Showing results by narrator "L J Ganser" in All Categories

First Contact: Assess humans with the flawed, rudimentary, mind … Unbeknownst to simpleton Cuddy Perkins, his dependable, uneventful, life was about to be turned completely upside down. It’s a moonless summer night when a severely damaged intergalactic spacecraft enters Earth’s upper orbit. The alien pilot is desperate. Needs to hold up long enough to make repairs—before his pursuers find him.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Joe Grudeck is a living legend - a first-ballot Hall of Famer beloved by Boston Red Sox fans who once played for millions under the bright Fenway lights. Now, he finds himself haunted by his own history. Horace Mueller is a different type altogether - working in darkness at a museum blacksmith shop and living in a rundown farmhouse. He clings to an anachronistic lifestyle, fueled by nostalgia for simpler times and a rebellion against the sport-celebrity lifestyle of Cooperstown, struggling to bring his baseball prodigy son to his side. Gods of Wood and Stone is the story of these two men.

After pulling off their latest train robbery, outlaw leader C. C. Ellis and his unruly gang of long riders set their sights on a new target—a rich mining operation. There are only two men who can stand in their way: Sheriff Max Boyd, a lawman who doesn’t always play by the rules, and Colonel Randolph Doss, the brutal security chief of the Colorado Western Express R.R. Co. Doss pursues Ellis like Ahab pursued the white whale, while Boyd pursues his aim of keeping the town standing … and even some of C.C.’s gang are secretly pursuing their own agendas.

Critically acclaimed children’s author Jonah Winter reimagines a true story from 1987. The small Long Island town of Islip has a big problem - 3,168 tons of garbage and no place to put it! So workers pile the smelly refuse on a large barge, hire a tug boat, and send the stuff south to find a final resting place. But as the barge travels from North Carolina to New Orleans and from Mexico to Belize - nobody wants Islip’s rotting mountain of garbage.

Poems, prose, and dramatic art show how ordinary people, as well as famous ones, played vital roles during the night of Paul Revere's ride and the beginning of the American Revolution, in this book for ages 7-10.

The year is 2049, and we most certainly are not alone...A miraculous, life-enhancing microbe has been discovered on Mars and the race is on to bring the organism back to Earth. But failed physicist Jack Harding has his own reasons to get to Mars first - to save a dying, seven-year-old boy. All he must do to succeed is break the law - the law of gravity. To make the mission to Mars, Jack must perfect a ground-breaking anti-gravity technology and avoid being killed by ruthless billionaire, Travis Locke, a man who has no qualms with breaking a few laws himself - even murder.

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, by acclaimed children's-book author Adam Rex, is a collection of uproarious poems about everyone's favorite spooky monsters, including Dracula, Wolfman, Bigfoot, and Godzilla.

This compelling book describes how the Big Bang theory arose, how it has evolved, and why it is the best theory so far to explain the current state of the universe. In addition to understanding the birth of the cosmos, listeners will learn how the theory stands up to challenges and what it fails to explain. Karen Fox provides clear answers to some of the hardest questions including: Why was the Big Bang theory accepted to begin with? Will the Big Bang theory last into the next century or even the next decade? Is the theory at odds with new scientific findings? 

We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are evolution's greatest creation, why are we so badly designed? We have retinas that face backward, the stump of a tail, and way too many bones in our wrists. We must find vitamins and nutrients in our diets that other animals simply make for themselves. Millions of us can't reproduce successfully without help from modern science. We have nerves that take bizarre paths, muscles that attach to nothing, and lymph nodes that do more harm than good. And that's just the beginning of the story.

Written in a straightforward, personal tone, the pamphlet is equal parts guidebook, cultural snapshot, and propaganda piece. A central aim of this pamphlet was to dispel any prejudices American soldiers may have about the French—especially relating to their quick capitulation in 1940.

While investigating the apparent suicide of a beautiful college student with a double life, detective John Blake finds his own life in danger when he makes a startling discovery that could blow the lid off New York City's sex trade.

John Blake and Miranda Sugarman dated in high school, but after graduation they went their separate ways: he stayed in New York City and became a private investigator while she moved to the midwest and settled down to a safe, respectable life as an eye doctor. Or so he thought -- until the day, ten years later, when he opened the Daily News and saw Miranda's photo staring out at him under the headline "STRIPPER MURDERED."

Two years ago, Wilson left his old boss alive in exchange for a clean slate, keeping up his end of the bargain and staying off the grid. Then, thousands of miles from the city he once escaped, a man comes calling on Wilson with a gun in hand and a woman in his trunk. Wilson is pulled back into his old life as a grinder, working under the radar to quietly find out who is responsible for a dangerous mobster's missing nephews - and this time all bets are off.

If we are, in part, a product of our genes, can free will exist? Incisive and engaging, this indispensable tour of evolutionary biology runs the gamut of contemporary debates, from science and religion to our place in the universe.

The NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes: An Amateurism That Never Was provides a comprehensive historical, sociological, legal, financial, and managerial argument for the reclassification of profit-athletes as employees. Such a reclassification would permit profit-athletes to gain not only fair financial compensation but also equal access to educational benefits that have been promised but systematically denied. The authors trace how Power Five college sports have morphed into a hyper professionalized and commercialized sport-business enterprise.

The Lone Star state has been a subject of pride and admiration for generations of writers. Forever Texas features the works of some of the most memorable men and women who ever lived in Texas. With essays by President George W. Bush, H. Ross Perot, Sam Houston, David Crockett, Stephen F. Austin, Lyndon Baines Johnson and many more.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball - a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures - including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians - that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so.

Shale gas extraction - commonly known as fracking - is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet - whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the land beneath our feet - is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent.

Forced to retire from his job as a scout for the Yankees, Jack Barrett is just getting by in a small Florida town when his daughter drags him to watch the local minor league team play. On the field, he spots a remarkable player, Mikey Clement, a kid whose amazing natural skill on the field is overshadowed by his bad attitude and solitary habits.