Showing results by narrator "Christopher Ragland" in All Categories

You're woken early by the doorbell. It's a young girl, the daughter of the love of your life. She's scared, covered in blood, she says her mother is hurt. You let her in, try to calm her down, tell her you're going to get help. You reach for your phone, but it lights up with a notification before you touch it. It's an Amber Alert - a child has been abducted by a dangerous suspect. The child is the girl standing in front of you. The suspect? You.

1997. Seventeen-year-old Laura Bow has invented a rudimentary artificial intelligence and named it Organon. At first it's intended to be a sounding board for her teenage frustrations, a surrogate best friend; but as she grows older, Organon grows with her. As the world becomes a very different place, technology changes the way we live, love and die; massive corporations develop rival intelligences to Laura's, ones without safety barriers or morals; and Laura is forced to decide whether to share her creation with the world.

Kyle Chayka is one of our sharpest cultural observers. After spending years covering minimalist trends for leading publications, he now delves beneath this lifestyle’s glossy surface, seeking better ways to claim the time and space we crave. He shows that our longing for less goes back further than we realize. His search leads him to the philosophical and spiritual origins of minimalism and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin and Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and designers; visionaries and misfits.

This book reveals how China has used the US-led Global War on Terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people. China’s actions, it argues, have emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism. Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government announced that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its largely Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority.

‘If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.’ The honesty and realism of Jonathan Franzen’s writings on climate have been widely denounced and just as widely celebrated.

Anyone managing an artist's career needs to be well versed and have a savvy understanding of the moving parts of the music business. Learn how and why those moving parts "move," as well as how to manage and navigate a music-based career.

Author Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for apocalypse or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal. Filled with marvelous characters, stories, and ideas, Digital Cash is an engaging and accessible account of the strange origins and remarkable technologies behind today’s cryptocurrency explosion.

God has a more effective prayer life for you than you ever dreamed possible. Let this volume be your open door to wonderful answers to prayer. Here is your personal guide to a life of mighty prevailing prayer. Let this book speak to your heart, take you to your knees, and help you obtain prayer answers in difficult and resistant situations.

Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. These materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethink the way we build and collaborate with our environment. Things Fall Together is a provocative guide to this emerging, often mind-bending reality, presenting a bold vision for harnessing the intelligence embedded in the material world.

A Chinese astronaut is found dead in a NASA training environment in Houston, Texas. No one can explain how he got there. Amid fears of a diplomatic catastrophe, the CIA dispatches Timothy 'Hangman' Blake to investigate a convicted kidnapper who works in the facility – someone Blake put away years ago. Blake is deeply insane, afflicted by terrible urges he can barely control – but he's also brilliant. Zara, his beautiful and deadly CIA handler, suspects a secret Chinese spacecraft is surveilling the United States, but Blake can see something much more sinister is going on.

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future. Taking listeners from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

When Albert Einstein told Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 that the atomic bomb was possible, he did not tell the president about another discovery he had made, something so extreme and horrific it remained a secret...until now.

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

Dr Michael Lynch provides a concise overview of the Chinese Civil War, a defining conflict in world history. Between the end of World War II and the dawn of the Cold War, one of the most important conflicts in modern history reached its climax. Delving into the political background and complex ramifications of the conflict, he assesses Mao and Chiang’s millions-strong armies, their strategies and commanders, and the critical campaigns that won and lost China.

The seventh Jim Rook novel from the master of supernatural horror - Remedial English teacher and psychic Jim Rook has been feeling out of sorts all summer, and on the first day of the Fall semester he runs over and kills his pet cat, Tiddles. But halfway through his first class, enigmatic new Korean student Kim Dong Wook arrives... with a gift: a basket containing Tiddles, alive once more. The Korean spirit Kwisin, Jim is told, is saying “thank you” in advance. But what for? Jim can’t help but feel deeply uneasy...

Once a rising VP at a topflight ad agency, Bill Moss now works as a cold caller at a telemarketing firm in the Times Square area. He's got a bad case of the urban blues, and when a pink slip rather than a promotion comes through, Bill snaps.... Now he's got a dead supervisor on his hands and problems no career counselor can help him with.

In this 365-day devotional, you will meet men and women who have come through the darkness of separation and divorce and who now walk in the bright hope of God's love and healing. You will be encouraged and inspired by some of today's most respected and well-known Christian leaders and psychologists. The daily readings and heartfelt prayers in Divorce Care affirm God's love for you. You'll discover that the divorce process can be a powerful catalyst for good in your life, transforming deep loss into meaningful growth with God.

We were so young when it all happened. Just 13 years old, making the most of the long, hot, lazy days of summer, thinking we had the world at our feet. That was us – me, Fat Bobby, Jim and Tara – the four members of the Outsiders’ Club. The day we found a burnt-out car in the woods was the day everything changed. Cold hard cash in the front seat and a body in the trunk… it started out as a mystery we were desperate to solve. Then, the Collector arrived. He knew we had found his secret. And suddenly, our summer of innocence turned into the stuff of nightmares.

For many of us, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call, forcing us to take a frank look at how well our immune systems could serve us during challenging times. Is your immune health up to par? Could it save you from a monumental threat? In this new book packed with up-to-the-minute information, natural-wellness expert Dr. Joseph Mercola offers a powerful toolkit for strengthening immunity and supporting health.

What are the beliefs and behaviors that set great teachers apart? In this internationally renowned bestseller, Todd Whitaker reveals 19 keys to becoming more effective in the classroom. This essential third edition features new sections on why it’s about more than relationships, how to focus on a consistent, engaging learning environment, and the importance of choosing the right mode—business, parent, child—to improve your classroom management.