Showing results by narrator "Alan Smyth" in All Categories

In exploring everyday life and its intersections with death, this enduring collection of stories offers a naturalistic depiction of the working class in early twentieth-century Dublin. Joyce masterfully portrays frustrations and aborted desires to escape the mundane; transformative epiphanies both great and small; and the restraints, loneliness, violence, and contemplations of lives lived.

Now the director of the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security, Brooke Fairfax has one objective: stay on top of all threats to the people and property of the Commonwealth. The position is thankless and never-ending. It even pulls her out of Declan O'Roark's bed in the middle of the night.

When a child is kidnapped by his unstable mother, the father turns to Joe Tiplady - offering him a lot of money to find the boy and bring him back. It soon becomes clear that Joe will have to earn every cent: mother and son are in war-torn Syria, and they've willingly joined the ranks of ISIS.

There's one must-have toy this Christmas, and Neala Clarke has told her niece Charli she'll get it for her. Never mind that she's got less than a week and it looks like everywhere is sold out. She's promised Charli a Fire Princess doll - and Neala is a woman of her word. Darcy Hart is a people-pleaser. So when his adorable six-year-old nephew, Dustin, asks for a particular doll at the last minute, he says yes. Luckily for Darcy, there's one left in stock at the local toy store.

In the feeble light of a London winter, Joe Tiplady walks his dog in the snow. He is not alone. Two men are tracking him, as is a woman with wolf eyes. Soon Joe will find himself caught in a storm of violence and retribution that he does not yet understand. Around the world, a chain of events is in motion that will make Joe a priceless target. A retired Soviet general hunts for his missing daughter after a series of brutal murders. A ruthless assassin loses something so precious he will do anything to get it back.

After dozens of Lexington, Kentucky's forgotten - mostly prostitutes and the homeless - swamp local hospitals from apparent overdoses over the Fourth of July weekend, Kentucky cops soon discover a new synthetic form of heroin is infecting their communities, and that gangs - namely the outlaw motorcycle gang Samael's Army - are responsible for using a "disposable" population to test the new drug.

Miss Ada Quicksilver, a student of London's Lovelace Academy for Promising Young Women, is spending her holiday in Ireland to pursue her anthropological study of fairies. She visits Dublin's absinthe bars to investigate a supposed association between absinthe and fairy sightings. One night a handsome Irishman approaches her, introducing himself as Edward Donoghue. Edward takes absinthe to relieve his sleepwalking. She discovers that he's the earl of Meath, and that he will soon visit a mysterious ruin. On learning about Ada's area of study, he invites her to accompany him.

Just days before the running of the biggest thoroughbred horse race in the world, an act of bioterrorism kills Kentucky's lieutenant governor, and former FBI Special Agent Brooke Fairfax receives a video of the murder from her long-time anonymous source. When Brooke discovers domestic terrorists are actually after the governor - her late husband's brother - and that the radicals are eyeing more targets, she heads to Kentucky to stop the threat.

Coauthors Alan Smyth and Jessica Midkiff have dedicated their lives to ending the plight of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This book exposes the harsh realities facing vulnerable populations to these criminal enterprises and explores the transformative role of authentic masculinity. Upon listening to this book, men will open their eyes to how they knowingly and unknowingly participate in the dehumanization of women and children and how we can stand up to these horrors and transform the world.