Showing results by narrator "Allen O'Reilly" in All Categories

The humans of Ergoth continue to encroach upon Thorbardin, but the worst threat to the dwarven fortress comes from a mysterious fog-beast and a covetous wizard. A Cobar, a kender, and a giant raptor add to the confusion as the dwarves are faced with wizards who command not only the forces of magic but thousands of mercenaries as well. And, unknown to the dwarves who valiantly fight the invaders, the beast has already claimed Thorbardin as its own.

Everyone in Navronne seems to be after Valen. There is the fanatical Harrower priestess, Sila Diaglou, who wants to raze the kingdom. The Bastard Prince Osriel, who steals dead men's eyes. And the Pureblood Registry, determined to keep every pureblood sorcerer in thrall. Even beings out of myth, the Danae guardians, whose dancing nurtures the Earth and whose attention could prove the most costly of all. As Navronne sinks deeper into civil war and perilous winter, Valen finds himself a bargaining chip in a deadly standoff.

Despite the stubborn courage of dwarven warriors, the protracted Wilderness War ends as a no-win. The Swordsheath Scroll is signed, and Thorbardin shows its support of the open-minded Qualinesti elves by joining in the construction of magnificent Pax Tharkas.A new leader emerges from their midst, Derkin, the King of Living Stone, whose bravery and wisdom is written in dwarven annals, and whose name becomes the "throne name" of all future dwarven kings.

The 21st century sniper is a mature, intelligent shooter who leverages technology to his deadly advantage. He has spent thousands of hours honing his skills. He is a master of concealment in all environments, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the crowded streets of Iraq. He is trained in science and left alone to create the unique art of the kill. To the sniper, the battlefield is like a painter’s blank canvas. It is his job to simultaneously utilize tools, training, and creativity to deliver devastating psychological impact upon the battlefield. And it is he alone who is left with the intimacy of the kill.

The 1920s in Paris are the pivotal years in Hemingway's apprenticeship as a writer, whether sitting in cafés or at the feet of Gertrude Stein. These are the heady times of the Nick Adams short stories, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and the writing of The Sun Also Rises. These are also the years of Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, the birth of his first son, and his discovery of the bullfights at Pamplona.

Explores the folklore and history of the dwarven clans of Krynn through the bickering clans' reconciliation and the construction of the legendary Thorbardin. By the author of Gates of Thorbardin.

The rebellious son of a long line of pureblood cartographers and diviners, Valen has spent most of his life trying to escape what society - and his family - have ordained for him. His own mother has predicted that he will meet his doom in water, blood, and ice. Her divination seems fulfilled when a comrade abandons Valen in a rainy wilderness half-dead, addicted to an enchantment that converts pain to pleasure, and possessing only a stolen book of maps.

This is a highly comprehensive introduction to the Talmud, the age-old storehouse of Jewish wisdom. Bokser covers the long history of the Talmud, from its origin in the Babylonian exile, its growth through the five centuries after the Roman destruction of the Temple, and the later persecution of the Talmud. The book covers a number of high-level topics, including social ethics and personal morality, with numerous examples from the Talmud. Ben Zion Bokser was one of the major Conservative rabbis of America.

Like the Rockefellers and the Kennedys, the Kochs are one of the most influential dynasties of the modern age, but they have never been the subject of a major biography... until now. Not long after the death of his father, Charles Koch, then in his early 30s, discovered a letter the family patriarch had written to his sons. "You will receive what now seems to be a large sum of money," Fred Koch cautioned. "It may either be a blessing or a curse."

In Pursuing the Good Life, one of the founders of positive psychology, Christopher Peterson, offers 100 bite-sized reflections exploring the many sides of this exciting new field. With the humor, warmth, and wisdom that has made him an award-winning teacher, Peterson takes listeners on a lively tour of the sunny side of the psychological street. What are the roles played by positive emotions and happiness, by strengths of character, by optimism, and by good relationships with others? How can we pursue the good life in families, workplaces, schools, and sports, no matter who we are or where we live?

The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?” What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think. Sure, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship.

The 1920s in Paris are the pivotal years in Hemingway's apprenticeship as a writer, whether sitting in cafes or at the feet of Gertrude Stein. These are the heady times of the Nick Adams short stories, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and the writing of The Sun Also Rises. These are also the years of Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, the birth of his first son, and his discovery of the bullfights at Pamplona.

A contract killer who wants out of the game, Kessler hires Stanley mostly to watch his back in the event that someone of similar professional skills is shadowing him. Someone is, in fact, only Stanley fails to spot him and dead bodies are soon piling messily up. The hapless Stanley thus begins an odyssey around Manhattan in his attempt to uncover just what did go down, and why, during his client's last, decidedly dirty, job.

Michael Reynolds recreates the milieu that forged one of America's greatest and most influential writers. He reveals the fraught foundations of Hemingway's persona: his father's self-destructive battle with depression and his mother's fierce independence and spiritualism. He brings Hemingway through World War I, where he was frustrated by being too far away from the action and glory, despite his being wounded and nursed to health by Agnes Von Kurowsky - the older woman with whom he fell terribly in love.

Secret Lives of the Civil War features irreverent and uncensored profiles of men and women from the Union and the Confederacy - complete with hundreds of little-known and downright bizarre facts. For example, you’ll discover that: Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to receive valuable military strategies from ghosts in the spirit world and that Jefferson Davis once imported camels for soldiers stationed in the American southwest.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Billy Graham & Me contains 101 fascinating stories from all the living U.S. presidents, well-known pastors, country singers and other celebrities, and world leaders, relating their personal experiences with Billy Graham. Renowned Evangelical preacher Billy Graham has touched tens of millions of lives, inspiring faith and hope around the world. And you will get to know the beloved preacher better in these inspiring personal stories by the people who know him best. You will meet the real Billy Graham, the man behind the public figure.

What explains the growing class divide between the well-educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it's because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills - the right "human capital" - reap the majority of the economic rewards. The complexity of today's economy is not only making these lucky elites richer - it is also making them smarter.

What is sentimentality, and where did it come from? For acclaimed scholar and biographer Fred Kaplan, the seeds were planted by the British moral philosophers of the eighteenth century. The Victorians gained from them a theory of human nature, a belief in the innateness of benevolent moral instincts; sentiment, in turn, emerged as a set of shared moral feelings in opposition to both scientific realism and the more ego-driven energies of Romanticism.

Since technology has made it easy to access, share, and distribute company data, many managers avoid live interaction, instead relying on emails, text messages, web-based seminars to manage their employees. But although technology has changed, people have not. There is still a need for effective face-to-face communication; managers need to have the ability to ask the right questions and use the answers to find solutions.

Their ambitions, intrigues, and jealousies shaped the birth of our nation, but they overcame their foibles and imperfections to throw off the chains of tyranny and form a more perfect union. We think of them now as faces on money or statues on pedestals, and, as Burns shows here in luminous prose, thats exactly what they wanted to be. They all possessed astonishing brilliance, expansive egos, and more than just a little vanity.