Showing results by narrator "Shawn Compton" in All Categories

In a near-future New York City, where self-driving cars roam the city streets, rival entrepreneurs Brandon and Tyler compete to produce the smartest AIs, training them in a virtual game world. As the two rivals struggle to dominate the market, their personal enmity pushes them to attack each other's reputations, hack each other's cars, and develop ever more sophisticated algorithms to keep their customers safe. The result? Intelligent computers that excel at using all available data to determine which humans should live, and which should die.

Most of us never get to test ourselves in combat. As a UH-1 Helicopter pilot flying in the jungle highlands of South Vietnam, Warrant Officer Jim Crigler and the men he flew with were tested daily. Coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s was challenging for most young men of that era. Throw in drugs, free love, draft notices, the Vietnam War, and a country deeply divided, and you have one of the most important books of this genre. This true story is a raw, bold, introspective autobiography.

For over 100 cycles, the Marshals of Rhea have defended their strongholds against the wastelands’ many dangers, from vicious raiders to mechanical beasts. Anticipation is high as they gather for a major hunting expedition. So when disaster strikes and House Omega is left leaderless, it falls to no-nonsense Head Cook Xanthe to investigate. She’s not alone, however, and is aided by an unlikely group of individuals - including a haughty young noblewoman, a world-weary Armorer, a fastidious bodyguard, and a whimsical assassin.

James Longstreet's countermarch and Samuel Johnston's morning reconnaissance are two of the most enigmatic events of the Battle of Gettysburg. Both have been viewed as major factors in the Confederacy's loss of the battle and, in turn, the war. Yet much of it lies shrouded in mystery. Recognizing the multitude of factors that affect human memory, In the Shadow of the Round Tops explores how the individual soldiers experienced, remembered, and wrote about the battle, and how those memories have created a cloud over James Longstreet's countermarch and Samuel Johnston's reconnaissance.

Six months after the murder of his uncle, Sean is trying to get his life together. He's stopped drinking, he's taking better care of himself, and he's working hard to keep a fledgling security business afloat. At a blood plasma bank Sean frequents to earn extra income, he meets the distraught relative of Andrew Carson, a man who went missing weeks earlier on the other side of the state, with a pool of blood in the snowy driveway of his home as the only clue to the man's fate.

Echo has landed on his feet after finding himself in a mysterious other world with tens of thousands of gamers, and forms a close-knit unit of people like him. Echo's fighters quickly level up and get ahead of everyone else. But much remains unclear. Where is he, and what is this world? Who are the mysterious "arbiters" enforcing the rules of the game? What role does the local population play in all this? How deep can he delve into the underground realm full of unspeakable monsters? Complicating matters, the rules of the game suddenly start to change.

In this brutal, fast-moving thriller from Ralph Dennis, the author of the legendary Hardman series of crime novels, Kane finds himself caught between the mob, Cuban revolutionaries, and his own government as he seeks retribution for a man murdered for uncovering small-town corruption...and justice for another man on death row, falsely convicted of raping and murdering a child.

A mysterious, one-eyed stranger wanders into Farewell, New Mexico, a dusty border town rife with corruption. He's known only as The Preacher, an ex-Priest, ex-Special Forces commando, and now a professional gambler who has given up on his own salvation...but is determined to find justice for a murdered Vietnam vet...even if it means taking on the entire, God forsaken town.

The grandson and great-grandson of Chicago police officers, Chicago Police Detective James Sherlock was CPD through and through. His career had seen its share of twists and turns, from his time working undercover to thwart robberies on Chicago's L trains to his years as a homicide detective. He thought he had seen it all. But on this day, he was at the records center to see the case file for the murder of John Hughes, who was 17 years old when he was gunned down on Chicago's Southwest Side in 1976. The case's threads led everywhere.

For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit. 

After fastball phenom Prospero Stark's baseball career craters in a Mexican jail, he retreats to a trailer park in the scorching Arizona desert. He lives in peaceful anonymity with a collection of colorful outcasts until someone leaves his former catcher's severed hand on his doorstep. Beautiful, hard-living reporter Roxanne Santa Cruz, who keeps a .380 Colt and a bottle of Chivas in her car, joins Stark to help him uncover his friend's fate, a dangerous pursuit that pits them against a ruthless gang of drug-dealing killers.

The exact qualities that bring an individual to found a start-up company (their brilliance and expertise) are what prevent them from achieving the success they are looking for - this is the paradox that is entrepreneurship. What starts out as freedom and financial independence turns into grueling hours and added stress and bills. But successful five-time entrepreneur Curtis Morley is here to help. He shares that every entrepreneur is typically doing the same 15 things wrong or just not doing them at all - regardless of industry or business type.  

At 28 years old, Eli "Berg" Koenigsberg has never encountered a challenge he couldn't push through, until a head injury leaves him with lingering headaches and a weakness for opiates. Berg moves to a remote Northern California town, seeking space and time to recover, but soon finds himself breaking into homes in search of pills. Addled by addiction and chronic pain, Berg meets Alejandro, a reclusive, master boatbuilder, and begins to see a path forward. Alejandro offers Berg honest labor, but more than this, he offers him a new approach to his suffering, a template for survival amid intense pain. Nurtured by his friendship with Alejandro and aided, too, by the comradeship of many in Talinas, Berg begins to return to himself. 

After months on the run for an assassination they call justice, David Shaw and Natalie Hale have built a new life in the shadows. But when a hit squad tracks them down in the Caribbean, it's clear their enemies aren't done with them yet. Someone with deep connections wants them dead—someone with the power to erase them for good. That someone is Connor Roark. A dirty CIA officer with everything to lose, Roark has spent years operating in the darkest corners of international crime. Now, with his illicit enterprise crumbling, he's tying up loose ends. 

The year is 2283. Though more than a quarter-century has passed since the end of the last war, the Galactic Confederation is still busy picking up the pieces. Whole sectors of the galaxy remain lawless, rife with corruption and greed. The criminal element has a well-established foothold on these sectors. It is a good time to be a bounty hunter.

When a local businessman’s arm is found in the jowls of a large alligator, Clint Wolf and Susan Wilson investigate to find out how it got there. They quickly discover that the man was murdered, but thanks to a secret force working against them, solving the case will be no easy task. A new dog comes into Clint’s life, and not only does it bring him hope after having lost his wife and daughter two years earlier, but it proves to be quite the guard dog when a dangerous stranger comes sneaking around.

Charles "Chuck" Mawhinney is a United States Marine who holds the Corps' record for the most confirmed sniper kills (and the second most of any US service member in history), having recorded 103 confirmed kills in 16 months during the Vietnam War. He was also the youngest—killing the enemy as a teenager. In 1967, at the age of 18, Mawhinney joined the Marines and began his assent from recruit to the Marine Corps’ deadliest sniper. 

A tribute to the glorious slasher movies of the 1980s.

The year was 1971. Thirty-year-old Charles Lubar opted to make his next home in the UK. "Hired off the street" by two American lawyers in London, Lubar could never have predicted that his work would soon put him front and center at some of the biggest moments with some of the biggest names in showbiz. From the James Bond franchise to Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat; from Jim Henson and The Muppets to Michael Jackson and the Beatles; from behind the Iron Curtain to the islands of the Netherlands Antilles, Lubar's rare knowledge of the tax codes spanning made him an indispensable figure.

Langdon is a laid back, slacker detective, happy with his work, friends, and way of life in the town of Brunswick, Maine. To complement his income in Brunswick’s scarce private detective market, Langdon also owns and operates a mystery bookstore named after his trusted companion, Coffee Dog.