Showing results by narrator "Karen White" in All Categories

Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, Martha C. Nussbaum takes us to task for our religious intolerance, identifies the fear behind it, and offers a way past fear toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society, through the consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience.

Mary Beth Caine has always been the good girl in her small Mississippi town. But when a big, protective, shamelessly sexy stranger offers to console her on the night of her disastrous engagement party, Mary Beth lets him--only to discover that Parr Weston also happens to be the older brother of her fiancé, Bobby Joe. Parr left Mississippi after spending years holding his family together. Now that he's back, he can't steal Bobby Joe's woman, and he sure can't offer Mary Beth the tidy happily ever after she deserves.

Pleasant Creek, Indiana, buzzes with anticipation as thousands of people converge on the sleepy little town for the annual Harvest Festival. The Kappel Apple Race and the Hog Wild Ride draw groups of cyclists and bikers to Liz Eckardt's Olde Mansion Inn. But tension between the rival groups threatens to ruin the festive atmosphere. As Liz attempts to keep the peace, the conflict among her guests pushes her patience to the limit. The tension escalates when Trent Cleveland, the egotistical champion cyclist, sets his womanizing sights on one of the biker's girlfriends.

The Man in the Dog Park offers the listener a rare window into homeless life. Spurred by a personal relationship with a homeless man who became her coauthor, Cathy A. Small takes a compelling look at what it means and what it takes to be homeless. Interviews and encounters with dozens of homeless people lead us into a world that most have never seen. We travel as an intimate observer into the places that many homeless frequent, including a community shelter, a day-labor agency, a panhandling corner, a pawn shop, and a HUD housing office.

Before Louisa May Alcott achieved national fame with Little Women, she received success and recognition for Hospital Sketches, which was published in 1863. The book is based on her experience as a Civil War nurse at a Union hospital in Georgetown. In "The Death of a Soldier," an excerpt from the fourth chapter, she recounts the final days of a young Virginian blacksmith named John. Told through his nurse, Periwinkle, who stands by his side until his death, John never wavers in his desire to return to his post as a soldier and fulfill his duty.

I don't know which stop I got on at; I only know the train is going fast and the world outside becomes a blur. I should get off, but I don't. The universe is playing a cosmic joke on me. Here I had my life - a good life with everything a woman could want - and suddenly, there is something more I didn't know I could have. A chance for me to be satisfied and content and maybe even on occasion deliriously, amazingly, exuberantly fulfilled. So this is where I am, on a train that's out of control, and I am not just a passenger.

Americans call Niagara Falls a natural wonder, but the falls aren't very natural anymore. In fact, they are a study in artifice. Water diverted, riverbed reshaped, brink stabilized, and landscape redesigned, the falls are more a monument to man's meddling than to nature's strength.

If you’ve ever dieted, you’ve undoubtedly worked very hard to achieve results—only to experience the disappointment of having the pounds creep back on. But now wellness expert Kathy Freston lets listeners in on her secret: losing weight doesn’t have to be difficult, and it can last. With this book she shares the powerful concept of the Lean—a radically effective approach to positive change—with a practical 30-day plan to transform your health and jump-start weight loss in the most gentle, easy, and automatic way possible

Between the years 1918 and 1920, influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history, killing at least 50 million people, more than half a million of them Americans. Yet despite the devastation, this catastrophic event seems but a forgotten moment in our nation's past. American Pandemic offers a much-needed corrective to the silence surrounding the influenza outbreak.

While attending a gala at Prescott University's lavish new campus, Hester Thursby and fellow guest Detective Angela White are called to the home of the college's owners, Tucker and Jennifer Matson. Jennifer claims that someone broke into Pinebank, their secluded mansion on the banks of Jamaica Pond. The more Hester and Angela investigate, the less they believe Jennifer's story, leaving Hester to wonder why she would lie.

BONUS: Includes the quiz: How Much of a Perfectionist Are You?* Do you have trouble going to bed at night when there’s a mess in the kitchen? Do you think you would be happier if only you could lose weight, be a better parent, work smarter, reduce stress, exercise more, and make better...

From the introduction by Jonathan Santlofer: "Like film, literature has been no stranger to marijuana and hashish, going back to Charles Baudelaire's 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world.

At first glance, Nell King's cozy home in Yorktide, Maine seems a step down from the impeccably decorated Boston house she shared with her husband. But in the six years since he abruptly left to marry another woman, Nell and her almost-grown daughters have found real happiness and comfort here.

Cristy Haviland served eight months in prison, where she gave birth to the child of the man who put her there and might yet destroy her. Now she's free again, but what does that mean? As smart as she is, a learning disability has kept her from learning to read - and that's the least of her hurdles. Georgia Ferguson, a talented educator, receives a mysterious charm bracelet that may help her find the mother who abandoned her at birth. Does she want to follow the clues?

In 2005 Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, unveiled a new state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar cancer center. Determined to understand the whole spectrum of factors that determine what kind of medical care people receive in this country, best-selling author Julie Salamon spent one year tracking the progess of the center and getting to know the characters who make the hospital run.

Descendants of a prominent slaveholding family, Elizabeth, Grace, and Katharine Lumpkin grew up in a culture of white supremacy. But while Elizabeth remained a lifelong believer, her younger sisters chose vastly different lives. Seeking their fortunes in the North, Grace and Katharine reinvented themselves as radical thinkers whose literary works and organizing efforts brought the nation's attention to issues of region, race, and labor. In Sisters and Rebels, National Humanities Award-winning historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall follows the divergent paths of the Lumpkin sisters.

Can a badly abused elephant halfway across the world help a woman win back her cheating husband? In this funny, heartwarming story, the author of the beloved novel Horseplay presents another smart, memorable heroine and the animals–and men–she loves. Neelie Sterling never did listen well to...

Retirement insecurity is an increasingly serious manifestation of the vast inequality that risks destroying the social fabric in America. The nearly inevitable consequence of lifetime wage discrepancies, security in retirement is linked to the kinds of jobs we hold during our work lives. That, in turn, is a product of all the forces leading to historic levels of inequality, forces that have protected the very wealthy, destroyed any hold on stability for the poor, and gradually eroded the security of the vast middle class.

No matter how hard she tries, Ellen Burns will never be Scarlett O'Hara. As a little girl in South Carolina, she prefers playing Tarzan to playing Jane. As a teenage beauty queen, she spikes her Cokes with spirits of ammonia and baffles her elders with her Freedom Riding sympathies. As a young woman in the 1960s and '70s, she hypnotizes her way to Harvard, finds herself as a lesbian, then very nearly loses herself to booze and shamans.

Jendara is a woman of many roles: trader, pirate, islander - and mother. Having left behind her life of piracy, Jendara and her young son, Kran, are back in her native Ironbound Archipelago, looking to make an honest living as seaborne traders. But when Kran goes missing and the threat of a goblin attack looms, Jendara has no choice but to take up her ax once more if she wants to save her new friends - and her son.