide to the world, so he pushes forward in his own amateur investigation.

Some worship him and some want him dead, but either way, tensions run high when “Ray Boy” Calabrese is released from prison. It’s been 16 years since Ray Boy’s actions led to the death of a young man. The victim's brother, Conway D'Innocenzio, is a 29-year-old Brooklynite wasting away at a local Rite Aid, stuck in the past and drawn into a darker side of himself when he hears of Ray Boy’s freedom. But even with the perfect plan in place, Conway can’t bring himself to take the ultimate revenge on Ray Boy, which sends him into a spiral of self-loathing and soul-searching.

Acting on values—doing good for the benefit of all—can substantially benefit the bottom line, but many business leaders mistakenly believe that doing the right thing lowers profits. This belief is the greatest barrier holding businesses back from being more financially and competitively successful—and delivering more good for the world. Not only can it be a winning business strategy to act on values, as Daniel Aronson suggests in The Value of Values, but it is also a savvy choice, increasing a company’s power, profit, and competitive advantage.

A team of expert innovation strategists delivers an exciting and insightful collection of strategies, techniques, and frameworks for scaling your next big, audacious idea into a concrete product or service. Each proven and tested strategy contained in the book has been categorized to make it easy to find and implement when you need it most. You’ll learn how and where to start, when to bet big, how to invest, when to play the long game, what to communicate, and much more.

Among today’s most successful businesses are those that have significantly transformed our daily routines. This focus on the consumer experience, not solely on product, has enabled them to drive remarkable growth and customer loyalty and, in many cases, to create totally new marketplace categories. Seeing the How invites you to reimagine your brand, company, or idea through the lens of consumer experience. It gives today’s disruptors a path to offering consumers a new and better way to do what they do, clearly demonstrating how to see opportunities, and how to seize them to great advantage.

After two daughters of a wealthy railroad baron are abducted, they hire a famous bounty hunter and a couple Pinkerton detectives to find them. As they investigate, it’s discovered the girls’ abduction wasn’t random but part of a larger conspiracy that will propel them on a deadly hunt to rescue the girls before they’re lost forever.

Jack Winters is in a bit of a pickle. Things started out just fine. He had a decent job and a few friends. Then he met the woman of his dreams. They go out on a date and things go really well. That’s when things go south. The morning after turns out to be a week later and the world went ahead and ended itself while Jack was far away in dreamland. Along with his friends and some other random tag-alongs, Jack will journey cross-country to find the woman of his dreams against zombies, heavy metal horsemen, pirates, and an immense, evil power.

In October 1939, Albert Einstein warns President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Nazi Germany is actively pursuing an atomic bomb and urges him to make sure that the United States develops the bomb first. Roosevelt heeds the warning and launches the “Manhattan Project” in June 1942. In October 1942, Roosevelt tells Einstein that prudence calls for the US to have a backup plan to the Manhattan Project in case Hitler gets the bomb first. Roosevelt commissions Einstein to secretly construct a usable time-travel machine code-named the “White Hole Project”.

Adolf Hitler’s darkest secret is about to cross paths with the time-traveling Bad Love Gang on their quest to save the life of one of their members from a fate of terminal breast cancer. Before they can get the cure to Hannah, the gang meets with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in April 1945. Churchill informs them that British Special Operations Executive spies have uncovered Hitler’s darkest wartime secret, the “Black Hole Project”.

Millionaires, a mini dachshund, and dreams of old Manhattan inspire a writer to leave monotony behind and follow a 1930s murder mystery. Rick Gordon is accustomed to losing. He decides it’s time for a change after finding himself single and out of work again with no one for moral support but his two meddling friends and a precocious dachshund. A box of old family photos reveals an odd mystery his deceased uncle had tucked away for him.