Showing results by author "Jim Dale" in All Categories

On Easter Sunday morning, the city of Boston is struck by a widespread and coordinated series of terrorist attacks: an explosion in the T, a suicide bomber at Back Bay Police Station, and heavily armed gunmen taking hostages at the Patriot Hotel. For robotics innovator Louis Massina, aka the Puppet Master, this is far more personal than a savage act of political terrorism. Boston is his city - and one of his employees, Chelsea Goodman, is among the hostages facing certain death.

An Asian war that would have escalated into a nuclear nightmare has been halted, thanks to the raw courage, unparalleled skill, and total commitment of the Dreamland force. But an analysis of radar data has revealed the presence of an unknown super-weapon in the area: a robot warplane with terrifying capabilities, dubbed the “ghost clone.” Though strikingly similar to Dreamland’s own U/MF Flighthawk, no one knows where this fearsome instrument of destruction originated, but a rogue nation possessing a squadron of them could wreak unimaginable havoc on an unsuspecting free world.

When the U.S. develops intelligence showing that Iran is in the final stages of assembling a nuclear bomb, the President orders Breanna Stockard and the Whiplash team to destroy it before the renegade nation can destabilize the shaky Middle East. Left with no other choice, Stockard sends young Air Force ace Turk Mako behind enemy lines. His orders: pilot a squadron of high-tech nano-UAVs from inside Iran to destroy the weapon and its assembly bunker. Turk and his accompanying Delta Force team succeed, only to discover another site and another device.

When Muslim extremists are found with a mysterious UAV in the Malaysian part of Borneo, Colonel Danny Freah and his Whiplash team are sent to investigate. They discover that Dreamland's drone technology has been stolen. Who has betrayed them? China is rumored to be involved, as is Russia. But finding out who's really bankrolling the guerrillas means finding someone who knows combat UAVs inside and out. Someone with nothing to lose. Someone like Air Force ace Turk Mako.

The deadliest weapon…is Man. Top NATO representatives meet in Kiev to forge a new alliance…Powerful elements within a newly resurgent Russia decide the alliance must be stopped at all costs…The warriors of Dreamland have moved on. Some, like Breanna and Zen Stockard, to positions of power and influence; others, like Danny Freah and Nuri Lupo, into Whiplash, a cutting-edge combination of brain and brawn. Tasked by the President to handle the country's most deadly and sensitive jobs, the elite SpecWarfare unit marries muscle to technological prowess.

A volatile U.S. ally has fallen prey to the terrorist beast. India is the target of radical Islamic jihadists, and the world watches breathlessly as tensions escalate between the uneasy giant and its longtime nemesis, Pakistan — with China waiting in the wings, eager to flex its military might.

The Dreamland team has used stealth, raw nerve, and technology to defuse nightmares all across the globe. But now the darkness is racing toward America at blinding speed. With more than two dozen nuclear devices unaccounted for, the global masters of terror have set a catastrophe in motion: a surprise attack more deadly than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined. If the nation is to survive, Lieutenant Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian and his crew will have to reach deep into their cutting-edge arsenal. And they’ll have to do it shorthanded.

The world’s attention is focused on the historic plans of the U.S. and Iranian presidents to lay down their swords. But on the African continent, one man holds the power to obliterate the peace by unleashing terror and global chaos - and no one sees it coming. Hiding behind the bloody madness of tribal warfare in the Horn of Africa, Iranian functionary-turned-fanatic Bani Aberhadji has achieved the impossible - single-handedly creating a vast, invisible network dedicated to the construction, delivery, and detonation of a nuclear nightmare. Only by chance are American agents now learning of its existence, and it may already be too late.

Dreamland is the place where the nation's top minds come to develop artillery and aircraft that push beyond the cutting edge. And where the Air Force's top guns come to test them, on the frontlines of a new era in warfare. The fiasco of a spy's infiltration has the Pentagon looking for an excuse to close Dreamland down. To clean up the mess, and save Dreamland from the congressional chopping block, Lt. Colonel Tecumseh "Dog" Bastian is sent in.

As extremist Islamic pirates, armed and supported by a powerful Saudi terrorist, prey on civilian vessels in the Gulf of Aden, America aggressively answers with serious muscle - a next-generation littoral warship with a full range of automated weapons systems that the enemy has dubbed “Satan’s Tail.” However, unforeseen technological problems, combined with the suicidal tendencies of a fanatical foe, mean support is needed from above - and a pair of Dreamland’s awesome Megafortresses and their Flighthawk escorts are dispatched to the war zone.

One of the Air Force's top guns, Captain Breanna Stockard is training Brunei pilots to fly the EB-52 Megafortress. But when a violent attempted kidnapping threatens a major arms deal about to take place, Breanna and her husband, Major Jeff "Zen" Stockard, must uncover a plot that - in this volatile region of the world - could mean Armageddon.

The weapon is codenamed “Razor” - the brainchild of the brilliant minds at Dreamland - a mobile chemical laser system with a range of 600 kilometers, capable of downing anything that flies. The destruction of an American aircraft over Northern Iraq suggests the inexplicable and unthinkable: a vengeful foe now possesses the lethal technology. It is a fear that draws an old warrior out of retirement, and sends Dreamland’s best pilots to the skies to determine what the enemy has and to help take it away from him. But politics threatens to crush a covert engagement that must be won in the air and on the ground....

Hidden in the Nevada desert is America’s most advanced aerospace weapons – testing facility. Dreamland is the place where the nation’s top minds come to develop artillery and aircraft that push beyond the cutting edge. And where the Air Force’s top guns come to test them – on the front lines of a new era in warfare…A showdown between Indian and Chinese navies in the Pacific gives Dreamland the opportunity to test their new remote-operated underwater probe. Using the Piranha for surveillance, the U.S. watches as India and China circle each other like sharks. When the tension erupts into violence, innocent civilians are caught in the fray – and Captain Breanna Stockard is shot down trying to rescue them. To save her, Dreamland rushes an unmanned bomber project off the drawing boards – and in the sky…

Hidden in the Nevada desert is America’s most advanced aerospace weapons-testing facility. Dreamland is the place where the nation’s top minds come to develop artillery and aircraft that push beyond the cutting edge. And where the Air Force’s top guns come to test them – on the front lines of a new era in warfare… As politicians push for more budget cuts, Colonel “Dog” Bastian must do what he can to salvage a key experimental program known as ANTARES - a method of merging electronic data with a pilot’s natural senses.

The latest military miracle to come out of the Whiplash group was designed to eliminate any possibility of human error - yet civilians die when a computer-controlled UAV drone inexplicably goes rogue while the whole world watches. Now the entire Whiplash program is under fire, as the weapon’s creator heads into the blistering heat of the conflict to discover if sabotage caused his infallible machine to fail. But there’s an enemy waiting for him, determined to unleash more chaos and terror and death - which sends pilot Turk Mako to the skies once more to prove that, in the heat of battle, a skilled ace can do what no computer can.

In the blistering heat of the Sudan, the CIA has gone rogue. On the trail of a notorious terrorist, Agency operatives have overstepped their sanctioned boundaries. And now the ultimate weapon has fallen into the wrong hands.

Louis Massina is revolutionizing the field of robotics. His technological wonders are capable of locating disaster survivors, preventing nuclear meltdowns, and replacing missing limbs. After one of Massina's creations makes a miraculous rescue, an FBI agent recruits him to pursue criminals running a massive financial scam - and, not coincidentally, suspected of killing the agent's brother. Massina agrees to deploy a surveillance bot that uses artificial intelligence to follow its target.

Masters of astonishing military technology that enables them to deploy almost instantaneously to any part of the Earth, the Dreamland team must now stop a dangerous revolution in the making in Eastern Europe - where a mysterious group of insurgents has blown up an essential pipeline, thereby disrupting Europe’s gas supply. With NATO and the EU paralyzed by the crisis, it falls to Dreamland’s best and brightest to keep the world from the brink of another Cold War. But the secret hand of an old enemy is pulling the strings from the shadows.

The team behind the best-selling books that serve as prequels to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan talk about the fourth installment in their Starcatchers series, with middle graders ages 9 and up. Actor Jim Dale, best known from the Harry Potter audiobooks, will perform an excerpt. The event includes a discussion with the audience.

In this Q&A session, narrator Jim Dale and Paul Schwendener, co-producer of The Shoe Bird, talk about what makes this story so special, and why Jim says The Shoe Bird "is one of the best audiobooks I�ve ever made".