True Professional

Blinded at age three, Mike May defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling news: a revolutionary stem cell transplant surgery could restore May's vision.

Called a "groundbreaking masterpiece" by Dr. Gregory O'Shanick, medical director emeritus of the Brain Injury Association of America, this is the gold edition of the unabridged audiobook of the critically acclaimed memoir The Day My Brain Exploded, which tells the story of Ashok Rajamani, a first-generation Indian American who had to relearn everything about life after a full-throttle brain hemorrhage at 25. With humor and insight, he describes the events of that day (his brain exploded just before his brother's wedding!) as well as the long, difficult recovery period. In the process he introduces listeners to his family - his principal support group as well as a constant source of frustration and amazement. Irreverent, coruscating, angry, at times shocking, but always revelatory, his memoir takes the listener into unfamiliar territory, much like the experience Alice had when she fell down the rabbit hole. That he lived to tell the story is miraculous; that he tells it with such aplomb is simply remarkable.

Sixteen-year-old Wesley had his heart set on an eight-second ride that February morning. As he lowered himself onto the bull inside the chute, his heart raced with anticipation and excitement. His head nodded. The chute opened. Cowboy and bull released into the stage of competition. Tragedy struck. His lifeless and broken body laid face down on the dirt floor of the arena. Trampled by the 1900-pound bull he sought to conquer. The once cheering crowd silenced, frozen with fear. But where the heartbeat stops, God's plan takes over.

Thaïs is almost two. Like most well-loved children, she is happy. She laughs as she runs on the beach. But her footprints in the sand, with toes turned out, tell a different story. Two Small Footprints in Wet Sand relates the overwhelming tragedy experienced by a family as a result of a genetic disorder.

Against All Odds is a deeply moving account about one boy who had all the odds stacked against him, but through grit, hard work and determination, defied the statistics to become a success. Each chapter includes valuable life lessons and will inspire listeners from every walk of life to look beyond their circumstances, take responsibility for their choices, and move into the life they’ve always wanted.

The word conquer has changed meaning for Bryan Anderson. As a U.S. army sergeant in Iraq, it meant taking down the enemy. After becoming Iraq’s fourth triple amputee from a roadside explosive, what he had to conquer got a bit more personal. On October 23, 2005, the moment Bryan looked down and realized he no longer had legs, he cracked a joke. It was a tragedy that could break many, but Bryan transformed it into something positive, something that propelled him forward.

Growing up in Prince George, BC, our family owned the National Hotel from 1972 to 1998. As soon as I was able to pick up garbage in the parking lot, my dad had me working for my allowance. Throughout the years, I have done everything from the payroll, to carrying the raw sewage pipes out during the renovations in 1984. When I was in school, I would work weekends. During summer break, I would work full-time at the hotel. When I had enough of school, I chose to work full-time at the hotel. These are some of the true stories, and - believe it or not - they were seen with my own eyes too.

In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help - it seemed the fate of the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.

In July 1952, Dr. Walter Freeman arrived at the gates of a West Virginia asylum. In his medical bag he carried two metal picks and a surgical hammer. He had invented a “cheap, easy” ten-minute lobotomy. The press described it as a miracle cure, a new frontier in psychosurgery. That summer, in just twelve days, Freeman lobotomized 228 men, women, and children in West Virginia’s public mental hospitals. His blitzkrieg of brain surgery became known as “Operation Ice Pick,” named after the tools he wielded.

This book captures the stories of five doctors who have killed their patients, including, Harold Shipman, Marcel Petiot, Michael Swango, H.H. Holmes, and John Bodkin Adams. It is amazing that these people chose a profession to help save lives, but preferred to kill. Is it not their job to curtail suffering and death? We sometimes put our lives in the hands of doctors, trusting that our best interests are the most important to them. Thankfully, there are only a handful of doctors who have been inclined to murder their patients.

Jarvis was a typical, middle-aged man in the early summer of 2019. He didn't know what a transient ischemic attack (TIA) was until he had six of them in one evening. The next day, Jarvis walked into an emergency room on his own power to get checked out. The TIAs had been scary, but he figured they were just a warning that he needed to take better care of himself.

In 1996, an unprecedented decade-long courtroom battle was waged in Florida to help bring justice and hope to the family of a young boy born with no eyes after his mother was doused outside of a local u-pick farm by a chemical fungicide believed to have caused his birth defect and the birth defects of many other children. It was a battle that nearly everyone but attorney Jim Ferraro deemed unwinnable. After all, it involved one of the world's most powerful industrial giants.

In a single moment in time, Garret Frey was transformed from an active and energetic four-year-old to a quadriplegic, ventilator-dependent boy who struggled to make sense of a world in disarray. For seven years, Garret worked with Clinical Psychologist Dr. Karen Pirnot as Garret learned that his mental powers could help compensate for the loss of body function. As I Am details the struggles of Garret's mother to advocate for a "normal" childhood education for her son.

An Invented Life shares the story of Alan Amron, a visionary inventor. Even as a child, Alan found it fascinating to create new things, always exploring and trying to understand how everything worked. In the book, Alan tells his story and shares snippets from his childhood and youth in Brooklyn, how he always looked at things differently with deeper insight. This is his journey. Even though he is the inventor of the Post-it sticky notes, he was ripped off of his invention due to an unfortunate set of events. But accepting defeat is not in his nature, so he kept fighting.

A collection of hilarious, heartbreaking, and terrifying encounters with wild black bears in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Rangers, scientists, wildlife photographers, wilderness guides, tourists, and others do all the wrong things when meeting one of the world famous icons of the Smokies. Wake up from a nap and discover a bear sleeping next to you, see a bear driving a car through the park, or hear a ranger whisper a warning that there's a bear in the stall next to you in the ladies room. It's all so emBEARrassing.

In The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey quotes the iconic French philosopher as speaking “nostalgically...of 'an unforgettable evening on LSD, in carefully prepared doses, in the desert night, with delicious music, [and] nice people'". This came to pass in 1975, when Foucault spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wade - ostensibly to guest-lecture at the Claremont Graduate School where Wade was an assistant professor, but in truth to explore what he called the Valley of Death.

Maneater is a personal account by a specialist who approaches her work like a forensic scientist or a case-hardened private eye. Dr. Pamela Nagami is a leading authority on infectious diseases and her stories will shock, amaze, and warn listeners.The patients in Maneater are ordinary Americans. When Danielle Jordan innocently ordered a salad for lunch in Puerta Vallarta she had no idea she had just become the "host" to an organism that six years later would grow into a worm and burrow into her brain.

Will you live your life for all the right reasons? Is your life built on a solid foundation? Do you know your core values, and do you have the courage to live by them? Kevin Guest couldn't have foreseen where his childhood dream of being a rock star would take him. From Kalispell to Holland, Nashville to China, Kevin has been around the world and back again collecting experiences and learning valuable lessons of strength and character that have served him for a lifetime.

A possible genius, a smidgen of madness, a twist of science, and an invention that very nearly changed the world - all collide in a giddy, unbelievably true mystery set in turn-of-the-century Paris.

Philip's remarkable career in law in London led to recommendations from which he gained unprecedented access to leading lights in politics and the trade unions. He warns about the many pitfalls that trap the unwary, even what happened to a High Court judge! He recounts many fascinating events, beginning with a landmark case while articled, all the way through acting for such colourful clients as impresarios, actors, airline captains, and members of both houses of Parliament, to ultimately being chosen out of thousands of solicitors by the Prime Minister himself for his Party's prestigious new London headquarters.