Showing results by narrator "Dan Bittner" in All Categories

In January of 2019, Nicholas Lalla made his first visit to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to consider working on an economic development project he had been invited to lead. Listening to Tulsans talk about racism, poverty, and trauma, the need for redevelopment, and the city’s broader desire to change economic course inspired him to accept the role and found Tulsa Innovation Labs (TIL). In Reinventing the Heartland, Lalla shows how cities that have been left out of the innovation system can grow their own vibrant tech ecosystems while at the same time building a more inclusive and equitable economy.

Showrunner Ethan Harris had a hit with The Murder Show, a television crime drama that features a private detective who solves cases the police can’t. But after his pitch for the fourth season is rejected by the network, he returns home to Minnesota looking for inspiration. His timing is fortunate—his former classmate Ro Greeman is now a local police officer, and she's uncovered new information about the devastating hit and run that killed their mutual friend Ricky the summer after high school. She asks Ethan to help her investigate.

When Saba Khan’s apartment burns in a mysterious fire, possibly a hate crime, her Chicago high school rallies around her. Her family moves rent-free into a luxury apartment, Saba’s Facebook page explodes, and she starts (secretly) dating a popular boy. Then a quirky piece of art donated to a school fund-raising effort for the Khans is revealed to be an unknown work by a famous artist, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Saba’s life turns upside down again.

The Kick-A** Book of Cobra Kai is a celebration of the superfans — an essential companion to the show acting as a master sensei ready to guide listeners through the karate-crazed San Fernando Valley. The legacy of The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai continues with interviews with Ralph Macchio (Daniel LaRusso), William Zabka (Johnny Lawrence), Martin Kove (John Kreese), Xolo Maridueña (Miguel Diaz), and Mary Mouser (Samantha LaRusso).

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. This anthology includes brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.

Grist Mill Road is a dark, twisted, and expertly plotted Rashomon-style tale. The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends—Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah—are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again—with even more devastating results.

The stories in this collection reflect a fundamental truth about Santa Fe: history depends on who's telling it. Too often the story of this city has been told only by the conquerors and the tourism PR firms. Hear the stories that never make the glossy tour brochures: the working class and the underground, the decolonized and the ever-haunted; the Santa Fe only we know.... Conquered and reconquered, colonized and commodified, Santa Fe understands - from historical genocide to the murders of family members - the intimacy of violence.

On his birthday, Billy Miller wishes for something exciting to happen. But he immediately regrets his wish when an ambulance rushes to his neighbor’s house. Is Billy responsible? Award-winning author Kevin Henkes delivers a short, funny, and emotionally complex novel complete with misplaced love letters, surprising critters, art projects, misguided tattoos - and another surprise for Billy and his family, maybe the best one yet!

Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. For the most part, every day is exactly the same for Ivan, which is why he turns everything into a game, manipulating people and events around him for his own amusement. Until Polina arrives. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The nurses like her. She is exquisite. Soon, he cannot help being drawn to her and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and everything they never dared dream of.

Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers and creative dreamers of our time. The many honors he received, which included an Emmy and Academy Award nomination for adaptations of his work, culminated in the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a 2004 National Medal of Arts, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. For many years NASA and the Disney Studio felt the impact of Ray Bradbury’s creativity, and his fiction has found its way into hundreds of anthologies, textbooks, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program.

Gorgeous Vivi is the star of the Aquacade synchronized swimming spectacular, and plucky Max is a journalist for the fair's daily paper. Both are striving to make their way in a world where men try to control their actions and where secrets are closely kept. But when Vivi and Max become friends and their personal and professional prospects are put in jeopardy, they team up to help each other succeed and to realize their dreams during the most meaningful summer of their lives.

Welcome to Anara, a world mysteriously crumbling to devastation, where nothing is what it seems: Ancient relics emit technologically advanced powers, members of the old Order are hunted by the governing Watch yet revered by the people, and the great energy that connects all seems to also be destroying all. The only hope for the world lies in Galen, a man of the old Order and a Keeper of relics, and his 16-year-old apprentice, Raffi.

Trapped in sunny, stifling, small-town suburbia, 17-year-old Morgan knows why she's in therapy. She can't count the number of times she's been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her "weird" outfits, and been told she's not "really" black. Also, she's spent most of her summer crying in bed. So there's that, too. Lately, it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat - and it's telling them how to feel, who to vote for, what to believe. Morgan wonders, when can she turn this song off and begin living for herself?

The fourth installment in the Relic Master quartet!Galen and Raffi's quest has brought them to the Pits of Maar. There, below the surface of the world, in the deepest darkness, a most evil thing is waiting for them to come.

Shortly after his thirtieth birthday, John Turner receives a call from an old college friend who makes him an odd job offer: move to Ukraine to teach customer service agents at a start-up how to sound American. John’s never been to Ukraine, doesn’t speak Ukrainian, and is supposed to be a journalist, not a consultant. But having just gone through a breakup and still grieving his father’s death, it might just be the new start he’s been looking for.

Gemma Peters is doing fine. She’s making a name for herself in the L.A. music biz as a radio producer. She’s got a ride-or-die best friend in Lila, and she gets to come home to Rex, her loving Labrador, every night. But ever since her rock star ex-boyfriend used her to get a record deal from her rock legend dad, she’s made a “no musicians” rule when it comes to dating that’s becoming more like a “no dating” rule, period. So, when Gemma crashes (literally) into Jack one Thursday morning, at first she feels like fate might finally be doing her a favor. The truth is this is no ordinary Thursday.

Poppy, Dash, Azumi, and Dylan may have made it out of Shadow House - but the grounds are a whole new nightmare. Someone they thought was a friend is hunting them, and there's no place that's safe now that they've woken the shadow creature. If they want to survive, they'll have to figure out once and for all what the house wants from them, and what - or who - they'll need to leave behind in order to escape...or risk being trapped within Shadow House forever.

Wren Martin isn’t what you would call a popular girl. She is remarkably average, gets good grades, and aspires to get a scholarship to her dream college and leave her hometown, as it’s filled with impossible memories. Asher Reed - star athlete and heartthrob of Eastview High - is everything wrong with high school in one frustratingly good-looking body. But when an on-field accident leaves him sidelined for the season, he takes an interest in Wren.

Trophy Son tells the story of tennis prodigy Anton Stratis, from an isolated childhood of grueling practice under the eye of his obsessed father to his dramatic rise through the intensely competitive world of professional tennis. Written with an insider knowledge of the tennis circuit, Trophy Son explores a young man striving to find balance in his life, navigating moral compromises, performance-enhancing drugs, and the elusive lure of wealth and celebrity.

No one knows how the world will end. On a secret compound in the Washington wilderness, Honey Juniper and her sisters are training to hunt, homestead, and protect their own. Prepare for every situation. But when danger strikes from within, putting her sisters at risk, training becomes real life, and only one thing is certain: Nowhere is safe.