Showing results by narrator "Mike Ortego" in All Categories

The Last Jump is a war story, a mystery, a love tale, and a tribute to the people who won World War II. Fact and fiction intermix seamlessly to unravel a secret passionately guarded by four aging soldiers. The reader is transported back in time to an imperfect America, with all is incredible virtues and vexing shortcomings struggling with racial and gender issues while fighting for its very survival. It was time when Americans stood shoulder to shoulder to free the world from tyranny.

"Top Secret" mystery missions, many without other ships in support, were becoming uncomfortably familiar for the crew of the USS Nashville CL43. It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war "Neutrality Patrol" that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy.

In the beginning, great power is only great potential... Renowned for both martial and arcane skills, the mighty warcasters of the Iron Kingdoms possess the unique gift of bonding with and commanding mighty warjacks on the field of battle. Yet despite their inborn abilities, these powerful soldier-sorcerers began as novices, forced to harness their talents in rigorously structured military training programs or through the brutal crucible of battle.

More than 30 years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached 90 million readers. With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have produced a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure - told here with authority and heart.

A striking collection of stories, poems, letters, travel essays, journal entries, excerpts from three novels, and more—including the complete text of The Sheltering Sky—from one of the most revered authors of the twentieth century.

In the aptly titled Offbeat, Richard Matheson, a modern master of strange fiction, offers 13 excursions into the unsettling and bizarre. In these stories you will encounter a major league pitcher with a horrific secret for his astonishing success; an ordinary man who wakes to find himself in a silent, empty world; a death row prisoner with an extraordinary explanation for his innocence; and a novelist whose fictional creations transcend the printed page.

It's been six years since Grant Justice was brought back to life to help the Peaceful citizens of Earth defeat the Minith. Life should be good. The Minith are gone. Grant now has a loving wife and a remarkable son. He is a hero to the society that once shunned him. But Grant hasn't been taking life easy. He's been recruiting fighters away from Peace. He's been cobbling together an army from the dregs of society and training them to fight. Which is a good thing, because another alien Mothership is headed their way.

Set in the waning years of the Cold War, a stunning debut novel about a trio of young Armenians that moves from the Soviet Union, across Europe, to Southern California, and at its center, one of the most tragic cataclysms in twentieth-century history - the Armenian Genocide - whose traumatic reverberations will have unexpected consequences on all three lives.

Does the idea of progress still apply to our times? If so, what does progress really mean? Today, many believe that progress is a word to be avoided, a relic from a past, the dangerous product of an era of intellectual naivety that would be best forgotten. Yet, the idea of progress is rooted in a human impulse that is both profound and essential, a way of interpreting history without which our ability to plan the future, our very identity would be at stake.

An old soldier's last request spirals into a worldwide search to recover the remains of seven missing GIs from World War II. A four-person team of both military and civilian volunteers conduct the investigation. All they have to work with is a list of names. Their only motivation is to honor the fallen and give closure to their families. Or is there some other unknown purpose at play?

Dragon Rebirth picks up where Dragon Soul left off. The plot line intensifies, new characters are introduced and the arena for the battle with the creatures attacking the Palmir People broadens as the story progresses. Mixed in all this, there are poignant moments of loss, love, spiritual growth and maturity as the characters face their fears and find within themselves the means to survive and prepare to prevail against the incursions.

The latest Ecco reissue of Joyce Carol Oates’ early classics: a fiery gothic tale of doomed fates and demons of biblical proportions in rural New York state. Nathan Vickery came into the world amid unfortunate circumstances. His mother, Elsa Vickery, daughter of an agnostic small town doctor and his pious wife, was brutally assaulted at the age of 17. The son she gave birth to in the wake of this event is brought up by his grandmother as a devoted Christian. At the age of seven, Nathan begins to see visions of Christ and embarks on a path as a prodigy boy-preacher.

The Committee pits friends against friends and threatens careers and lives in a struggle for the soul of a town, a university, and an ideal. Based on actual historical events and set against the backdrop of political, cultural, and class turmoil, this is a story of love - both licit and hidden - war, friendship, betrayal, compromise, and finally the necessity to stand firm against the encroachments upon freedom by men who believe they are doing God’s and the government’s righteous work.

The violent racism of the American South drove Wayne Flynt away from his home state of Alabama, but the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's classic novel about courage, community, and equality, inspired him to return in the early 1960s and craft a career documenting and teaching Alabama history. His writing resonated with many Alabamians, in particular three sisters: Louise, Alice, and Nelle Harper Lee. Beginning with their first meeting in 1983, a mutual respect and affection for the state's history and literature matured into a deep friendship.

Forged in the hot West Texas wind, the Allen brothers grew up. Johnny and Coy had the same parents, same environment, and had the same advantages and disadvantages. Yet they would grow up to be so different. Coy, the younger Allen brother, grew up to be a successful Baptist Pastor; Johnny, a death row inmate. With years of separation and a wall of bitterness and rage, can these two men come together? Can there be reconciliation? This is a story of murder, mystery, and redemption.

Reanimated after six hundred years, Grant Justice has become the leader of Earth's new army. Unwilling to sit back and wait for the next attack, Grant decides to take the fight to the enemy. He and a mothership full of his best fighters are headed toward Waa, the aliens' new home world. Unknown to Grant, a fleet of alien motherships is headed toward Earth-intent on punishing the planet for destroying Minith. Who will win the battle for supremacy-the alien slavers with a thirst for war, or the humans struggling to survive and save their way of life?

Thirty years after they walked hand in hand to the electric chair, sentenced to die for giving the gift of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union, Solomon and Dolores Rubell are the targets of a new investigation - conducted not by the FBI, or some paranoid Senate subcommittee, but by Gerald Lerner, boyhood Communist and author of such classic chronicles of the American Jewish experience as Hot Pastrami Sandwich and Kosher and Topless.

Clarence “Cat” Touchette, an elderly and very rich Cajun farm owner, is acting as campaign advisor for his friend, Simon, who is a candidate for parish sheriff. When Simon is threatened with blackmail, Clarence, with the help of his blind brother-in-law, J.O., and his friend and employee, Tee Man, investigates the threat. Cat resents getting old and irritability invades his personality in dealing with his family, friends, adversaries and associates. The discovery of a stray dog among his cattle affects him in a manner that even he has difficulty understanding.

Cat and his friends are back! The rich, cantankerous, narcissistic, but generous, septuagenarian Cajun, Clarence "Cat" Touchette, helps when his friend, Crosby "Souris" Babineaux finds his son in a coma at the family's marine transportation company. Cat begins probing, discovers unusual business practices by Souris' son, and scrutinizes a sleazy crew aboard a vessel chartered by a mysterious company.

Dragon Soul begins in a small village of the Palmir people. A quiet, productive, and peaceful clan with an almost forgotten violent history. The Plague from the North - an attack of powerful, evil creatures - virtually annihilated them generations ago. They defeated the Plague, with the help of mystics and dragons - but at great cost. A Prophet has a vision that takes shape in a physical form and warns the Palmir people of an ominous event. Was it a just a reminder of the hellish past, or a harbinger of things to come?