Showing results by narrator "Ray Porter" in All Categories

Edgar Laplante was a small-time grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, and an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, Cherokee nation leader - and total fraud.

This audiobook introduces Brown Dog, an ex-Bible student with raucously asocial tendencies who rescues the preserved body of an Indian chief from the depths of Lake Superior in a caper that nets a wildly unexpected bounty. Elsewhere, a band of 60s radicals reunite to free an old comrade from a Mexican jail. And a 50-year-old suburban housewife flees quietly from her abusive businessman husband and explores the bittersweet pageant of the preceding years within the sanctuary of an Iowa cornfield.

The Iron Kingdoms is a land dominated by mighty warcasters, arcanists who command the terrifying war machines called warjacks. While these epic figures lead armies and shape the futures of their nations, other powerful individuals, no less skilled, forge their own destinies in steam and steel. Called to Battle is a collection of stories focused on the Iron Kingdoms’ unsung heroes, its skilled mercenaries, and even the horrifying villains who haunt its darker reaches.

Rutger and Taryn are scraping by in the infamous Port of Deceit, a place where two skilled mercenaries should have no trouble finding work. But an ominous shadow has fallen across the city of Five Fingers, and an ancient evil has come to gorge itself on the agony and suffering that have long been the city’s stock and trade. Rutger and Taryn are dragged into a tangled plot of danger and intrigue as they face a terrifying Cryxian invasion and a vengeful specter from their past.

In March 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops into Vietnam. 57,939 American soldiers would be killed and 17 years would pass before this controversial chapter of American history concluded with the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982. The history of this era is complex; the cultural impact extraordinary. But it's the personal stories of eight people - six American soldiers, one American nurse, and one Vietnamese refugee - that form the heartbeat of Boots on the Ground. Each individual's story reveals a different facet of the war and moves us forward in time.

A reluctant servant of Pharasma, Salim is no missionary. Yet when a desperate eidolon seeks his help in saving his master's soul, Salim has little choice in the matter. Saddled with a strange curse, this mysterious snake-man's creator is no longer in control of his actions - yet they may still weigh on his soul when it comes time for Pharasma's judgment. Only Salim can put a stop to events before they go too far. But are some souls really worth saving?

Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: 27-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College.

Meet Joe Ledger, Baltimore PD, attached to a Homeland task force … who’s about to get a serious promotion.

"Rescue Party" was first published in the May 1946 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is regarded as one of the most-influential science fiction writers of all time. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Mystery sensation Pelecanos pens the lead story and edits this groundbreaking collection of stories detailing the seedy underside of the nation's capital. This is not an anthology of ill-conceived and inauthentic political thrillers. Instead, in D.C. Noir, pimps, whores, gangsters, and con-men run rampant in zones of this city that most never hear about.

A strange phenomenon is sweeping the globe. People are having visions, seeing angels, experiencing events that defy reality. Bizarre accounts pour in from distant places: a French teenager claims to have witnessed Joan of Arc being burned at the stake; a man in New York dies of malnutrition in a luxurious Central Park apartment; a fundamentalist Christian sect kidnaps and murders a geneticist.

Roshad is a sorcerer and street thief in the great caravan city of Ular Kel. Bors is a nomadic warrior and heir to the Horse Throne. As a pair, the two are members of the mysterious Iridian Fold, an organization in which lovers seek to perfectly blend their consciousness to become an elite combat unit. But when Bors’ father forbids their union, are Bors and Roshad willing to start a war to defend their love?

Friend or foe, stay out of their way! Malaria can’t slow them down. A stockade can’t keep them penned up. Tanks can’t stop them. They’re the most blood-hungry platoon of killers in the jungle. The enemy fears them. Their own army hates them. But friend or foe, when they’re on their red-meat rampage of terror, you’d better steer clear of...The Rat Bastards.

The Landscaper has a secret. An ancient secret that will take you on an extraordinary adventure! You're invited to enter a secret garden-a landscape of unlimited proportions. It's a place where ordinary becomes extraordinary-and miracles, large and small happen. You'll enter this garden through an unassuming gate. It's the one that was opened to the Landscaper some years ago. Inside, you'll discover the secret-if you will pay the price!

A week ago, the supernova Aeon detonated in the skies over Antarctica. Mass migrations of humanity and animal life began northward. Secondary bursts of ionizing radiation knocked out worldwide power grids. Global temperatures spiked. Oceans rose as seawater expanded and glaciers melted. Massive storms and acid rain scour the planet. The southern continent is literally melting under the feet of Dr. Xin Rhou as she is trapped at the South Pole, and she is perhaps the only person in the world with a full accounting of the data recorded when Aeon exploded.

Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses - or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions - the ones all companies must ask to survive.

Haunted by an ancestor’s tale of near death on a distant battlefield, James Carl Nelson set out in pursuit of the scraps of memory of his grandfather’s small infantry unit. Years of travel across the world led to the retrieval of unpublished personal papers, obscure memoirs, and communications from numerous Doughboys as well as original interviews of the descendents of his grandfather’s comrades in arms.

Israel, late 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MIG fighter is racing at breakneck speed over the arid scrublands below, and promptly disappears. It soon becomes clear to Israeli intelligence that the pilot is a defector, desperate to come over to the US side. Houston Flight Controller and former test pilot Kaz Zemeckis is charged with bringing the pilot and his plane to the highly secret Area 51, in the Nevada desert. But every defection carries with it a risk.

Gary Foster's life is finally heading in the right direction. After years of trying, his wife, Beth, is pregnant, and he recently opened a business with his brother. But after collapsing suddenly, Beth is rushed to the hospital. Tests reveal a devastating diagnosis: an inoperable brain tumor. Their only hope is an expensive experimental treatment, with a cost that's out of their reach. And Beth's time is running out. Then a strange man approaches Gary and offers the money he needs, on one condition: that he kill someone, no questions asked. End one life to save another.

For over 40 years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America's longest conflict: The War on Drugs. His obsession to defeat the world's most powerful, wealthy, and lethal kingpin—the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adán Barrera—has left him bloody and scarred, cost him people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul. Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created 30 more that are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico. But not just there.