Showing results by narrator "Wendy Tremont King" in All Categories

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

Every day, countless men and women go to counselors and ask if their relationship can be saved. Even more men and women turn to their friends and trusted family members, bemoaning that what was once good has now turned bad. There are screaming fights, stony silences, glares across a crowded room and sighs of sadness. Sometimes there is a long conversation that ends in tears, and sometimes there isn't a conversation at all.

He's no Tony Soprano. Still, local crime boss Giustino "Tino" Fabrizio is one shady character that Tara would love to see behind bars. He operates a security business - or so he claims on his tax forms - but his clients don't feel so secure when it's time to pay up. Problem is, no one can get close enough to nail this wiseguy for extortion. No one, that is, except Tara. Going undercover, Tara lands a waitress job at Benedetta's Bistro - which is owned and operated by Tino's wife.

Rooted in established scientific findings, as well as her own research and clinical experience, Harvard-trained psychologist and connection researcher Dr. Kristine Klussman's approach to well-being is simple and transformative. Klussman shows us that the way to achieve true happiness and fulfillment is not by striving toward them at all, but rather by cultivating connection in our everyday lives.

Moody and restless, teenage Louisa longed for freedom. Faced with the expectations of her loving but hapless family, the Alcotts, and of 19th-century New England society, she struggled to find her place. On long meandering runs through the woods behind Orchard House, she thought about a future where she could write and think and dream. Undaunted by periods of abject poverty and enriched by friendships with some of the greatest minds of her time and place, she was determined to have this future, no matter the cost.

Today there is no place on Earth that does not harbor invasive exotic species. Invasive plants and animals can be found on every continent, including Antarctica, and within all waterbodies, including all oceans. This Very Short Introduction provides a clear definition of an invasive species, and considers the myriad ways they are moved around the globe, and the ecological, social, and economic impacts they often impose.

Come West and See is a work both timely and timeless. Set in the Redoubt, an isolated triangle of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming where an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge escalates into a separatist uprising, these stories explore the loneliness, insecurity, and frustration inherent to love and heartbreak. A lakeside wedding drunkenly devolves into a cruel charade; an unemployed carpenter joins a militia after his wife leaves him; and a former soldier raises the daughter of a dead comrade in a bunker beneath an abandoned farm.

Because of the way technology has impacted real estate sales, buyers and sellers have greater access to information and even the ability to direct the sales process. While knowing market information is helpful in real estate sales, most people still lack a key aspect: expertise. By presenting an inside view on sales, McLaughlin provides a guide for maximizing the value of the sale and purchase of homes.

Sue Finley murdered people...on paper. As a mystery writer, she knew all the angles, who did what and why. The only thing she couldn't explain was...well, men. Dating was like diving into a box of chocolates: sometimes the sweetest-looking specimens were candy-coated poison. After a breakup with a bank robber and a divorce from a cross-dresser, she gave it up for good. Then came Detective Jason Dodd. Raised in foster homes, Jason swore never to need anyone as much as the parents who'd abandoned him. That was why he failed to follow up after experiencing the best kiss of his life.

When a letter arrives from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Angela and Rose decide to visit Aunt Silvia, their mother's Mennonite sister, in the heart of Amish country. This vacation could provide the opportunity both sisters need to sort out their issues. And yet instead of finding a new way of connecting with each other, Angela and Rose discover surprising family secrets that add to their strife and threaten Rose's romance with a new beau.

Judith Butler shows how COVID-19 and all its consequences-political, social, ecological, economic-have challenged us to reconsider the sense of the world that such disasters bring about. Drawing on the work of Max Scheler, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and critical feminist phenomenology, Butler illuminates the conditions in which we seek to make sense of our disorientation, precarity, and social bonds. What World Is This? offers a new account of interdependency in which touching and breathing challenge the boundaries of the body and selfhood.

Of the Divorced, Desperate and Delicious club, Kathy Callahan is the last surviving member. Oh, her two friends haven't died or anything. They just gave up their vows of chastity. They went for hot sex with hot cops and got happy second marriages - something Kathy can never consider, given her past. Yet there's always her plumber, Stan Bradley. He seems honest, hardworking, and skilled with a tool. But Kathy's best-laid plans have hit a clog. The guy snaking her drain isn't what he seems. He's handier with a pistol than a wrench, and she's about to see more action than Jason Statham.

Zoe Hallett and her sister, Ava, are the precocious offspring of two pioneering scientists, but the sisters have been estranged for years. When Zoe reads a news story about Ava's mysterious disappearance, she assumes it's just another of her sister's twisted fictions, designed to blame Zoe and destroy the peaceful life she's created with her husband and beautiful stepdaughter in Houston. But Zoe's email is hacked to send threatening messages to Ava - and a more sinister picture begins to emerge.

From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross - disciplinary study has existed - until now.

Stressors are everywhere. Each and every day, we run into situations that constantly test us, rob us of our patience, strip us of our sanity, impact our focus, and cause us to lose control of our days. Although stress can be challenging, it can also be easy to handle if you have a system to deal with it. This system would knock out these stressors, shut down your anxiety, and curb fear so you can take back control of your life.

What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain.

Jason Burkwell is all about the next adventure. Whether it's an emergency call as lieutenant on Redwood Ridge's fire department or a pretty woman between the sheets, he gets in and gets out. He has no interest in being trapped by anything or anyone. But when he's manipulated into a charity auction for his station, something tells him he's about to get hosed.

The Crissmans, owners of Crissman & Wolfe department store, were once one of Portland's most powerful families. There's still enough fortune left to sow mistrust between Lucy, her bohemian sister Layla, their brother Lyle, and his grasping wife Kate. When a charity event at the Crissman Lodge ends in a fatal poisoning, Lucy becomes a prime suspect. But the truth is even more twisted, and Lucy can't be sure which of her family is being targeted...or who to fear.

En Alt Maedel - an old maid. At age 29, that's what Eva Lapp considers herself. Finding a good Amish husband at her age will be next to impossible. Plus, Eva's unwarranted bad reputation in Lancaster County precedes her. Maybe living the Englisch life would be better. Squeezed out of her childhood home by her brother's boisterous family, Eva finds lodging and a new job managing a small cafe at a local plant nursery. Then to her surprise, her first love, Jake Miller, suddenly returns to Lancaster County.

Four contemporary spooky short stories: Ghost Brother So what happens after you die? Do you go to heaven, or hell? Or do you go to a special place fashioned just for you based on the life you'd lived in the real world? Based on how you treated people? What you did to them? And do ghosts exist? Do they roam the earth and plague the living, persuade them to do things they shouldn't do?