Showing results by narrator "A.T. Chandler" in All Categories

Weaving the brackish humor of Chuck Palahniuk with the empathy of Barbara Ehrenreich, J. R. Helton brings to life an obscured underside of the American psyche in this unflinching account of life inside the working class of Texas in the 1980s. We first meet Helton as a struggling writer succumbing to the bleak reality of what it means to support himself and a wife. That despair is transformed into resilience as Helton insightfully narrates his wayward years, enduring hateful employers and mind-numbing manual labor.

Scientists have spotted holes opening up in Earth's magnetosphere, and now a massive, deadly eruption of solar radiation is hurtling toward the planet at one million miles per hour. With only three days before impact, the American president turns to two unlikely heroes: inventor Calder Sinclair and physicist-turned-news-correspondent Allie Armendariz.

How far would a villain go to help a friend? Lord Arkus of Blackriver Castle thinks doing three heroic deeds is a bit too far. Not only is it plain detestable, it could ruin his reputation and get him in trouble with the Villains League. On the other hand, it's not like he's got friends to spare. And losing the League's membership isn't the end of the world, one can always work independently.

His power is great. The price he had paid for it and the pain he carries are even greater. "The pain takes over sometimes," as he puts it. He can be ruthless then. However, he still has a heart. He is learning to let it beat once again. This is a combined edition of Books 1-3 of the Dark Elf of Syron series of fantasy novellas.

Lash by bloody lash, the she-devil from Dallas would get her revenge.

Ted Barstow wasn't a spy. He didn't even work for the government. He was simply an American tourist on vacation in a small Austrian village. He had met Erica, beautiful and intelligent, and the attraction had been electric.

Hallucination... or time travel? One man alone against the cosmos, creating his own reality! Exiled on Mars! Johnsmith Biberkopf escapes from a penal colony on the Red Planet and learns that his hallucinations are real - space and time can be manipulated. Kidnapped by Vikings who have sailed through the continua since ancient times, Johnsmith embarks on an epic adventure, an infinite journey through the multiverse. Facing alien menaces, he learns the terrifying truth about the power of illusion.

Lord Arkus of Blackriver Castle readily admits that he is a villain and sees no reason why it should stop him from being the protagonist of this book. After all, Prince Kellemar, an aspiring hero, has defeated him in a rather questionable way.

Dr. Niels Berners - a Swiss plastic surgeon living in New York - is struggling to recover from his dysfunctional son's abandonment of him. He joins a group of four other parents, all with absent children either in jail or in jeopardy, to discuss their feelings and seek a sense of community, comfort, and closure.

Central Oregon is the last frontier, with transportation still by stagecoach and freight wagon. Now there's a movement afoot for a people's railroad. For years, competing railroad barons James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman have done nothing, but now they both set about building a line there. And for years their front men, Lee Dawes and Mike Quinn, have competed for rights-of-way - and for women. Attracted to Deborah Haig, Dawes is nettled to see her in an intimate meeting with Quinn. But there is something else....

In a future where minds are enslaved by computer chips, one man seeks revenge. Michael Berlyn is an American computer game designer and writer. He is known as an Implementor at Infocom, part of the text adventure game design team. Berlyn joined Marc Blank in founding the game company Eidetic, which later became Sony Bend. He is also a composer and continues to create games for the Apple App Store.

The groundbreaking new change-management strategy that will give you the edge in a business world where nothing stays the same. Selling Vision provides a sales approach designed specifically to help you sell new products or services that require significant change in the way you do business.

Low performance and high turnover is not the result of lazy, apathetic workers. It's not about decreasing budgets. And it's not about a terrible economy. It's about leadership that doesn't engage employees. In Nine Minutes on Monday, leadership guru James Robbins argues that employee engagement comes down to one thing: a constant dedication to meeting the universal needs that drive performance excellence.

The cast of cosmic characters: A prodigal worm, a telepathic, egotistical, totally unscrupulous little alien running away from his father becomes the biggest prize in the universe. Capture the slimy brat and win an entire planet! A cosmic hustler, an effete snob who ekes out a comfortable living as the president's son-in-law and perfects his reflexes with endless contests of cosmic pool, becomes the most important element in a delicate game of interspatial espionage - and the galaxy's prime target for assassination.

Captain Torren, the warden of the Dormigan Prison, knows that the mysterious Prisoner 34 is much more dangerous than the authorities think. Torren does his best to guard him, going so far as to break some of his orders, but the new governor's sudden wish to personally inspect the prison threatens to destroy the shaky balance the warden has achieved. Will the Prisoner comply and help Torren through the inspection? What will he ask in return? And will he keep his word?

She's a Ranger, a wild and savvy knife-fighter, determined to get help in finding her partner who's lost on the treacherous northern border. He's a scholar who sees visions, eager to escape the confines of city life and the shadow of his charismatic mother. With the assassination of a beloved leader and the city in turmoil, the two have only each other to turn to. What begins as a rescue mission turns deadly as together they unravel the secret that lies beneath Laurea's idyllic surface.

Renowned and knighted for capturing the fearsome Dark Elf of Syron, Sir Fredric has nagging doubts about his victory. His brother Malgrid's drunken remark strengthens dire suspicions. Was it all some devious scheme? Fredric has enough enemies who would want to compromise his honor, especially with the prestigious Jewel Quest coming up. It seems that there is only one person who can possibly shed some light on the situation - the Dark Elf himself. But will the captured enemy speak? Will Fredric discover the truth before a plot far more elaborate and danger much greater than he realizes take his life?

An old Ford with simple carburetor called a farm vehicle from 1965, the all steel monster filling the end of the driveway against the sidewalk and white picket fence is adorned with gods, figures, wicked and mean creatures of plaster and perhaps sculpted elves. Mixed among the flowers by the walk, and towards the west where the mountains stand before the ocean begins is a line-up of gods like headstones for memory of previous tenants in this rooming house among the redwood trees.

Growing up, Dean Perrasani always dreamed of following in the footsteps of his idol and older brother, Tyler. At 19 his dream would be fulfilled. Dean is now president of Phi Beta Regnum, the very fraternity Tyler ran nearly 10 years earlier. To the outsider Regnum is your typical fraternity. But that’s what they want everybody to believe. Secretly it’s a crime syndicate created by one of the most ruthless mobsters in the world, Alfred Calarone.

Being a teenage literary prodigy is hard. Richard Goodman may have a book contract at 17, but his parents don’t respect his opinions, he can’t lose his virginity, and his ego inflates and deflates with every breath. Even when Richard receives the attention he craves, he finds that fame and fortune can’t deliver him from his own flaws. The Work Is Innocent is Yglesias’s fictional take on his own freakishly precocious literary coming-out as a teen.