Showing results by narrator "Steve Carlson" in All Categories

"Winston!" "Oh, hey," Chip said lamely, spinning on his heel. "I didn't think you were still here." Seeing Brenden's confused look, he clarified. "No limo." "Oh, yeah." Brenden looked down at his boots, the brown leather just scuffed enough to be fashionable. "I hopped an Uber over. I thought maybe you'd give me a ride back to the hotel so we could talk."

With a history of molestation and abuse, Sage turned 18 living on borrowed time. After his mother had died the year before, Stan, his stepfather, had been disgustingly clear on the type of repayment that was expected as soon as Sage was of legal age. Sage would do almost anything to avoid becoming his stepfather's whore. At 34, Stefan was also alone. Quiet and serious, he was definitely an atypical biker with a heart of gold. What no one knew, not even Stefan himself, was how far he would go to protect an innocent that he had never met.

Caleb wasn't coming out, per se. That would imply that he had previously been closeted. In reality, it had just never occurred to him that he might be attracted to men. Until, that is, a pair of emerald eyes and a chiseled jawline at the gym caught his attention. After the man that he had thought he would spend the rest of his life with had suddenly walked out on him with no explanation, Kane had all but given up on love and immersed himself in his work. Not everyone gets a happily ever after.

Self-improvement can be slow. Mastery takes years. But you don't have to be a master to be good. "Good" is good enough to greatly improve your life. And you can be good at anything, fast. Defy the monotony of the status quo. Find freedom in being good at anything. Good At Anything, Fast! gives you a framework for getting consistently better, faster. If you want to be the best version of yourself, faster than you ever thought possible, then this book is for you!

Peter lives in a silent world. Thirteen, deaf, and tormented by neighborhood bullies, Peter seeks solace in summertime snorkeling outings with his eccentric Viking-horn-helmeted Uncle Sverrir. But after a dangerous encounter with a giant hammerhead predator, Peter discovers he has a unique gift: He can talk to sharks.

As he takes his final trip home, Samuel Wrightman thinks about the life he left behind in Bloomsdale, Georgia. Home. The memories, a mix of happiness and pain, are all he has left of the quiet little town. His mom, dad, and friends are all gone now. And Annie. Beautiful Annie is never far from his mind.

After Colby's estranged father returns to his white-trash home, the nine year old struggles to survive a promiscuous neighborhood mother, money sharks, and an uncontrollable autistic older brother while discovering the true cost of living and brotherhood.

Songs of the Deliverer is a re-imagining of the Gospel stories of the Bible written for teens and young adults. The novel and the reflections on the Songs of the Deliverer website provide a perfect way for young people to learn more about Christ and the faith to which we are called.

To bridge this gap between the "talk" and the "walk", Freeman and Auster provide a process through which organizations can collectively surface deeply held values that truly resonate with everyone, from top to bottom. Their Values Through Conversation (VTC) process focuses on four key types of values conversations: introspective, historical, connectedness, and aspirational.

Unbeknownst to Quarr, one of the ancient enemies of her people has already arrived at their intended destination, seeking to conquer and exploit the planet. And with an evil genius member of her family offering his services to the self-proclaimed deity, Quarr is in for a shock when their scoutship emerges from subspace and is caught in an unusual trap. Unable to escape back into subspace, they fight their way to the planet where the invincible entity and its minions are conducting a reign of terror.

In 1927, Today, millions of people fly, and everyone who does views the ground thousands of feet below. But in 1927, air traffic was a relatively new phenomenon, especially in the wilds of southern Peru, and when the first planes passed over the sprawling expanse of the Nazca Desert, passengers looking out their windows saw an incredible sight that they could hardly believe.

John's wine reviews are part history lesson, part personal epiphany, part peep show, part discovery, and they are always peppered with a dash of enthusiastic admiration. You see, John doesn't write reviews for wines he doesn't like. He leaves that for the professionals. John only reviews wines he loves, and his reviews reflect that in an especially clear way. For John these reviews are personal.

Jean Claude "Skeeter" Johanson has never caught a break. Bouncing from a messed-up childhood into prison and back to his dying small-town home; he scrapes by as a low-level drug dealer. On a day that starts bad and pushes him toward a desperate end, he encounters a mystical stranger on a lonely road who saves him in more ways than one.

Young lawyer Ed Davis sits in his boss' fancy office, sure he is about to be fired. After two years of gradually slipping into addiction, he has finally hit bottom, and pretty much knows it. Instead though, Ed is offered a mission to an exotic island and a promise of redemption. Find fugitive gambler Orleans Moss and save his career? Seems easy enough. But Ed's personal ghosts follow him to remote Panglao island, where nothing, including himself, is what it seems.

Not on my watch! So declared Montana Senator Beauregard Bryant when the small town of Twin Rivers, Montana, sought a lucrative federal contract to house Guantanamo Bay prisoners in its languishing prison. Undaunted, newly elected town Mayor Phoenix Jamborsky hires local lawyer Gabriel Lantagne to help secure the controversial contract against the wishes of the powers that be in Montana.

While the big bad corporation has often been the offender in many of the world’s greatest environmental disasters, in the case of the mass poisoning at Camp Lejeune the culprit is a revered institution: The US Marine Corps. For two decades now, revelations have steadily emerged about pervasive contamination, associated clusters of illness and death among the Marine families stationed there, and military stonewalling and failure to act.

Agent Orange, the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, the Virginia Tech massacre, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Deep Horizon gulf oil spill: Each was a disaster in its own right. What they had in common was their aftermath - each required compensation for lives lost, bodies maimed, livelihoods wrecked, economies and ecosystems upended. In each instance, an objective third party had to step up and dole out allocated funds: In each instance, Presidents, Attorneys General, and other public officials have asked Kenneth R. Feinberg to get the job done.

In an ancient civilization that spans Earth's galaxy, only those with strength of purpose and razor-sharp cunning can survive the wrath of the lustful and the craven. The Time Treasure: Insidious Inheritance is an enthralling, wildly inventive science fiction odyssey by Mark Fulcher and Annet Libeau, which pits the ruthless against the righteous in an epic galactic battle royale that could transform the universe as we know it.

Are you spending hours on end training your lamb, only to place at the bottom of your class? Have you been trying to win for years just to come up short every time? Is this going to be your first time showing and you can't seem to find good information anywhere?

Does it feel like people are getting stupider? No, it’s not your imagination. New government data shows that the general intelligence level in the US is plummeting. Investigative reporter Ben Wozniak is trying to uncover why. Is the quality of teachers to blame? Or the increased use of AI? Or dependence on social media for all of our opinions? Or is it the rise of book banning by conservative school boards? Or chemicals in the water? Or maybe something in the in the air?