Showing results by narrator "Joe Barrett" in All Categories

Definitely not for baby's bedtime reading, this hilarious and irreverent take on classic fairytales - think Shrek for grownups - combines humor, mystery, and characters only a fairy godmother could love...

In 1942 Stanley Johnston is embarked in the aircraft carrier USS Lexington during the Battle of the Coral Sea. In addition to recording the crew's doomed effort to save the ship, Johnston displays great heroism, earning the praise of the Lexington's senior officers. They even recommend him for a medal. Then his story darkens. On board the rescue ship Barnett, Johnston is assigned to a cabin where messages from the Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Chester Nimitz, are routinely, and carelessly, circulated.

From the introduction by David L. Ulin: "For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began."

In the 1940s, Walter L. Shaw was thinking of speakerphones, conference calls, and call forwarding. Ahead of the world by decades, Shaw spent a lifetime inventing and patenting the many means of communication we take for granted, but he was repeatedly cheated by shrewd businessmen and big corporations.

When the 300-year-old village cemetery at Newbury, Connecticut, is invaded by a gaudy, half-million-dollar mausoleum, Ben Abbott is not happy. Newcomer Brian Grose's tall, mirror-polished monument of eternal ego sticks out in the peaceful burial ground and has been nicknamed "McTomb" by the locals. But no one expected to find Grose's body locked in his mausoleum 50 years ahead of schedule.

Noted Civil War historian Richard Wheeler brings this narrative to life with haunting images of the final days of the Civil War: President Lincoln walking through the streets of Richmond, drawing an admiring crowd of blacks; Confederate and Union troops gathering in the fields around Appomattox Court House, mingling with former foes, experiencing disbelief, bitterness, relief.

Crooked cop Joe Denton gets out of prison early after disfiguring the local district attorney, which doesn't help his popularity. Nobody wants Joe to hang around, not his ex-wife, his parents or his former colleagues. Meanwhile, local mafia don Manny Vassey is dying of cancer and keen to cut a deal with God. He's thinking of singing to the DA if this will set him up for a better afterlife. And he knows stuff that will send Joe down again for a very long time.

Hillary Clinton is running for the presidency with a message of hope and change. But, as Doug Henwood makes clear in this concise, devastating indictment, little trust can be placed in her campaign promises. Rigorously reviewing her record, Henwood shows how Clinton's positions on key issues have always blown with the breeze of expediency, though generally around an axis of moralism and hawkishness.

In this first biography of Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. in more than 30 years, Chuck McFadden explores the unique persona of one of the most idiosyncratic politicians in California history. The son of California political royalty who forged his own political style against the tumultuous backdrop of a huge, balkanized state - and shoved to and fro by complex currents - Jerry Brown pursued visionary impulses as well as his grandiose ambitions.

An adolescent boy stands patiently in the back of the long line of children waiting to sit on the lap of their local Santa Claus. Why is he there? What does he intend? What mysterious hopes does he hold for this holiday season? The answer arrives following a cryptic interaction between the two, when the reality of the boy's awareness and the goals of the man in the red suit become clear.

After four years of horror the Great War has ended, and president Woodrow Wilson's arrival in Paris in December 1918 unites the city in ecstatic celebration. Major Jamie Fraser, an army physician who has spent 10 months tending to American soldiers, is among the crowd that throngs the Place de la Concorde for Wilson's visit. As an expert on the Spanish influenza, Fraser is also called in to advise the president's own doctor on how best to avoid the deadly disease.

A beautifully crafted collection of eight short stories by Edna Ferber: In Gigolo, Edna Ferber delves into the minds of eight diverse characters from all walks and stages of life.

During 1944, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur's forces fought their way from New Guinea to the Philippines, Allied air commander Gen. George Kenney, discarding pre-war doctrine, planned and ran an "air blitz" offensive. His 5th Air Force drove forward like a tank army, crash-landing in open country, seizing terrain, bulldozing new airfields, winning air control, and moving forward. At airfields on the front line, Rocky Boyer kept the radios working for the 71st Tactical Reconnaissance Group, a fighter-bomber unit.

In Barred by Congress: How a Mormon, a Socialist, and an African American Elected by the People Were Excluded from Office, Robert M. Lichtman provides a definitive history of congressional exclusion and expulsion cases. Lichtman offers a timely investigation of the vital constitutional issues, debated since the nation's founding, concerning permissible and impermissible grounds for excluding a member-elect or expelling a member from Congress.

Once part of the holy triumvirate ruling the South Boston Irish Mob, Kyle Nevin is set up with the Feds by head mobster Red Mahoney, who leads him to a court case and a stretch in the slammer. Now out of prison, Kyle wants revenge on his old boss and mentor and, just as importantly, to reclaim his former glory. A kidnapping gone wrong leads, bizarrely, to a major book deal and a newfound celebrity status for Kyle.

The allure of literary letters and rare first editions captures the imaginations of three professors of English literature and leads to tragedy in the wake of the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995.

Twelve-year-old Marion Parker was kidnapped from her Los Angeles school by an unknown assailant on December 15, 1927. Her body was found days later, delivered to her father by the killer, who fled with the ransom money. When William Hickman was hunted down and charged with the killing, he admitted to all of it, in terrifying detail, but that was only the start. His insanity plea was the first of its kind in the history of California, and the nature of the crime led to a media frenzy unlike any the country had seen up to that point.

Paris and Berlin, 1919-1920: In the wake of the Great War, the city of Paris unites in jubilant celebration at the arrival of United States President Woodrow Wilson. But amid the prospect of peace, Parisians are dying as the Spanish influenza reaches epidemic proportions. Dr. Major Jamie Fraser is called in to advise the president's own doctor on how best to avoid the deadly disease and discovers, despite Wilson's robust appearance, the man is frailer than most realize.

Bino Phillips, a tough Texan crime lawyer, links the murder of his seedy underworld client to the assassination of one of the most prominent politicians in Texas. As a result, Bino finds himself the most unpopular man in the state, but this does not stop him digging deeper into therotten heart of Texas. His search takes him from the halls of Congress to the arms of a sexy FBI agent to the sleaziest bars in Dallas.

Once in the White House, Andrew Jackson stood for the rights of common citizens, founded the Democratic Party, expanded the powers of the presidency, paid off the national debt, and postponed civil war by prevailing against the advocates of states' rights. By today's standards, however, Jackson was hardly politically correct: he also owned many slaves on his Tennessee plantation and sponsored the Indian Removal Act.