Showing results by narrator "James R Cheatham" in All Categories

The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery. Between Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands African American men, women, and children. These transactions in humanity made the internal slave trade a cornerstone of Confederate society, a bulwark of the Rebel economy, and a central part of the experience of the Civil War for all inhabiting the American South.

When Charlie Fightmaster gets the call-up to the Major Leagues, all of his dreams are about to come true. But word that his little sister, Pippin, is struggling changes everything. Charlie returns to his childhood home, joins the amateur baseball team his father coaches, and begins helping Pippin with her dream of making the best baseball bat ever made. Charlie meets Bud Crawford, a reclusive local legend, who reluctantly teaches him the three secrets to finding perfect harmony at the plate.

When Vicki Fowler's body is found covered with bee stings in a Central Illinois pasture, the sheriff calls her death an accident. Freelance reporter and private detective Nick Bancroft doesn't believe it. He learns the victim lived in a home for young unwed mothers who work as waitresses and whores at a local nightclub.

After the brutal slaying of his family, British Special Forces ex-agent John Steel arrives in New York with a singular purpose: Find the person in the photograph. Judicious NYPD detective Samantha McCall is investigating a triple homicide when Steel shows up to help find the perpetrator and bring him to justice. What at first appears to be the work of a serial killer soon turns out to be a deeper level of darkness and deceit, with relentless mercenaries, a shadowy informant and ghosts from the past for both McCall and Steel all involved.

Everything Thomas Benton ever wanted is finally within his reach. As Vice-Regent in the New World Faith Union, he is two steps beneath the spiritual adviser to Premier Immu Aali, the leader of the world. He has wealth, power, prestige and any pleasure he wishes. But memories of his best friend’s execution haunt him day and night. Why does he care? His job has been to eradicate all Deviants from the planet, and he’s been good at it...until one fateful day when he’s assigned to either break or execute a particularly powerful Deviant, the only woman he has ever loved.

Michael Monroe had a perfect life...until Robert Elliott Lang decided to destroy him. Michael has it all: A fulfilling career, a loving family, a beautiful home. When a disgruntled employee sends a devastating e-mail to thousands university students and co-workers, Michael’s hard-won reputation goes up in flames. In a matter of hours, Michael's life is completely shattered, and the whole world seems aligned against him.

PI Steve Rockfish's morning meeting was supposed to focus on a case of straightforward harassment. Two clients had purchased a miniature golf course and instantly became victims of vandalism and projected intolerance.

Julia Hastings, wife of the oldest Hastings brother, Graham, is soaking up her first Christmas on the 7H Ranch. Embracing Hastings family traditions, and hoping to create new ones, Julia has high hopes for an unforgettable holiday, but little does she know that the Hastings brothers have their own ideas up their sleeves on how to make her first Christmas a memorable one.

History is clear: Whenever the church has aligned itself with worldly, coercive power, it ends up on the wrong side of important justice issues. But when the church cooperates with God's power through his presence among the least powerful, its witness for Jesus transforms the world into a better place. In Reckoning with Power, David Fitch unpacks the difference between worldly power, or power over others, and God's power, which engages not in coercion but in love, reconciliation, grace, forgiveness, and healing.

Blamed for the accidental deaths of two family members, Akuleh—Ku to his friends—flees his shamanic society to fight in an interstellar war. An excellent bush pilot, he gets accepted for flight training, even though he’s underage—a quality that makes him the target of abuse from many of his peers.

At the heart of Tolkienian fantasy is "recovery," a "cleaning of the windows" of our perception that we may learn to see the world again in all its strange beauty. And, for Tolkien, to recover the world anew is to recover a sense of the world as a meaningful act of creation by a living and loving Creator. How does Tolkien accomplish this? Through "sub-creation" or mythopoeia, the "fashioning of myth." For it is in creating an imaginary world ourselves through poetry, fairy-story, and myth that we come to "see" our "primary world" as itself an act of creation.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is one of the biggest predictors of personal and professional success, and the key to effectively developing your EQ is tying it to your own personality type. In this book, certified EQ coach and Enneagram teacher Scott Allender helps you chart a personality-specific path toward lasting emotional intelligence and health. Allender uses the popular Enneagram framework to illuminate how each of the nine personality types aligns with the five essential skills of emotional intelligence.

History is written by the victors, and the powerful rewrite the rules in their favor. These are simple facts that the dysfunctional have decided to accept, if not embrace. After all, what's the point of fighting something as fundamental as gravity? The end result is always a fall. When it comes to Pain and Agony, conforming is just not an option. Challenges to these age-old proverbs will be taken on as the powerful, shifting on top of the pile, seek to stamp out any nonconformity. There's nothing left for Pain and Agony to do but punch hard enough to bring it all down.

Jilted lovers, cheating spouses, treacherous business partners . . . All bread and butter that pays the bills for this dysfunctional Investigation team. Unfortunately, the past is catching up with one of them. Vengeance with a capital V is as rare as it is dangerous and doesn't pay. Except that is what both of them want. What choice do they have when a federal agent promises to turn the pair into his personal sock puppets if they don't comply with his game?

New alliances and of course new betrayals are at hand as the tectonics of the black ops world shifts and rumbles. Who is working for who, who is hunting who, and will have the decency to simply shut up and die? Our favorite misfits must avoid being strangled and stabbed (and run over, and shot, and blown up, and, well, you get the point) in this latest cloak-and-dagger escapade. Can the pugnacious pair emerge from the intrigue in one piece? Dive into another adventure with the world's most dysfunctional duo, where murder, intrigue, and a stolen Pomeranian are just the tip of the iceberg.

Pain and Agony are two madcap masters of mayhem, but even they need friends. What are friends for? Companionship, support, and a helping hand when your luck is down. But the cost of friendship becomes something altogether different during their latest escapade. If you aren't going to help when things get rough, then what are you but a traitor? When longtime allies are at odds, and enemies new and old close in, the answer has lethal consequences.

In the finale of the That Was Before series, Randolph Spiers and Sheila Backe team up with redemption, forgiveness, and the possibility of second chances at stake.

If no good deed goes unpunished, what will a lifetime of doing Uncle Sam's dirty work cost a person? Pain and Agony have hardly cemented their new partnership as "investigative problem solvers" when SISTER comes poking around and raising all kinds of hell. Accusations flying left and right, the dysfunctional duo are back at it. But can they solve a murder, a kidnapping, and a matter of national security, all in the space of one week? Murder, mayhem, and a societal meltdown are all in a day's work for our pair, but to top it off, they get hit in the room and board department.

Pain is a burned ex-mercenary. Agony is a burned ex-cop. Together, they might just find out. The only problem? They can't stand each other. Trust, it seems, doesn't come easily between a black-ops mercenary and an ex-police detective. What could make it worse for her? He doesn't like using guns. Will Pain and Agony be able to dodge the criminals trying to take them out and avoid killing each other in the process? Will the criminals be able to handle the two of them together?

Is it wrong to doubt? Many Christians assume that doubt is faith's opposite and that wandering among the hard questions of faith will lead us further and further away from God. True believers, the assumption goes, never waver in their confidence in the fundamental truths of the Christian faith. Professor and philosopher Travis Dickinson disagrees. Instead, he says, our doubts and hard questions about the faith are actually an important way we can express our commitment and love to God.