Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

We're currently in the golden age of superhero blockbusters. Movies like Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Joker, and Avengers: Endgame routinely break box office records and compete for Oscars. Yet, Zack Snyder's 2017 behemoth Justice League - a veritable sure bet at the Hollywood casino - tanked miserably, and the behind-the-scenes reasons for the movie's demise are fascinating.

American expat Paul Leibovitz was once an ambitious advisor, dedicated father, and loving husband. But after living for nearly 30 years in Hong Kong, personal tragedy strikes, and Paul's marriage unravels in the fallout.

When Randa, a reporter for an alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, receives an urgent phone call from her estranged lover, Cam, she rushes to his apartment. She arrives to discover that he's leapt from the building to his death. Police believe that before committing suicide, Cam also murdered someone in a convenience store, but Randa does not believe Cam was capable of such an act. She seeks out Cam's brother, Jack, who is living off the grid somewhere near Atlanta, in hope of figuring out what really happened.

After Catherine Wells’ ship experiences a deadly incident in deep space and loses contact with NASA, the entire world believes her dead. Miraculously - and mysteriously - she survived, but with little memory of what happened. Her reentry after a decade away is turbulent: Her husband's moved on with another woman, and the young daughter she left behind has grown into a teenager she barely recognizes. Catherine, too, is different. There are periods of time she can’t account for, and she begins waking up in increasingly strange and worrisome locations, like restricted areas of NASA.

In Los Angeles, Theodore and his team have no choice but to go into the lion’s den to learn the secrets that have not only destroyed their lives, but perhaps the lives of an entire generation. Their road leads to Cerberus. Can he, Jack, Ludwig, and Yuna Saki come back with the truth that Rhein Ruhr Industries is determined to keep buried? Once behind enemy lines, they uncover a plot that goes all the way to Ganymede and changes their objective to just one thing: survival.

Whole hog barbecue is a culinary art form that is both disappearing and experiencing a renaissance. In The One True Barbecue, Rien Fertel chronicles the uniquely Southern art of whole hog barbecue - America's original barbecue - through the professional pitmasters who make a living firing, smoking, flipping, and cooking 200-plus pound pigs.

In Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the cyber curtain. First, we look at the hackers - who they are, how they work, their motivations, and methods. The opening article examines hardware - specifically microprocessors and why they are vulnerable to tampering. Then we turn to the internal attacks, the worms and viruses whose resulting damage ranges from merely inconvenient and attention-getting to expensive and dangerous. Next, we take a broad look at issues of privacy and the technology used to gather and track personal information.

What did President Ronald Reagan think of Rocky IV? How did the Matthew Broderick film WarGames inform America's missile defense system? What Michael J. Fox movie made such an impression on President Reagan that he felt compelled to mention it in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress? Over the course of eight years, Mark Weinberg travelled to Camp David each weekend with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man - who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age? - lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?

Including stories first published in Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post, this best-selling collection follows the romantic escapades of Max Shulman's famed collegiate Don Juan. Like most undergraduates, Dobie Gillis is a bit scattered - sometimes he's as quick as a whip, other times dull as a doorstop, and his major keeps changing from chemistry to law to journalism. But no matter what subject he should be studying, Dobie always has a girl on his mind.

Discover the definitive inside account of how the Warriors, under the leadership of venture capitalist Joe Lacob and Hollywood producer Peter Guber, quickly became one of the most remarkable success stories ever, both in sports and business. In just five years, they turned a declining franchise with no immediate hope into one of the greatest teams in basketball, a period that included the rise of All-Star point guard Stephen Curry and two NBA championships in the past three years.

Sara Lennox moved to an apartment complex on the outskirts of Outer Banks to escape a complicated past - and even her name - and rebuild a new life for herself under the radar. But Sara cannot help but notice the family next door, especially 12-year-old Cassie and five-year-old Boon. She hears rumors and whispers of a recent tragedy slowly tearing them apart. When a raging storm threatens then slams the coastal community, Sara makes a quick, bold decision: Rescue Cassie and Boon from the storm and their broken home - without telling a soul.

Jake Stiles has no idea what he's signing up for when he dashes into the rain to help a stranger and her dog who have been in a car accident, but fate has stepped in. Jenna Dunning was on her way to return her sister's high-energy border collie to a shelter after another failed attempt at a forever home for him when a distracted driver ran into them. Jenna is being taken to the hospital and must rely on a caring stranger to take charge of the terrified canine.

A love triangle plays out over decades on a Montana dude ranch. A hurdler and a gymnast spend a single night together in the Olympic village. Mistakes and mysteries weave an intangible web around an old man’s deathbed in Paris, connecting disparate destinies. On the slopes of an unfinished ski resort, a young woman searches for her vanished lover. A couple’s Romanian honeymoon goes ominously awry, and, in the mesmerizing title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a Hollywood cult.

Amidst the turmoil and loneliness of the pandemic, All of Us Together in the End is a poignant and often humorous investigation into belief set in a time where it seems people will believe anything. It is an elegiac affirmation of the awesome, strange, otherworldly ways our loved ones remain alive to us, even when they are out of reach.

With the first disappearance, the townspeople begin to mistrust outsiders. When the second girl goes missing, neighbors and childhood friends start to eye each other warily. And with the third disappearance, the sleepy little town awakens to a full-blown nightmare. The Church of Dead Girls displays Stephen Dobyns' remarkable gifts for exploring human nature, probing the ruinous effects of suspicion.

Eric Brach's new book Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the moment: opioid addiction. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us - even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives.

Summer 1989: Gunther Fahnstiel, once a tough cop who wasn't averse to taking a little side money from a certain madam, has just escaped the dementia ward of his Wichita nursing home. He's not exactly sure where he wants to go, but wherever it is, it has to do with the bag full of cash belonging to the man he accidentally backed over with his RV in 1979. During his search, Gunther begins to relive the violent fallout of that madam's sex lottery 40 years ago. As Gunther's memories unravel, his past and present will collide in a devastating reckoning.

Top Manhattan criminal defense attorney Sam Tahar seems to have it all: fame, fortune, an enviable marriage to a prominent socialite, and two wonderful children. But his success is built on a lie - he isn't the person he pretends to be. Growing up a poor Tunisian immigrant, crammed inside the walls of a grimy Paris apartment tower, Samir Tahar seemed destined for life as either a drug dealer or a delivery man - until he decided "he was going to cut through the bars of his social jail cell, even if he had to do it with his teeth".

The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave.