Showing results by narrator "Will Tulin" in All Categories

The ink isn't dry on the contract for my arranged marriage when my first and only love comes back to town. The Pits demand five souls, turning men into monsters. I know this, as it took away my humanity when I was forced to kill my best friend. I lost not only him, but his sister and my lover—who can never discover the truth of her brother's death. I swore before I snapped his neck that I would find out who runs the Pits and bring them to their knees.

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on artificial intelligence and machine learning, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand the future direction of AI, bring your AI initiatives to scale, and use AI to transform your organization.

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.

The fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago (except for their feathered descendants). In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins. The Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic Era, has never had its Jurassic Park, but it was an amazing time in earth's history, populated by a wonderful assortment of bizarre animals. The rapid evolution of thousands of species of mammals brought forth many incredible creatures—including our own ancestors.

A vivid account of the political triumphs and domestic tragedies of the Jewish king Herod the Great during the turmoil of the Roman revolution.

“Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home.

Specialist Amanda Sumner is one of the first to make contact on the Earth-like planet Harp and discovers she's the only Earthling, who can hear the trees sing in the strange forest. Determined to remain and learn more of the planet’s secrets, Amanda sets out to become part of the elite Guild there....

Ron Shaich is a business visionary who has been part of building three iconic restaurant brands: Au Bon Pain, Panera Bread, and now Cava. Along the way, he developed "fast casual," a $100 billion-plus segment of the industry. Now he reveals what he learned about entrepreneurship, running large enterprises, business transformation, and life itself. He illustrates these lessons with his experiences turning a small cookie store into 2,400 restaurants with $5 billion in revenue, delivering annual investor returns of 25% over two decades, and outperforming both Starbucks and Chipotle.

Peter Fraenkel presents a practical, creative, integrative approach that combines action- and insight-oriented techniques to help last-chance couples manage conflict, modulate intense negative emotions, address power struggles, develop mutual compassion, and restore emotional intimacy and pleasurable connection. Special attention is paid to developing a collaborative therapeutic alliance when partners have little motivation for therapy or faith that it can be effective. Through engaging in "nonbinding experiments in possibility," partners can then better evaluate whether to "stay or go."

“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises.

Valachi, the name of a rival mafia family, was the last word on my mother's dying lips. After years of careful deceit and planning, my moment of revenge has finally arrived. The head of the Valachi family has died, leaving his innocent daughter vulnerable. She is forced to take my hand in an arranged marriage. By the time she learns my true identity, it will be too late. As her new husband, I will have complete control over her. I am the enemy in her bed.

Unraveled is a tale of chaos and near-death experiences that shares personal and private moments and the intense challenges and grueling work it takes to get sober and remain sober. It’s a unique story of a mother and son’s journey that ends with on-your-knees epiphanies that leave both parent and child asking for help. This tandem narrative is a compelling testimony of bravery and honesty that, with edgy and surprising humor, charts a family’s slow climb out of the abyss of pain into the full power of faith, redemption, and healing.

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.

In The Win-Win Wealth Strategy: 7 Investments the Government Will Pay You to Make, celebrated entrepreneur, investor, and bestselling author Tom Wheelwright, CPA, transforms the way you think about building wealth and challenges the paradigm that tax incentives are immoral loopholes. Backed by deep research in fifteen countries, he identifies seven investing strategies that are A-OK with governments worldwide and will fatten your wallet while making the world a better place.

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.

When bounty hunter Duke LaGrange and his oft-inebriated Japanese-Irish ninja companion, Ishiro’shea, entered their favorite watering hole, Cyborg Joe’s Grill N’ Go & The Why Not Saloon, they had no idea that they would soon be gobbled up by an unhinged astral anomaly and deposited on an uncharted primitive world. Few things are worse than undeveloped planets, especially those that haven’t even made it to the soufflé stage. To top it off, this particular planet comes with its own insane ruler and an Orb That Controls Everything and Must Be Respected.

Holy hedgehogs! Everyone's favorite bounty hunting duo is back! Nova Texas' favorite son, Duke LaGrange, and his silent swordsman sidekick, Ishiro'shea, once again find themselves unceremoniously removed from Cyborg Joe's and deposited on a planet at the least opportune time. The only way for the tandem to escape the harsh world of Psitakki is for Duke to survive the most dangerous underground pit fighting tournament in the cosmos.

"In almost any culture, at any time, you can find food writing,” writes guest editor Mark Bittman in his introduction. “Food means growing and hardship, and health and medicine, and work and holiday. In its abundance it is a gift and a joy, and in its absence a curse and a tragedy. If a culture has writing, that culture has food writing.” The stories in this year’s Best American Food Writing are brilliant, eye-opening windows into the heart of our country’s culture.

Dylan Thomas, a former Maine State Police officer who obtained a private-investigator license to support himself while attending law school, receives a phone call from his sister, Caitlin, telling him that her youngest daughter, Sandra, has gone missing.

Rachel Fortier is a much sought-after expert when it comes to exotic planets — especially the deadly kind. So when she’s hired by Earth Fleet’s most respected scientist to join a mission to the tightly closed planet Harp, it’s a dream come true. Until she discovers their mission is to capture shifters and sell them to the military.