Showing results by narrator "Scott Sowers" in All Categories

On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virginia, is a little-known and never-visited psychiatric facility. There, the government stores former intelligence employees whose psychiatric states make them a danger to their own government, people whose ramblings might endanger ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient. One of these employees, agent Hal Ambler, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But there's one difference between Hal and the other patients, Hal isn't crazy.

It's time for the annual Recipe Days bake-off in Lubbock, Texas. Soccer moms and grandmothers gather to show off their family recipes, learn new secrets for the perfect shortcake, and perhaps earn a chance to be on the famous cooking show, How Would You Cook It, Then? When the bake-off is crashed by a federation of pro wrestlers - including American Badass, Jersey Devil Jill, Tiny Giant, The Village Person, Jonah the Whale, the Hellbillies, and the fan favorite Xombie - all hell is set to break loose. Your heart beats faster as you anticipate who will come out on top in the ultimate showdown of the century: soccer moms or pro wrestlers.

Two babies left to die in an icy creak. Two boys who must fight to survive. Two men, two very different lives. One unbreakable bond. When a twelve-year-old boy murders his tormentor in their brutal orphanage, his older brother takes the blame and runs to New York - into the heart of organized crime. Two decades later, Michael returns to North Carolina with a sentence on his head, the mob in hot pursuit and his long-lost brother in trouble of a different kind.

For most people, the Great Crash of 2008 has meant troubling times. Not so for those in the flourishing poverty industry, for whom the economic woes spell an opportunity to expand and grow. These mercenary entrepreneurs have taken advantage of an era of deregulation to devise high-priced products to sell to the credit-hungry working poor, including the instant tax refund and the payday loan. In the process, they've created an industry larger than the casino business.

After 33 seasons managing in Major League Baseball, Tony La Russa thought he had seen it all - that is, until the 2011 Cardinals. Down ten and a half games with little more than a month to play, the Cardinals had long been ruled out as serious postseason contenders. Yet in the face of those steep odds, this team mounted one of the most dramatic and impressive comebacks in baseball history, making the playoffs on the night of the final game of the season and going on to win the World Series despite being down to their last strike - twice.

Crapalachia is a portrait of these formative years, coming-of-age in rural West Virginia. Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana.

Paul Carlson, a brilliant young scientist, is summoned from his laboratory job to the remote Indonesian island of Flores to collect DNA samples from the ancient bones of a strange, new species of tool user unearthed by an archaeological dig. The questions the find raises seem to cast doubt on the very foundations of modern science, which has proven the world to be only 5,800 years old, but before Paul can fully grapple with the implications of his find, the dig is violently shut down by paramilitaries.

Part of Ivan Doig’s acclaimed Montana trilogy, English Creek revolves around Jick McCaskill, a 14-year-old growing up in 1930s Montana. This incandescent coming-of-age tale dramatizes the climatic events of one summer that inevitably mark Jick’s awakening from childhood to adulthood.

Readers and listeners were first introduced to Jason Bourne's nemesis, Leonid Arkadin, a brilliant Russian assassin and fearless international mercenary, in The Bourne Sanction. His girlfriend was killed during a fight for which an enraged Arkadin blames Bourne. In The Bourne Deception, Arkadin hunted Bourne to take revenge and kill him. Now, in The Bourne Objective, Jason will turn the tables and target Arkadin. Hunter will become hunted.

Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson, a top level Marine sniper, receives top-secret orders to rescue the General. But upon landing in the Iraqi desert his men come under ferocious attack and Swanson is the only one left alive. How did the enemy know details of a mission known only to a few top government officials? Swanson soon realizes he is fighting a particularly ruthless and dangerous enemy—American mercenaries working with the White House. They're part of a clandestine conspiracy whose agenda is nothing less than total control of the American military.

Howard Fineman, one of our most trusted political journalists, shows that every debate, from our nation’s founding to the present day, is rooted in one of thirteen arguments that–thankfully–defy resolution. It is the very process of never-ending argument, Fineman explains, that defines us, inspires us, and keeps us free. At a time when most public disagreement seems shrill and meaningless, Fineman makes a cogent case for nurturing the real American dialogue.

Kyle Swanson, once the top sniper in the Marine Corps, has become the key member in a secret special operations team known as Task Force Trident. When Juba tests the new weapon by killing hundreds of people at a British royal wedding in London, Swanson is assigned to hunt down his old special ops rival. The birth of a new reign of global terror can be stopped only by a confrontation between the two best snipers in the world, a duel in which the first shot wins. Usually.

Set in Revolution-era America, The Messenger features Hannah Sunderland, a young woman who is devastated when her brother is jailed for joining the Colonial cause. Spy Jeremiah Jones sees in Hannah a way to access the prison to obtain valuable information, but Hannah’s Quaker beliefs stand in the way. Nevertheless, Hannah and Jeremiah develop a mutual fondness, even as they become caught in history’s tumultuous churn.

Joining the Marines in 2002, David Rose signed up to go fight...and to go die. On this grim path, rather than finding a violent death, he would find family, purpose, and a brotherhood amid the misfit world of the war fighter. No Joy sees David recounting madcap tales of Muay Thai bouts in seedy garages, a bizarre stint as a street cop, being on the other side of the badge, becoming a veteran of the psych ward, and more. It's an irreverently told story that doesn't just tell one man's tale, but speaks to the necessary question: What really draws modern young men to war?

Captain Jack Starr served the Confederate cause with honor for four years. The town of Lost Dog Creek promised an opportunity for the war veteran to rebuild his life-and a woman to share it with. But not everyone is willing to roll out the welcome wagon....

Now transformed by God's grace, John Sheldon is concerned about reuniting with his family after five years in prison. As he asks God to revive his dying marriage and heal his fragmented home, the answer to his prayers might just lie in the caring hands of his Down syndrome son.

It's 1967. Jack Witcher is a 12-year-old boy genius living in a Virginia suburb at an address the entire neighborhood avoids. Jack's father has lost his job - again - and he's starting fights with other fathers. Jack's mother, sweet but painfully ugly, works as a cashier at a local market. Jack's older brother is a long-haired, pot-smoking hippie. If all of that isn't bad enough, Jack's brother suddenly becomes the main suspect in the disappearance of the town's golden boy.

A teenage girl with a taste for violence holds a burglar hostage in her house on New Year's Eve; a middle-aged couple examines the intricacies of their marriage as they prepare to throw a party; and a real estate mogul in the throes of grief buys up all the property on an island only to be accused of madness by his daughters. These stories, infused with humour and pathos, excavate brilliantly the latent desires and motivations that drive life forward.

Long considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight's stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the "right kind of Mobile family" in the years preceding a devastating hurricane.

Death and destruction follow the demon wherever he treads, and Gabriel is rarely far behind, waiting for his chance to extinguish the creature known as Temple once and for all. But in Singapore during the Second World War, a lone soldier in possession of a shattering secret gets caught up in their battle. The knowledge he holds could change the course of their ancient conflict...and the fate of the world.