Showing results by narrator "Christine Marshall" in All Categories

For billions of people, having a religious belief system provides purpose in life. For some, religion serves as a guide for moral behavior. After many years exploring the foundations of various world religions, Jason Boyett has written this comprehensive, easy-to-understand exploration of the 12 major world religions through a meticulous, yet unbiased lens. 12 Major World Religions offers an impartial look at where each of these belief systems intersects, how they differ, and why some have been - or are currently - misunderstood. 

From the invention of interest in Mesopotamia and the origin of paper money in China, to the creation of mutual funds, inflation-indexed bonds, and global financial securities, here is a sweeping survey of financial innovations that have changed the world. Written by a distinguished group of experts - including Robert Shiller, Niall Ferguson, Valerie Hansen, and many others - The Origins of Value traces the evolution of finance through 4,000 years of history.

Pure Land is the story of the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon and how McGivney's quest to investigate the victim's life and death wound up guiding the author through her own life-threatening crisis. On this journey stretching from the southern tip of Japan to the bottom of Grand Canyon, and into the ugliest aspects of human behavior, Pure Land offers proof of the healing power of nature and of the resiliency of the human spirit.

This is the remarkable behind-the-scenes story of the creation and growth of Airbnb, the online lodging platform that has become, in under a decade, the largest provider of accommodations in the world. At first just the wacky idea of cofounders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb has disrupted the $500 billion hotel industry, and its $30 billion valuation is now larger than that of Hilton and close to that of Marriott.

Lucie Montgomery attends a Thanksgiving weekend party for friends and neighbors at Hawthorne Castle, an honest-to-goodness castle owned by the Avery family, the last great newspaper dynasty in America and owner of the Washington Tribune. During the party, Prescott Avery, the 95-year-old family patriarch offers to pay Lucie any price for a cache of 200-year-old Madeira that her great-great-uncle discovered hidden in the US Capitol in the 1920s. By the end of the party Lucie and her fiancé discover Prescott’s body lying in his wine cellar. Is one of the guests a murderer?

Combining cutting-edge research with broad anecdotal evidence from her work as a clinical psychologist to illustrate just how invaluable spirituality is to a child's mental and physical health, Miller translates these findings into practical advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop and encourage their children's - as well as their own - well-being. In this provocative, conversation-starting book, Dr. Miller presents us with a pioneering new way to think about parenting our modern youth.

St. Paul, Minnesota, 1946: Introspective Shannon Malone and her more popular sister Eliza are Irish twins and best friends. As little girls, they relied on each other for companionship and affection as their mother remained distant, beating back the demons of her own mysterious childhood. As womanhood approaches, both look forward to promising - though different - futures. But when tragedy rocks the Malone family, secrets bloom and one sister leaves, possibly forever. The other, physically and emotionally scarred, vows to hold the invisible thread that runs deeply between them.

This groundbreaking feminist classic dismantles the way we view rape in our culture and replaces it with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure.  

A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world's the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity's long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the 20th century, and charts its future direction.

The future of democracy is about to implode. After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured 30 years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.

On the eve of WWII, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the 20th century's most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily Hahn was a legendary New Yorker writer who would cover China for nearly 50 years, and play an integral part in opening Asia up to the West. But at the height of the Depression, "Mickey" Hahn, had just arrived in Shanghai nursing a broken heart after a disappointing affair.

It's harvest season at Montgomery Estate Vineyard - the busiest time of year for winemakers in Atoka, Virginia. A skull is unearthed near Lucie Montgomery's family cemetery, and the discovery of the bones coincides with the arrival of handsome, wealthy aristocrat Jean-Claude de Merignac. He's come to be the head winemaker at neighboring La Vigne Cellars, but he's no stranger to Lucie - he was her first crush 20 years ago when she spent a summer in France. Not long after his arrival, Jean-Claude is found dead.

Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.

Married 20 years to Thomas and living in Nashville with their two children, Maggie is drawn ineluctably into a passionate affair while still fiercely committed to her husband and family. What begins as a platonic intellectual and spiritual exchange between writer Maggie and poet James, gradually transforms into an emotional and erotically-charged bond that challenges Maggie's sense of loyalty and morality, drawing her deeper into the darkness of desire.

Asian American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. It's a city within a city, a rich melange of smells, sounds, dark shops, and close-knit families - a world all its own. And in all of Chinatown, there is no one like Lydia, who has a nose for trouble, a disapproving Chinese mother, and a partner named Bill Smith who's been living above a bar for 16 years. Hired to find some precious stolen porcelain, Lydia follows a trail of clues from highbrow art dealers into a world of Chinese gangs.

Nicki Janssen's days are numbered, but she refuses to accept her fate lying down. Defying her father and doctors, she hits the road with a pocketful of cash, a bus ticket - and a romantic fantasy of riding off with her childhood crush. Handsome, dangerous Brad Ward is facing a different kind of sentence. Sent to prison for felony murder, he has escaped and rekindled his relationship with Nicki. But when Nicki's father joins forces with a deputy sheriff, the search for the runaways ignites a manhunt.

An all-new anthology showcasing the dragons of the Forgotten Realms world, including a new story from New York Times best-selling author R.A. Salvatore. This anthology features all-new stories by R.A. Salvatore, Ed Greenwood, Elaine Cunningham, and the authors of the R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen series. It fleshes out many of the details from the current Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy by Richard Lee Byers and includes a short story by Byers.

For Iris, he sudden impulse to write a piece about her mother leads to a shot at literary success. The piece recounts an eerie Irish fairy tale her mother used to tell her at bedtime - and nestled inside is the sad story of her mother's death, a strange, untimely end in a fire 30 years ago. When Iris returns to the remote Hotel Equinox in the Catskills, the place where she grew up, to write her mother's biography and search for her mother's missing manuscript, she unravels a haunting mystery that threatens to envelope her.

No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.

It's Boston, 1919, and the Cast Iron club is packed. Onstage, hemopaths - whose "afflicted" blood gives them the ability to create illusions through art - Corinne and Ada have been best friends ever since infamous gangster Johnny Dervish recruited them into his circle. By night they perform for Johnny's crowds, and by day they con Boston's elite. When a job goes wrong and Ada is imprisoned, she realizes how precarious their position is. After she escapes, two of the Cast Iron's hires are shot, and Johnny disappears.