Showing results by narrator "Norman" in All Categories

Albert Honig's most constant companions have always been his bees. A never-married octogenarian, he makes a modest living as a beekeeper, as his father and his father's father did before him. Deeply acquainted with the workings of the hives, Albert is less versed in the ways of people, especially his friend Claire, whose presence and absence in his life have never been reconciled. When Claire is killed in a seemingly senseless accident during a burglary gone wrong, Albert is haunted by the loss and by the secrets and silence that hovered between them for so long. As he pieces together the memories of their shared history, he will come to learn the painful truths about Claire's life.

Andre Norman’s early life put him on a path to prison. Raised in poverty and surrounded by dysfunction, Andre gravitated to his neighborhood gang. His choices there led to time in juvenile detention, and eventually a maximum-security prison, with sentences totaling over 100 years. During that time, Andre became one of the most dangerous gang leaders in the Massachusetts prison system. Then came the epiphany. Just before Andre was to be crowned “King of the Prison,” he had a realization—that he was about to become the “King of Nowhere.”

I fell in love with Charles “Double-D” Brothers when I was just 16 years old. He was 19 and had just patched into the Aces High MC in Charleston, SC. The falling in love part didn’t matter though, because our life - our love - wasn’t destined to be an easy one. In the beginning - I was too young, he was too wild, and my family was able to send me away to keep us apart. Later, when I was 20 and he was 23 our paths crossed again. This time he was the one ready for me, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

During the Civil War, the eyes of the nation usually stayed fixed to the Eastern theater, but one of the bright spots in the West for the Confederacy was Irish immigrant Patrick Cleburne, whose successes earned him the nickname "Stonewall of the West". Where so many Confederates were failing, Cleburne's strategic tactics and bold defensive fighting earned him fame and recognition throughout the South, even leading Lee to call him "a meteor shining from a clouded sky."

Written during a period of great tragedy in Mark Twain's life and great social unrest in America, Pudd'nhead Wilson rises above its farcical plot to ask pointed philosophical questions about society, values, and racism.

By July 1536, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490 - 1559) and three other survivors had walked 2,500 miles from Texas, across northern Mexico, to Sonora and ultimately to Mexico City. Cabeza de Vaca's account of this astonishing journey is now recognized as one of the great travel stories of all time and a touchstone of New World literature.

Call If You Need Me includes all of the prose previously collected in No Heroics, Please, four essays from Fires, and those five marvelous stories that range over the period of Carver's mature writing and give his devoted fans a final glimpse of the great writer at work. The pure pleasure of Carver's writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have already entered the canon of modern literature.

Meredith Gray had no choice but to meet with the last man on earth she ever wanted to see again. He ruined her once, and now he was threatening the livelihood of the thousands of people employed at her stepfather’s company. The last time she saw him, he’d lied to her face and broke her heart. Would she remain unscathed this time around? Meredith could only hope. Josef Aziz had a reputation for stealth and lethality. After he was dishonorably discharged from the military, he found himself in the employ of the Dark Wolf.

"Apollo's history is a confusing one," said the renowned poet and mythologist Robert Graves. This notion is also illustrated in a quote from the sixth century BCE Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which gives the listener a brief glimpse into the confusion surrounding Apollo's multi-faceted nature.

FBI agent Cora Pratt came to Storyville searching for the crazed Postcard Killer. A killer that has taunted her all over the USA. When she arrived in this quiet town, nothing could have prepared her for the supernatural mysteries that would unfold. Orphaned as a young child, Cora did not know about her family’s background. Let alone her shocking connection to this strange place. Until now, the truth of her unusual past has been kept secret to almost everyone. But as the end draws near, it’s now time for Cora to learn of her special purpose.

Welcome to Riverside Mobile Home Park, where there's plenty of shade but no escape from the heat. Marcus Reznick watched the love of his life blow her brains out and then dove to the bottom of a bottle of vodka. Now he's living in Riverside Mobile Home Park and trying to pull his life together...until a powerful temptation comes his way. Steve Regent is an Internet pornographer who has moved to Riverside Mobile Home Park to work on a new Web site - Trailer Park Girls. He's looking for beautiful women...but instead, he finds something very ugly.

Shuttled among orphanages and foster homes since he was 11, Wesley Benfield - newly converted - is trying to turn over a new leaf. But two things are keeping him from a straight-and-narrow kind of existence: lust for Phoebe, and a National Steel Dobro bottleneck guitar. There’s more than one way for an ungainly white boy to find a little soul, and Wesley strikes out on his own path of redemption.

The tree is decorated, the cookies are baked, and the packages are wrapped, but the biggest celebration this Christmas is Gaby Summerhill's wedding. Since her husband died three years ago, Gaby's four children have drifted apart, each consumed by the turbulence of their own lives. They haven't celebrated Christmas together since their father's death, but when Gaby announces that she's getting married - and that the groom will remain a secret until the wedding day - she may finally be able to bring them home for the holidays. But the wedding isn't Gaby's only surprise....

It is hard to find an island on the map more central than Sicily. Located at the crossroads between Europe and Africa, and between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Sicily has rarely been governed as an independent, unified state. Nonetheless, the island has been the seat of some of the most important events in history, and nowhere is this more obvious than during antiquity.

Part Two: 1979-1984 includes: The Orient Express; Rudyard Kipling; Railways of the Raj; Graham Greene's Traveling Companion; and Sunrise with Seamonsters.

The things I've lost could shatter any man. Send him on a downward spiral. I would've punched my own ticket if it weren't for the Satan's Knights. Instead, I became the VP of the Knightdale Charter. A man can't drown in his misery when he's got responsibilities. So I look for things to dull the pain. Sex. Drugs. Whatever. When you've been to hell and back, the only time worth having is a good one. My little Birdie knows this self-destructive path, too. That's why I can't stay away from her.

At the height of the Vietnam war, the U.S. Army drafted Norman Hile out of law school, trained him to be an artillery officer, and in August 1970 sent him to serve a one year combat tour in South Vietnam’s I Corps, where the war was hottest. “Keeping Each Other Alive” is Hile’s memoir of that combat tour.

Brother Gage takes a looks at the entered apprentice degree in Masonry. He explains that everything a Mason will encounter in the future is simply an elaboration of this degree, both within and without the fraternity. He talks at length on the concept of symbolism and how it relates to Freemasonry. He also walks us through the entered apprentice degree a bit and speaks of specific symbolism the candidate encounters within the first degree.

The Apocrypha of the Bible examines the history of the books excluded from the Bible, the characters and events told by the books, and the discoveries that have influenced Biblical studies in the last few centuries.

Of all the original 13 colonies in America, only one owes its conception to one man, and indeed, Pennsylvania was and still remains bound up in the life and character of its founder, William Penn. Here was a man born into a military family who saw his father rise through the ranks of the 17th-century English court to become a friend of the king, and he even considered a military career for himself, only to leave it all behind to become a member of the "Society of Friends", known colloquially as the Quakers.