Grover Gardner
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From internationally bestselling author Andrea Camilleri comes a brilliant, bawdy comedy that will surprise even the most die-hard Montalbano fans.In 1880s Vigàta, a stranger comes to town to open a pharmacy. Fofò turns out to be the son of a man made legendary for having a magic garden stocked with plants, fruits, and vegetables that could cure any ailment-a man who was found murdered years ago. Fofò escaped but has now reappeared looking to make...
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"The sinking of the plane was like a magician's trick. It was there and then it was gone, and there was nothing left in our big, wet, darkening world but the three of us and a piece of rubber that was not yet a raft." In 1942, three men on an antisubmarine patrol flight became lost and pitched into the Pacific. The plane sank beneath them, carrying most of the survival gear down with it. For thirty-four scorching days and shivering nights, they faced...
43) The Ice Harvest
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It's Christmas Eve, 1979, in Wichita, and Charlie Arglist, a crooked lawyer and strip-club owner, is drunkenly making the rounds before he blows town for good. Getting progressively drunker and deeper in trouble, Charlie needs to drop off a photograph of a local official in a compromising position and steal some drug money. Before it's all over, a lot of people are going to wind up dead.
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Irreverent, charming, and eminently quotable, this handbook—an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race—contains sixty-nine aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain's private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing...
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In his illustrious forty-five-year career as a novelist and author of short fiction, Robert Silverberg has belonged in the company of the best writers of the twentieth century. In this extraordinary Nebula Award-winning story, Silverberg builds on a literary allusion from Yeats to create a complex science fiction scenario of worlds lost and dreams fulfilled. It is the fiftieth century on Earth, and ancient historical cities such as Byzantine Constantinople...
46) Lancelot
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Lancelot Lamar, a disenchanted liberal lawyer, finds himself confined in a mental asylum with memories that don't seem worth remembering-until a visit from an old friend and classmate gives him the opportunity to recount his journey of dark violence.
It began the day he accidentally discovered he was not the father of his youngest daughter. That discovery touched off his obsession to reverse the degeneration of modern America and begin a new age of...
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Over the past several decades, Islamic terrorists have transformed themselves into a sophisticated global network of self-proclaimed holy warriors. These fighters no longer confine themselves to local battles against incumbent Muslim regimes in a bid to establish theocratic states. The Jihadi Salafis (a name they would use to describe themselves) have instead turned their fury toward the United States. The Name of the Enemy weaves complex political,...
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In this mischievous book, a #3 bestseller in France that's racking up press coverage and rights sales around the world, literature professor Bayard contends that in this age of infinite publication, the truly cultivated person is not the one who has read a book, but the one who understands the book's place in our culture
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The auto age is defunct. Buicks, Chryslers, and Pontiacs disfigure the landscape. Vines sprout in Manhattan. Wolves are seen in downtown Cleveland. And psychiatrist, mental hospital outpatient, and inventor Dr. Tom More has created a miraculous instrument: the ontological lapsometer, a kind of stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he plans to cure mankind's spiritual flu. But first he must survive Moira, Lola, and Ellen-and discover why so many...
50) Seize the Day
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Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes...
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An engrossing volume on the Italian Renaissance by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Will DurantThe fifth volume of Durant's acclaimed Story of Civilization, The Renaissance chronicles the history of Italy from 1304 to 1576. In this masterful work, listeners will encounterthe poets Petrarch and Boccaccio, the fathers of the Renaissance;the paintings, sculptures, and architecture of Milan, Florence, and Venice;the life and accomplishments of Leonardo...
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A thrilling art heist escapade that evokes a world of European high culture and luxury, while plumbing the vicissitudes of less exalted human foibles and obsessions.Johann Friedrich von Allmen, a bon vivant of dandified refinement, has exhausted his family fortune. Forced to downscale, Allmen inhabits the garden house of his former Zurich estate, attended by his Guatemalan butler, Carlos. When not reading novels by Balzac and Somerset Maugham, he...
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A modern classic, Einstein's Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, and people are fated to repeat their triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited...
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A Middle East scholar writes in a clear straightforward manner, carefully explaining who the terrorists are, where they come from, how they justify killing civilians in the name of God, and why the United States has become the latest target. "Grover Gardner is flawless in some difficult pronunciations, measured in his speed as if listeners were taking notes, and clearly committed to explanations of complex issues."
55) The Sacco Gang
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Based on a true story, a "wild west" tale of two brothers who battle both the state and a Mafia empire in 1920s Italy. Raffadali, province of Agrigento, 1920s. The Sacco brothers are free men with strong ideas about socialism and the state. Their lives change radically one morning when their father, Luigi Sacco, receives an anonymous letter from the local Mafia demanding protection money and is the victim of a robbery attempt. Luigi tells the police...
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Canadian writer Lawrence Millman has made courting adventure to unusual places his lifelong trade. In "An Evening Among Headhunters," Millman tells the story of his visit to the Jivaro Indians living along at the Equadorian border.
This selection is part of the full length audiobook, "Explore: Stories of Survival From Off The Map."
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A daring look at the development of human prosperity, how it was created, and where it's headed In the breakthrough spirit of Against the Gods, William Bernstein's The Birth of Plenty has the topical uniqueness and storytelling panache to literally create its own category and reader. Based upon the premise that mankind experienced virtually zero economic growth from the dawn of time until 1820, this provocative, big book identifies the four conditions...
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Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique's experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.
60) The Cafeteria
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In this mystical short story, the author recalls frequenting a Broadway cafeteria where he would meet other Polish and Russian immigrants. In the fifties, a woman named Esther became part of their group. Although she had been in a Russian prison camp and now had taken a menial job to support her cripple father, she was cheerful and outgoing. She and the author became good friends, but each time he saw her, she looked more disenchanted; her father...