Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

The New Rochelle High School team in suburban New York is like many across the country: a source of civic pride, a manhood workshop for a revered coach, and an emotional proving ground for boys of widely different backgrounds. In the fall of 2014, New Rochelle's season unfolded alongside watershed NFL head injury revelations and domestic abuse cases (remember Ray Rice?) as well as fatalities on nearby fields. The dramatic story of that season, for players, parents and coaches, underscores fundamental questions.

This collection features such stories as "Passenger Train Number 9"; "The Little People"; "The Phantom Rider of the Confederacy"; "The Demon of Wizard Clip"; "Room for One More"; "Tavern of Terror"; "The Surrency Ghost"; "The King's Messengers"; "The Haunted Gold Mine"; "The Singing River"; "The Gray Lady"; "Railroad Bill"; and "The Haunted Car".

Released in 1974, Sweet Home Alabama has become synonymous with Southern rock. From its opening guitar riff, it is instantly recognizable, a raucous, irreverent defense of a Deep South state and its segregationist governor against the jabs of Neil Young. But the roots of Lynyrd Skynyrd's best-selling anthem go much deeper than regional pride or resentment of a fellow rocker.

In LA Times First Fiction Award winner Maggie Shipstead's "Angel Lust", Simon Orff, a thrice-married movie producer, departs for his deceased father’s house, daughters selfishly in tow. “If he had to referee their squabbles and navigate their quicksilver emotions while sifting through his father’s possessions, he hoped the house would not seem so empty, or he hoped at least the emptiness would be neutral.” "If only," writes Halimah Marcus, co-editor of Electric Literature, in her introduction.

Nathan Porter, a young war veteran haunted by an atrocity he witnessed, ends up in an animation studio in southern California, where his dismal romantic history is upended by Violet Delmar, an older voice-over artist known nationally as "The Voice." Violet's siren song wafts in and out of Nathan's entire life, twisting through his misguided affairs and marriage, until he finds himself awakened, thanks to Violet, about no less than all of love and art.

Alfred Nobel, inventor of nitroglycerin and inspiration for the Nobel Peace Prize, visited the United States twice. Koppargruva, from Hugh Coyle's forthcoming book Peace at Last, is a fictionalized account of one of those excursions. Dubbed a killer by American journalists because of recent accidental nitroglycerin blasts in Panama and San Francisco, Nobel faces his tarnished reputation head on while searching for any sliver of redemption.

In 1860, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: They could submit to abolition - or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow.

When his daughter leaves for college, a single father has to cope with living alone for the first time. But is he or is he not actually growing a tiny replacement? A contemporary twist on an old tale.

What's fascinating about Dani Shapiro's story "Supernova" is "its focus on the minor catastrophe that is Shenkman, a relatively prosperous man whose minor shortcomings feel, to him alone, monumental and impossible to overlook," writes Benjamin Samuel, co-editor of Electric Literature, in his introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "Despite rowing every day, obsessively racing against an old rival in a computerized simulation, nobody even knows Shenkman is still competing."

Dragged to a speed dating event by her best friend, newly separated Tacie finds herself learning more about the reasons for her own failed relationship than she bargained for.

Victor VanWely has no use for social media. But now the executive director of the National Society of Rodent Professionals (NatSoRoPro) is facing the biggest challenge yet in his career: organizing the annual world conference Rodentia. Things are not looking well. They are far behind on registrations, their budget is depleted, and the chairman of the board is losing his patience. Can social media indeed be his savior, as everybody always seems to claim?

There is generally no place for spiders in tales of princes and princesses. Very aware of this truth is the spider who falls in love with a girl terrified of spiders. Heartbreak, anger, and conquest headline this unconventional tale of a love gone unrequited.

When neighborhood dogs keep turning up dead, Peter commits himself to finding the killer. His investigation leads him nowhere - until it doesn't. It isn't long before Peter finds himself on the ultimate quest for truth.

After living in the White House for four years, in November 1980, Jimmy Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide. Carter's unpopularity helped Republicans win seats in the House and gain control over the Senate for the first time in over 20 years. The Reagan Era had begun, ushering in a generation of conservative power. Democrats blamed Carter for this catastrophe and spent the next decade pretending he had never existed.

Earth, the fantasy - the place where mankind originated, the storied vista of green, rolling hills and unblemished mountains and fields of amber grain waving in a light breeze. Earth, the reality - a junk world, a dirty, dangerous, rundown planet filled with detention camps, flop houses, taverns, human body parts factories, mobsters' palaces, and a lawless immigrant community of aliens and humans on the run.

Fifteen years after saving only one of two drowning identical twin girls, Dave Quinn meets Anne, a struggling Canadian artist and the woman he had rescued as a child, who is drawn back to the scene of the old tragedy by the specter of her dead sister, who is out to avenge her missed chances and live.

When marriages, friendships, and families come undone, to what lengths do we go to keep it all together? That question lies at the heart of Brendan Mathews's buoyant and unforgettable debut collection of moving and darkly witty stories. From rock-star flameouts to church burnings to ordinary people trying not to fall out of love, these stories are packed with vivid detail, emotional precision, and deft, redemptive humor.

On the khan's orders, Tall Khenbish and his friend Batzorig journey to Russia to purchase an elephant for Mongolia's first zoo. While there, Khenbish learns of Batzorig's plot to overthrow the khan. After returning to Mongolia, Khenbish must decide who to trust - his dear friend, or the ruler that took him in?

This is the dramatic story of a conservative champion who shaped modern America—by leading a Golden Age of Bipartisanship and passing more legislation than any other Senator in the post-Vietnam era. Senator Orrin Hatch co-wrote the most sweeping civil rights bill since the 1960s, launched a health insurance program for 25,000,000 uninsured children, co-created the generic drug industry, and championed the greatest HIV/AIDS legislation in American history, while sponsoring or co-sponsoring over 750 pieces of legislation.

Did you know that to make a task seem easier, all you have to do is lean back a little? Or that retail salespeople who mimic the way their customers speak and behave end up selling more? If you like stats like this, are intrigued by ideas, and find connecting the dots to be a critical part of your skill set—this book is for you. Culled from Harvard Business Review's popular newsletter, The Daily Stat, this book offers a compelling look at insights that both amuse and inform.