Showing results by narrator "David de Vries" in All Categories

A story that kicked off a literacy campaign at the White House. Wells' sweet, rhyming text encourages parents to read to their children for twenty minutes every day and see the magic of reading begin.

When 650 of the world's most violent human beings pour out from Pronghorn Correctional Facility into the Nevada Desert, the biggest manhunt in US history begins. But for John Kradle, this is his one chance to prove his innocence, 26 years after the murder of his wife and child. He just needs to stay one step ahead of the teams of law enforcement officers he knows will be chasing the escapees down.

The clock was ticking on the Nazi plan to annihilate the last group of the Hungarian Jewry. After nearly suffocating in an underground bunker, Auschwitz prisoners Ceslav Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin escaped and told Jewish leaders what they had seen. Their testimony in early June, 1944, corroborated earlier hard-to-believe reports of mass killing in Auschwitz by lethal gas and provided eyewitness accounts of record daily arrivals of Hungarian Jews meeting the same fate. It was the spark needed to stir a call for action to pressure Hungary's premier to defy Hitler.

In France, Johnson is like an alien from another planet. Everything is strange to him. His goal is to speak French without going to prison, drive without being squashed like a bug, dance the tango without losing his marriage, and belt out a tune with a world-class jazz combo without being booed off the stage. Repeatedly, the author fearlessly steps into harm's way. He joins a summer acting troop and witnesses the French version of sexual liberation.

The story of an Olympic wrestler allegedly murdered by the wealthy heir to the Du Pont fortune, Blood Money takes listeners inside the bizarre world of a multi-millionaire, and lays bare the brutal shooting and tense police siege that riveted the nation.

Following the publication of his widely acclaimed Man Booker-nominated novel Hystopia, David Means here returns to his signature form: the short story. Thanks to his four previous story collections, Means has won himself an international reputation as one of the most innovative short fiction writers working today: an “established master of the form.” (Laura Miller, The Guardian).

The Kennedys in the World tells a new, rich, fascinating, and consequential story about Jack, Bobby, and Ted Kennedy. From an early age the brothers developed a deep understanding of the different peoples, cultures, and ideologies around the world; a keen appreciation for the challenges that such differences created for the United States; and a strong desire to reshape America's response to them.

A year ago Thorn's son, Flynn Moss, disappeared into the eco-underground, his only contact with Thorn a series of postcards chronicling his exploits. But a postcard arrives unlike the others, a call for help, Thorn jumps into action, setting off for North Carolina. But before Thorn arrives, he's intercepted by a federal agent who informs him he's too late - Flynn had been acting as an informant for the FBI, and when his traitorous acts were discovered, he was summarily executed.

Useful for academic and recreational archaeologists alike, this book identifies and describes more than 200 projectile points and stone tools used by prehistoric Native American Indians in Texas. The authors also demonstrate how factors such as environment, locale, and type of artifact combine to produce a portrait of theses ancient cultures.

In 1980, Jerry A. formed Poison Idea, a Portland-based punk band that gave voice to disaffected and disenfranchised youth for over thirty years. As happened to so many punk bands, Jerry A. and Poison Idea also went all in on drugs and drinking as they toured the country, spiraling out of control and blowing both the band and their lives apart.

Grampa Bender couldn’t run the Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse without the help of Ernest the mini-pig, Gabby the Vietnamese mynah bird, and his young cat, Milly. These three animals think of themselves as Grampa’s family, and they have always assumed he felt the same way.

This book examines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the Black experience in the region until now.

Phelan Tierney helps people who hope to start their lives over. When a young woman he's taken under his wing disappears, the former lawyer devotes himself to finding her - despite her puzzlingly unhelpful family and his own ghosts.

Dead clients are bad for business, something Tom Winter, head of security for a discrete Swiss private bank, knows all too well. After a helicopter explodes, leaving behind the charred bodies of a client and a colleague, he teams up with Fatima, a mysterious Egyptian businesswoman. Together they follow the money trail around the world and back into the Swiss mountains, the NSA watching their every move. When taciturn Winter, a former special forces commander, closes in on the truth, they turn from being the hunters to the hunted and realize they are in a deadly race against the clock.

When a ten-year-old girl's mutilated body is found in a public park in Paris, chief of police Nico Sirsky takes action. But his elite team of homicide detectives isn't on the case for even twenty-four hours before a second child is found murdered and left to rot inside a middle-school classroom. With the City of Light on edge awaiting another gruesome discovery, the clock starts ticking for Sirsky to catch the elusive killer who calls himself the gamemaster.

The Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse has gone wild! Grampa Bender is temporarily caring for a wounded Canada goose, a cranky old muskrat, and two starving fox kits. Luckily Ernest, Grampa’s capable mini-pig, is there to encourage the other animals to be good hosts. But the visiting creatures are wild, not tame, and they all just want to go home! Despite the chaos, Ernest also takes on the training of Sir Walter the Scottie, the newest addition to Grampa’s blended animal family.

The New York Times Book Review calls Edgar Award winner James W. Hall a “master of suspense,” and this new high-stakes thriller shows why as Thorn embarks on a mission to save his newfound son.

Earth Liberation Front, known as ELF, is a loosely knit organization comprised of environmental activists scattered around the country. These extremists take a “by any means necessary” approach to defending the planet.

On a summer’s night in 1955, CIA officer Michael Suslov is summoned to a secret vault in the heart of Buenos Aires. His mission: transport the corpse of Eva Perón to a safe hiding place in the wake of her husband’s fall from power. But before Michael can comply, everything goes tragically, horribly wrong.... Fifteen years later, Suslov is a ghost of a man living off the radar - and the only soul alive that knows where Evita is buried. When a shadow from his past appears and asks him for help in bringing the body home, as part of a peace deal to end the civil war tearing Argentina apart, Michael agrees, hoping this last mission will quiet the demons from his former life.

Tom Cliffe is who many young people in the 1960s want to be: not just a lover of music, a player of music. But more than an interest, more than a passion, music and a commitment to becoming an accomplished player and recognized for it will become the driving force in Tom’s life. He will give up everything, all the accommodations of the conventional life he was brought up in and educated for.

The Four Trials of Henry Ford chronicles Henry Ford’s forays into landmark litigation during the early years of the 20th century. Ford was a man of extraordinary genius in the intricacies and workings of mechanical objects and in the identification and hiring of talented engineers and administrative managers. But he was constitutionally unable to permit a light to shine on anyone other than himself and often employed humiliating tactics to terminate any employee who rose to prominence.