Showing results by narrator "Richard Joel" in All Categories

On the day the first shots of the Civil War were fired, a mob in Richmond clambered on top of the Capitol to raise the Confederate flag. Four years later, another flag was raised in its place while the city burned below. A 13-year-old girl compared the stars and stripes to "so many bloody gashes". This richly detailed, absorbing book brings to life the years in which Richmond was the symbol of Southern independence and the theater for a drama as splendid, sordid, and tragic as the war itself.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. It gave the government sweeping powers to strike down segregation, to enforce fair hiring practices, and to rectify bias in law enforcement and in the courts. The Act so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, "it seems preordained", as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, "no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." But there was nothing predestined about the victory.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, John Morehead Tripoli is marooned on the unspoiled Caribbean island of St. Renard. There, he lives for an idyllic year in a community of Carawak Indians. Three hundred years later, the Carawak are gone, St. Renard is carpeted with banana plantations and sugarcane fields, and Tripoli himself is remembered only through his grandson, founder of New Hampshire’s Tripoli College, which maintains a branch campus on the island.

The chaos of war is a horrific background for coming of age, a trial by fire testing all who experience it, and changing them forever. Contrary to Government denial during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army regularly sent Special Forces sniper teams into Laos and Cambodia. Their assignments took them deep into enemy territory. Heirs of Honor is the memoir of Lucky, the youngest member of one of those killing teams. A hero worshipping kid awed by the more experienced men around him, he was more than willing to prove himself to them and ignore the damage to his young soul.

"...measured first person narrative is packed with interesting details about investigative work and about his home life with Sherry and their young daughters: a refreshing rarity in the genre." ( Kirkus Reviews)

Unlike her brother, Saracasi Ocaitchi has always known that her loyalties belong to the ideals of freedom and democracy, not the government of the Alliance, and that protecting those ideals would require a fight. But now that the rebellion she has dreamed about has finally begun, she must come to terms with what that truly means: for herself, for her brother, and for all of the people who will die in the coming war.

Cleverly crafted by acclaimed author and motivational speaker Reverend Leo Booth, The Angel and the Frog is both a charming fable about relationships and an exquisite insight into life and human relationships, similar in the way George Orwell's classic Animal Farm was an insight into politics and governmental Big Brother.

He was Karn, the savage of the sky-high trees. He was protector and defender of the princess Niamh, whose very city was lost in the jungles of the world under the Green Star. But he was also an Earthman, whose helpless, crippled body lay in suspended animation in a guarded mansion in New England. It was his alien mind that drove Karn through perils that no other would dare. But dare he must - for though that alien planet was replete with dangers and treachery, there was a cause to be won and a love to be rescued!

When Gideon Oliver and his wife, Julie, are in Tuscany visiting the Cubbiddu family, the renowned Skeleton Detective is asked to reexamine the remains of a mysterious family tragedy. Pietro Cubbiddu, former patriarch of the Villa Antica wine empire, is thought to have killed his wife and then himself in the remote mountains of the Apennines. It does not take long for Gideon to deduce that, whatever happened, a murder-suicide it was not. Soon Gideon finds himself in a morass of family antipathies, conflicts, and mistrust, to say nothing of the local authority's resentment.

Things are beginning to evolve for the Zoo Crew. Drake Bell has passed the bar exam, accepted a new position, and begun a new phase of his legal career. His first case to walk through the door is in defense of a young woman that was the driver in an accident that left a young cyclist in the hospital. She accepts her guilt, but something about her story strikes a chord with Drake, causing him to dig a little deeper. What starts as an attempt to shield the young woman from the misguided crusade of a prosecutor serving ulterior motives soon begins to shift.

Deep in the heart of winter, things are beginning to shift for the Zoo Crew. Drake Bell is wrapping up his last days in law school and preparing to take the bar exam. Kade Keuhl has finally relented and agreed to apply for his private investigator's license. The ski lift at the local Snow Plaza has grounded everybody from hitting the slopes. And Emily, Drake's former college flame, is back in town looking to make him an offer that could alter everything moving forward.

Two weeks ago, Lukas Webb was an Army sniper on the front lines in Afghanistan. Upon finding out his father has just days to live, he is granted a compassionate discharge and returns home to Hamilton, Montana to say goodbye and take over the family business. Just days into his tenure at the helm of the WB Ranch, he appears at the front door of an Agriculture Commission meeting carrying a rifle and fires two perfect shots before being taking three rounds himself. While Lukas sits in Hamilton Memorial Hospital in a medical-induced coma, a frenzy wages on outside.

Bargain Mart, long a fixture in the Missoula economic structure has fallen on hard times. Things are dire, and if a financial windfall doesn't arrive soon, their doors will close. Across town, a woman grieves her recently deceased husband. Sitting alone at her kitchen table trying to put her life back in order, a call arrives asking where his quarter million dollar life insurance policy should be sent. A quarter million dollar life insurance policy she never knew existed. Joined by his partner Ava, and his loyal friends the Zoo Crew, Drake must attempt to make sense of Alice's case.

Ex-CIA Officer Patrick Evans is too late to save his colleague from a drug overdose—but just in time to kill the Chinese spy responsible. The two killings trigger an avalanche of twisted connections, treason at the highest level, and grim deaths in quiet places. Drafted to investigate by his Congresswoman employer, Pat follows a trail of chemicals and money from the Chinese provinces to Mexico City, and back home to Washington DC—where the Fentanyl boom is secretly financing one man's political machine.

COVID-19 was not an accident. Its successor, the highly lethal and contagious COVID-23, is not a mutation of COVID-19. China would like us to believe the passage of 19 from animal to human was random and 23 is a natural mutation of 19. The United States wants us to believe both 19 and 23 are weaponized versions of a harmless coronavirus released during a botched Chinese bioweapons experiment. It will be up to Dr. David Aaronson, the new surgeon in the desert town of Fallon, Nevada, to tell the world what really happened.

When Patrick Evans finds his asset (and friend) tortured to death in a Frankfurt basement, everything changes. Obsessed with revenge and haunted by guilt, Pat leaves CIA to track down the killer. Pat's pursuit is relentless and often reckless-only his mentor's advice and his growing bond with a former colleague are keeping Pat alive. For now.

Janelle Ortega and Chuck Bender are drawn deep into a threatening web of hostility and deceit in Saguaro National Park in this must-listen mystery.

When suspicious deaths befall a whitewater rafting expedition through Cataract Canyon in Canyonlands National Park, archaeologist Chuck Bender and his family recognize evil intent lies behind the tragedies.

Hounded by false accusations of murder, archaeologist Chuck Bender and his family risk their lives to track down an unknown killer on the loose in a rugged canyon on the remote western edge of Mesa Verde National Park, where ancient stone villages and secret burial sites, abandoned centuries ago by the Ancestral Puebloan people, harbor artifacts so rare and precious they're worth killing over.

North America's biggest cat was once killed for bounty dollars, slaughtered with impunity and driven toward extinction. But today's cat of intrigue, despite our lingering fears and misconceptions, has returned to much of its native range in the western United States and gained respect as a predator integral and necessary to wild ecosystems. This turnaround was triggered by one man: Maurice Hornocker. Cougars on the Cliff recounts the early years of his research when he tracked lions following a dog's nose and footprints in the snow—before telemetry was available.