Showing results by narrator "Brandon Massey" in All Categories

Murphy’s life didn’t begin on a track that would lead to homelessness. He was smart, dedicated to hockey, and was a key player for the Oilers, Red Wings, and Blackhawks, among other teams. But one vicious body check changed his life forever. Despite being shaken by the hit, Murphy was cleared to return to the game. Soon after, his entire life seemed to change. Murphy became a journeyman, moving from team to team. Along the way, other NHLers said they noticed something different about him, too.

When journalist Brett Popplewell first heard about Dag Aabye, an aging former stuntman who lived alone inside a school bus on a mountain, running day and night through blizzards and heat waves, he was intrigued and bewildered. Captivated by the seemingly implausible tale of a wild super-athlete aging more slowly than the rest of us, he was determined to meet the apocryphal white-haired man who was pushing the boundaries of the human mind and body beyond what anyone could dream was possible.

Omega Sector, an interagency task force, is made up of the country’s most elite agents. In these four classic tales by USA TODAY bestselling author Janie Crouch, they’ll be challenged like never before!

The Best Life Stories by Reader's Digest are 150 of the best hand-picked real-life tales of resilience, joy, and hope - all in 150 words or less!

The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture — during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement — but have now come to fruition in the presidency of Donald Trump.

Just Ask the Universe is not a book of New Age gobbledygook filled with empty promises. Angels won't fly from above and touch you while you're listening. You will not be asked to practice unusual or tedious rituals. There will be no preaching or sage advice and there will most certainly be no channeling of your inner chakras or dressing like Friar Tuck. Just Ask the Universe is a realistic guide to personal development.

How big was the pressure? How deep was the division? Those were the questions that would beg answering long after the Chicago Bulls had completed their strife-ridden 1997-98 season in the National Basketball Association. Blood on the Horns details the infighting and conflict between Jordan, coach Phil Jackson, teammate Scottie Pippen and the team's general manager, Jerry Krause, and managing partner, Jerry Reinsdorf.

A young African American millennial filmmaker's funny, sometimes painful, true-life coming-of-age story of trying to make it in New York City - a chronicle of poverty and wealth, creativity and commerce, struggle and insecurity, and the economic and cultural forces intertwined with "the serious, life-threatening process" of gentrification.

Pete Axthelm follows the 1969 - 70 season of the New York Knicks and provides a parallel focus on basketball as it was then played in the black neighborhoods of New York City. Throughout, he writes clearly, intelligently, and passionately about the game, bringing alive the players’ efforts, accomplishments, and failures.

Charming, wealthy Randle Kennedy has a secret: he's British Columbia’s most prolific producer of boutique marijuana. He’s developed strains of B.C. Bud to please the most sophisticated palates and produce any desired effect, from a light contemplative buzz to the most mind-warping stone. His medical varieties offer relief for conditions ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's disease. Come legalization, he'll be the first on the market with marijuana's answer to single-malt Scotch.

Living in St. Jude, a 110-year-old dying city on the edge of the Mississippi, is tough. But when a letter informs 14-year-old Cinque Williams of the passing of the father he never met, he is faced with an incomplete past and an uncertain future. A curse meant for his father condemns Cinque to a slow death even as it opens his eyes to the strange otherworld around him. With help from the ghost Willy T, an enigmatic White Woman named Iku, an African Loa, and a devious shape-shifter, Cinque gathers the tools to confront the ghost of his dead father. But he will learn that sometimes too much knowledge can be dangerous.

The night before the dance performance that could determine Gracie Wilder’s career, her father unexpectedly dies, leaving behind a curious gift with ties to a myth told to her as a child. Desperate to understand her father’s unspoken words, she puts her greatest dream on the line for an opportunity to remember the childhood she tried so hard to forget.

In ancient Athens, thousands would attend theatre festivals that turned writing into a fierce battle for fame, money, and laughably large trophies. While the tragedies earned artistic respect, it was the comedies - the raunchy jokes, vulgar innuendo, outrageous invention, and barbed political commentary - that captured the imagination of the city.

The Best Life Stories by Reader's Digest are 150 of the best hand-picked real-life tales of resilience, joy, and hope - all in 150 words or less! The boys in my neighborhood called me crybaby.

Russ Bryant, a lonely and downtrodden reporter trapped in a job he hates, stumbles onto the story of a lifetime when he is befriended by Casey Fox, a promising rookie catcher on the local minor league team. Possessed of mythic talents but mortal insecurities, Casey isn’t even sure he wants to play in the major leagues (and unless he improves his attitude toward the team’s management, he may never get the option). Still, when circumstances in Boston lead to an offer from the Red Sox, the lure proves irresistible, and Casey moves on the fast track from the anonymity of the minor leagues to stardom at Fenway Park.

In The Good Neighbor, Rory Fallon is walking his dog along the streets of the exclusive Venetian Vistas neighborhood when he notices activity at the house next door. New neighbors have arrived in the form of Austin and Meg Harden, along with their two children. Before long, the Hardens and Rory and his partner Bruno have formed a strange, sometimes symbiotic relationship, bringing up questions of love and marriage, trust and temptation.

The story opens in the Virgin Islands. Rob McKenna is a good man who has lost much: His beloved daughter was killed the year before. McKenna's wife leaves him, forcing him to take on a crewmember, Tom Cain, to help sail the boat back to Boston. But Cain brings trouble on board and forces McKenna to make a desperate choice. "Do this one thing," Cain says. "Do this and you'll have a life." All McKenna has to do is lie. And soon... kill.

The Best Life Stories by Reader's Digest are 150 of the best hand-picked real-life tales of resilience, joy, and hope - all in 150 words or less! My life pivots around a form letter I received in the mail in 1980.

Rafael Yglesias completed this novel, his first, at the age of sixteen. The largely autobiographical story follows a New York prep school dropout yearning for freedom and authenticity. On its release the book was hailed as a next-generation Catcher in the Rye. But protagonist Raul Sabas comes of age in a very different New York than Holden Caulfield - a tumultuous and radicalized city following the student takeover of Columbia University and assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Best Life Stories by Reader's Digest are 150 of the best hand-picked real-life tales of resilience, joy, and hope - all in 150 words or less! On August 31, I lost my arm to the shoulder on a nothing of a road outside of Tirkit.