Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Sleep" in All Categories

The Empire and its allies struggle to find a way to strike back at the Enlightened, who are employing raiding tactics to set the galaxy on fire. And with their new ability to travel through access points, the job of the galactic alliance is that much harder. Meanwhile Adrian, unable to force a confrontation with the three Enlightened turns his eyes to the Custodian, the ancient AI that had until recently kept the Enlightened contained. Now the AI had joined the Enlightened side, allowing them the use of access points.

Tomas Klein and Levisomaerni are working together to gather as many galactic powers together as they possibly can, hoping that they can form a galaxy wide alliance before the Enlightened decide to make a move. But their efforts are being hampered by a mysterious and dangerous foe. Meanwhile, Adrian and Anessa have finished constructing the Nomad Fleet, and are preparing for their mission to find the Enlightened, waiting only for Tomas to convince the core powers to allow them passage through their territories.

The conquest of the Erasi has begun and fleets clash over Erasi worlds. But while the alliance of the Shara Daim, Empire, and Krashinar has an advantage, the war is far from won. The Erasi industrial capacity as well as their population and size make it hard to conquer and harder to hold. And while the invasion across the outer Erasi systems is going well, the alliance is yet to clash with the Erasi core fleets.

Evolutionary theory in the theme that binds together these essays on such seemingly disparate topics as the feeding habits of flamingos, flowers and snails that change from male to female and sometimes back again, and the extinction from baseball of the .400 hitter.

Victory against the Sowir at the battle for Nuva gave Olympus and their new allies time to fortify their positions. Meanwhile Olympus stretches its already limited resources on a mission to aid their home planet—Earth, which had been enslaved by an alien race called Ra'a'zani. On Earth, resistance prepares to retake their world, daring to reveal themselves for the first time in years. Risking everything for the chance to liberate their world.

Short-order cook and ethical relativist Claude is fascinated by the secret art of Chinese cuisine. But as he delves deeper into the mysterious culture of the surrealized "Chinesians", his revelations threaten to uproot his entire code of values. What is the weight of sacredness on the relative scale of ethics? Are our morals God-given, or merely a matter of taste?

I was once a mighty Paladin of Darkness, mother of all the Elements. The one and only of my kind. Some called me the chosen one, a savior destined to rescue the world; others insisted I would be its downfall. I never got the chance to discover who was right. Society conspired with the traitors to trap me in the deadly Element of Time. But a year later, I managed to break free . . . wait, how has it been 700 years?

Over a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species, Darwinian theory is in a "vibrantly healthy state," writes Stephen Jay Gould, its most engaging and illuminating exponent. Exploring the "peculiar and mysterious particulars of nature," Gould introduces the listener to some of the many and wonderful manifestations of evolutionary biology.

Among scientists who write, no one illuminates as well as Stephen Jay Gould does the wonderful workings of the natural world. Now in a new volume of collected essays—his sixth since Ever Since Darwin—Gould speaks of the importance of unbroken connections within our own lives and to our ancestral generations. Along with way, he opens to us the mysteries of fish tails, frog calls, and other matters, and shows once and for all why we must take notice when a seemingly insignificant creature is threatened, like the land snail Partula from Moorea, whose extinction he movingly relates.

Charles Smith brought magic back with him to Earth, but will even that be enough to end the Reaper threat? The reapers have brought a Queen through the dimensional barrier. With her magic behind them, the reapers intend to open a massive portal, allowing tens of thousands more of their kind to pour into Earth. They have to be stopped—no matter the cost. As governments of the world gird themselves to use their most terrible weapons to stop the reaper threat, Smith and his allies throw everything they have into one final attempt to defeat the enemy with more conventional means.

To end the wraith threat, the dimensional barrier must be healed. But to do that, Charles will need to find a way back to Earth again! Only then can a combination of magic and technology repair the damage his arrival in Kortall caused. The quest to return to Earth is only the beginning of his troubles. Because the wraiths have been very busy, and not just in Kortall. They've invaded Earth as well! Smith quickly finds himself embroiled in two wars on two worlds against an implacable foe determined to spread across the multiverse until all life is devoured.

Cars are killing people and making the planet uninhabitable. Air pollution linked to motor vehicles contributes to even more untimely deaths. Highways and unsafe streets have devastated cities, yet traffic congestion still swallows up countless hours. And carbon emissions from transportation are a key driver of climate change, which now threatens to make the world unlivable. Why do we still worship at the altar of the car? How can we find alternatives that are healthier for the planet and ourselves?

Haunted with the ever-present memory of watching his parents get devoured by bears as a child, and now losing his adopted father and mentor, Klaus Richter embarks on a voyage of self-discovery and booze. He finds so much more - and so much less.

Charles has returned to a land devastated by war with the wraiths. Alone in a desolate land, seeking his friends and allies, he faces one peril after another. But finding his allies is only the beginning of the journey. A wraith queen has invaded Kortall, her legions wiping all life from the land. Worse, she's awoken ancient magics which will allow her to bring an even greater flood of wraiths across the dimensional barrier.

Charles must beat the Wraith Queen to at least one of the three Stones, or she'll open a portal and summon an unending horde, enough wraiths to suck all life from the world. At all costs-no matter how great the loss might be-at least one of the Stones must be obtained, or all is lost!

Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior. Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools. Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it. Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racial inequity, but few have thought to ask why.

To the world, Linda DeSilva's marriage to Robert Edelman was perfect. He was her college boyfriend turned wealthy and successful husband, and the father of her children. But what friends and family didn't know was that the Texas real estate tycoon who set her up with a luxurious life in Dallas was also her abuser. When she asked him for a divorce, the violence against her only escalated, until the shocking moment she learned her husband had hired an assassin to take her life.

Ikarion Gate is an isekai LitRPG adventure novel – Book One in the Ikarion trilogy. The novel follows the exploits of Tito, a down-on-his-luck and anonymous Imago slummer. Daily, he logs in to Monad’s Ikarion VR MMO to earn survival “gang protection” money in his alter ego identity as Card, the Hedge Merchant. With his fellow player friend Perk, the cheerful Agrarian Dwarf, and a host of other unlikely companions, Card is about to discover there is much more to the Ikarion game and its mysterious gate than he could have ever imagined.

Only the recently dead can helm the "deadman switch" to pilot a ship through the Cloud, a mysterious solar entity that shields the Solitaire solar system and its valuable heavy metals. Two convicted murderers are routinely sacrificed for this task—one to enter the system, one to exit.

Not only do individuals have core beliefs about what the government should or should not do, but individuals have become more likely to support the party that best matches their policy attitudes by both identifying as a member of that party and voting for that party in elections. However, as Zingher demonstrates, voters' ability to match their attitudes to a party or candidate varies according to signals sent by elites and increases as parties become more polarized.