Biography Collection

For more than a year, over two brutal Northeast winters, the whole of Vermont was captivated by the hunt for a runaway golden retriever named Murphy. He was more than a missing dog - he was a target for capture, and journalistic obsession. This is that story. Murphy’s disappearance would unite the dog’s increasingly anxious owners with an impassioned reporter - Wilson Ring, the state’s correspondent for the Associated Press - and an online community of animal lovers. As Murphy kept running, the quest to bring him home, safe and sound, seemed more and more impossible.

Sometimes our soul mates live down the street. Melissa finds hers when she opens the door for her new neighbor, Elizabeth. Over many years, their lives become intertwined as they support each other through pregnancy and motherhood, divorce, bereavement, and starting over. This is the story of finding a life partner under a different roof.

He was a cunning Berkeley Law grad who lost his job and hatched a con. Then he got rich and ran fast on an outlandish Adderall-fueled rush of stolen cash, multiple identities, and a euphoric fantasy of success. A Ponzi scheme was exposed, and a prominent Manhattan hedge fund imploded. Enterprising intern and financial wizard-in-training Gerti Muho saw it as an opportunity. He had insider knowledge and a knack for fraud, embezzlement, and identity theft. His steady supply of falsified prescriptions helped. Muho was on a luxury high. His luck seemed bottomless.

This is an itemized collection of material detailing The life of Donald Trump, the 45th President of The United States of America, and what he accomplished before and during his life as President. This audiobook primarily focuses on facts and is not an opinionated story.

In the era of Watergate and rising feminist awareness, reporter Pam Zekman was queen of the muckrakers. Her biggest investigation: buy a bar, document the inevitable city department shakedowns and bribes, and publicly document Chicago’s institutionalized corruption. Her epic story changed Chicago and also raised serious questions about the future of journalism.

"Plato sucks because the ideal world pales in comparison with the mysterious complexity of the real one." So writes Andrei Codrescu in this kaleidoscope of riffs and rants about the passions and nightmares of a poet at millennium's end. What does the collapse of communism and rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe look like from the perspective of this reporter who experienced it firsthand? How does a ceramicist and child of photographers view the origin myths of pottery and photography?

Every life journey is filled with personal and unique experiences, and when enough time has passed, each event is worth a story. The angle from which the story is told can be dictated by one’s memory and impressions of the moment. Author Bakilinna Warjri believes her experiences are for telling, and she shares them in this collection, The Fanfare of Life. Whether one experiences loss as a group, as told in “Brownie the Bulldog”, or on one’s own at center stage in “That Sunshine Mountain”, Warjri communicate that no situation is a lost cause.

Kobe Bryant was a true legend. He was one of the greatest basketball players of all time and also a known philanthropist, an Academy Award winner, and a loving husband. His untimely death in a helicopter crash came as a shock to the entire world. Even people who had little interest in basketball were deeply affected by the passing of this outstanding person. This audiobook is a collection of tweets that document the world’s immediate reaction to the tragic news.

The stories I have chosen to share include some of the special people who have touched my heart and helped to mold me. Each of the stories uncovers the direct impact that a simple day or moment has when a person shares their interests, experiences, and life's passions with another person. I have been lucky enough to have encountered some very special people in my life who have shown me how important one person can be in the life of another person.

After the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a white police officer, Chicagoans demanded change. Can a new state’s attorney, the first black woman to hold the position, bring real reform to a broken system? With a brick on her desk from the Cabrini-Green housing project where she spent her childhood, Kim Foxx must adapt her hard-won ideals to the realities of criminal justice in Chicago. In this intimate narrative by award-winning author Steve Bogira, Foxx reveals: “My mother taught me how to be a hustler. Hustle in the sense of work hard, grind - find a way out of no way.”

Uber Taxi Cab Confessions is a whirlwind tour of true short stories viewed through the eyes of a part time Uber driver. You will be a passenger on every ride, discovering the hottest bars and restaurants and the secret after-hour clubs in Fairfield County as we pick up riders and take them to wherever they want to go. Your life changes once you turn on the Uber app. The show begins as soon as a rider opens the door to your cab.

It’s a Darien, Connecticut, tradition: an emergency medical service managed by adolescents. One kid is a varsity soccer captain. There’s a future doctor, a band dork, a theater geek. Theirs is a view of town without the niceties. A drunken spouse turned violent. Lonely old people stuck in the bath. A midlife suicide. How do these kids process the sometimes shocking and violent life-and-death secrets of their community? The answer is a story of high stress and uncommon high school lives, told by a writer who spent his own youth on the night shift. Welcome to Post 53.

From the invasion of Poland to V-J Day, this book is your definitive guide to understanding this historical event. Gain insight into pivotal battles, such as Pearl Harbor, Midway, and Stalingrad. Learn about the weapons and technologies used in the battles and discover how women played a significant role during wartime. Unearth meaningful resistance movements and explore the legacies of WWII.

One prisoner’s ninety-year murder conviction becomes another prisoner’s crusade in this ongoing true account of an unlikely friendship forged behind bars and the enduring power of hope. For seventeen years and counting, Robert Chattler has made good on his promise to help exonerate his former cellmate, Lee Harris, who he believes was baited and duped by Chicago PD and buried by the false testimony of a bribed witness. In this emotional story of courage and trust, suspicion and sacrifice, Tori Marlan reveals the uncanny friendship powering an impassioned fight for justice.

For the first time, all in one place, the award-winning books A Trip to the Hardware Store & Other Calamities and I'm Not Talking About You, Of Course plus seven bonus essays. What a collection! If this doesn't make you smile, then you're not even trying.

This exceptional piece of work was motivated by the current Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic which continues to claim the lives of thousands of people across the World. It brought back memories of real and extraordinary short stories of individuals (known to me and including me), who have experienced threats to life’s span, and happened to bounce back remarkably well.

A Life in Thirty-Five Boxes: How I Survived Selling My Record Collection investigates our impulse to collect - particularly our emotional attachment to vinyl - and the notion that every record collection reflects our life story.

Coming out can be awkward enough. Now try it as a Catholic schoolboy in 1970s Ohio. In this fearless and funny true story, the host and founder of the hit podcast RISK! shares all. From first grade through junior high, twelve-year-old Kevin and his best friend, Ben, were inseparable. But when Kevin divulged his biggest secret, Ben froze him out. The pint-size cold war lasted two years - until they went head-to-head for student council president. Team Ben’s smear campaign began. The school took sides. And Kevin decided to run with it.

Michael Brein's Travel Tales Collection: Close Calls and Great Escapes 1 features a bunch of frightening and horrific tales of fear and panic that can most certainly happen to you in your travels. Scary things do happen occasionally, and mostly your travels are the usual, typical, expected sorts of normal non-anxious experiences. But there are also those unexpected, strange and dangerous surprises that pop up now and again in your journeys.

It was early February 1912, and Franz Reichelt, a Paris tailor, and Rodman Law, a self-described “professional jackass” from New York, were poised, respectively, on the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, ready to deploy an experimental parachute. In bat wings and bundled linen, they were almost certain their contraptions would work. Here is the tale of their inspirations and their pluck - and what happened next.