Showing results by narrator "Bruce Mann" in All Categories

Thomas Kestrel returns to his ancestral Highlands in an ill-fated attempt to help the people who feared him as a child. With the help of the Sylvana, men and women dedicated to protecting the Kingdoms from the Shadow Lord and the Dark Horde, Thomas bears the burden of returning to the Highlands to reclaim his proper place. Befriended by a Highlander who would die for him, struggling with his love for a princess who will betray him, Thomas tries to piece together the puzzle of his life - while the high king's assassins, aided by the minions of the Shadow Lord, pursue him.

Outwardly alien arrivals from a distant sea, the lambdas are genetically human. The government has noticed them. So has a whole gamut of extremist groups. Cara Gray has noticed them too, first as a haunting presence in her otherwise ordinary childhood, then as the impossibly shifting target of her work as a police officer. When a bomb goes off at a school, Cara finds herself the weak point in a surveillance regime that has failed to prevent the worst terrorist atrocity in decades. A nebulous group of lambda extremists claims responsibility for the attack.

In 1869, a great mystery was born. As astronomers observed a total solar eclipse, for the first time they saw the faint glow of the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere. Measurements of a previously unknown wavelength that made up this solar light sparked hot debate among scientists, but it was another 60 years before they discovered that this wavelength was in fact iron being burned at a staggering three million degrees Celsius. With the sun's surface only 6,000 degrees, this shouldn't be possible.

If there's anything the recession of 2009 taught us, it was the importance of investing in our customers, but when was this any different? So says Joseph Jaffe, best-selling author of Life After the 30-Second Spot and Join the Conversation, and a leading expert and thought leader on new media and social media. In most businesses, it costs roughly five-to-10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and yet companies continue to disproportionately spend their budgets into the "wrong" end of the funnel the mass media or awareness side.

Judah Maccabee is no longer a youth, but a great warrior and the unchallenged leader of the Jewish People. He leads his people to victory after victory on the fields of battle and diplomacy, shocking the leaders of the mighty Seleucid Empire. Relentlessly, the armies of the empire are sent to crush the rebellion in Judea. They will do anything to eliminate the Maccabee army and suppress the Jewish faith. But although the Maccabees are massively outnumbered, they have no choice but to overcome their foes. They know that their defeat would be the end of the Jewish People.

Light dances with dark, green fire burns in the night, hopes and dreams follow the wind, to fall in black or white. The prophecy spoke of Thomas Kestrel: outcast, lord, sorcerer, warrior, and perhaps savior of the Kingdoms - if he survives.

In the final days of World War II in Europe, Georgians serving in the Wehrmacht on Texel island off the Dutch coast rose up and slaughtered their German masters. Hitler ordered the island to be retaken and fighting continued for weeks, well after the war's end. The uprising had it origins in the bloody history of Georgia in the 20th century, a history that saw the country move from German occupation, to three short years of independence, to Soviet rule after it was conquered by the Red Army in 1921.

"God continues to speak today," says renowned French Jesuit writer Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Yet de Caussade explains that He doesn't always speak in ways we expect. His will isn't always revealed to us in a broad vision for our lives or overt direction. His voice and His will can be discovered in our everyday world as we give our lives to Him in complete trust and allow Him to work out His purposes for us.

The Economics of Poverty reviews critically past and present debates on poverty, spanning both rich and poor countries. The book provides an accessible new synthesis of current economic thinking on key questions: How is poverty measured? How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist, and is it inevitable? What can be done to reduce poverty? Can it even be eliminated? The book does not assume that listeners know economics already.

Some people find the Old Testament to be confusing, out of date, and essentially replaced by the New Testament. They are missing out. The Old Testament offers us a grand narrative that reveals God's work, God's purposes, and God's wisdom. Christopher J. H. Wright fits the pieces together and shows us the coherent whole. Using seven key sentences drawn straight from the Old Testament, he connects the dots and points us toward Jesus.

In The Passionate Muse, Oatley, who is both a prize-winning novelist and a distinguished research psychologist, offers a hybrid book that alternates sections of an original short story, "One Another", with chapters that illuminate the psychology of emotion and fiction. Oatley not only provides insight into how people engage in stories, he also illuminates the value of emotion and the importance of stories for our psychological well-being. Indeed, he offers evidence that the more fiction we read, the better is our understandings of others.

Arguing that North Korea is little more than a carefully constructed Chinese puppet state, the author looks into the heart of this "rogue nation" and finds the Chinese behind much of the terrorism and nuclear weapons manufacturing on the Korean peninsula.

Sergei managed to lay his hands on the Divine Avatar of Savior, which brings with it the kinds of new abilities other players can only dream of. Still, it's not the right moment to relax and go with the flow. Two of his friends have been captured; the third one is being kept hostage while Sergei is forced to procure the Elixir of Power.

Zacharias Swanwick, 21 years old and living in 19th century Bristol, England, has discovered a young man named Wyndor from another world. In this world of Erala, starlit beings called Velans dwell. Drawn to the mystery, Zacharias decides to help Wyndor find a Velan object that can return him to Erala and which is currently within a manor owned by a man named Jeremy Lipking. Without this object, Wyndor is slowly dying.

It's night time, and a young man sits writing at a table. He's afraid. Afraid of having to decide - on a woman, a group of friends, an annual holiday destination. He's afraid of becoming numb to emotion. Afraid of growing up. But all of that is about to change. When an acquaintance makes him a proposition, our unnamed protagonist is drawn into a scheme where each night at seven o'clock, he must commit one of the seven sins - a task that forces him to decide how far he is truly willing to go in his efforts to stave off habit and ennui and save his own life.

Humans are hard-wired for collaboration, and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies. This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology.

Whether planned or unexpected, change presents leaders with their toughest sustained challenges - regardless of the leader's seniority or the organization's size. For many leaders, change brings drama - and the replaying of familiar stories. In A Question of Leadership, Keith Leslie provides a wide range of illustrative case studies derived from both research and his firsthand experience in the public and private sectors as a former partner at both Deloitte and McKinsey.

During the tumultuous era of World War II, the city of London shattered under unrelenting bombs dropped by Nazi Germany. Millions of buildings were destroyed or damaged, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and survivors were left to ask: How can this destruction be part of God's plan? What is God's will in all of this? After City Temple in London was reduced to rubble, Rev. Leslie Weatherhead crafted five sermons on understanding the will of God to help his congregation endure religious doubt as their city - and church - crumbled around them.

Leadership Results explores the fall of traditional leadership thinking and the struggling multibillion-dollar leadership development industry that is failing to deliver results, and explains the mindset, skills, ways of being, and methods that will get results in the evolving paradigm. The Leadership Results model is practical and predictive, providing a way forward for companies seeking to build sustainable leadership capacity, develop individual leaders, boost employee engagement, and deliver breakthrough results through shared and collective leadership.

Aric may have found a new home and a new family in the desert, but once more, the emperor rears his ugly head. This time, his Paladins are coming to seize not only the Guild, but Aric himself. Meanwhile, in the north, as Cassia flees the imperial hounds close on her heels, Fadan seeks the support of a rebellion fragmented by politics and personal interests.