Showing results by narrator "Jean Ann Douglass" in All Categories

In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias or how the shape of a student’s gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they’re still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child-development milestones to what’s admissible in a court of law to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.

Frictionless outlines the groundwork necessary for getting a company up-and-running and explains how companies make and market products and services while meeting the demands of their customers and employees today. Frictionless is the essential handbook for creating tomorrow’s mind set and competitive advantage.

If you find yourself running away from fear, you’re running in the wrong direction. Fear demands that we move toward it, face it, and hear its messages. When we fail to do this, the price is high - chronic anxiety, sleeplessness, damaged relationships, skyrocketing pharmaceutical use, and more.

Callie Delgado volunteered to apprentice to Gem City's Soul Charmer. He'd forced the soul magic ability into her, but now it was hers. She'd learn to control her body's reaction to rented souls or go up in flames. She exchanged her chance to escape the darker side of Gem City to save her brother. Now she needs to keep him sober and safe, try to mend family ties, and avoid the mobsters who have too much interest in the magic of borrowing souls. But when bodies begin dropping at the Soul Charmer's door, it's up to Callie and her partner Derek to track down the person killing soul renters.

Lexi has always wanted to know more about the mother who passed away when she was only a child. But her dad will barely talk about her. Is it so wrong to want to learn about the mom she never got to know? When Lexi’s grandma dies and secretly leaves her a worn blue chest that belonged to Lexi’s mother, Lexi is ecstatic to find a treasure trove of keepsakes. Her mom held on to letters, pamphlets, flyers, and news articles all from the same beautiful summertime getaway—Mackinac Island—plus a cryptic postcard that hints at a forbidden romance.

Far from the kingdom of Torvald, on the Western Isles near the coast, sea dragons rule the skies. Lila is the daughter of the Raider leader, destined to take his place one day aboard their plundering ships. But she aspires to much more: Lila wants the Raiders to become Dragon Mercenaries, dragon riders who help protect merchant fleets and navies from attack. Her father Kasian is skeptical, but a young monk named Danu - with a quest of his own - comes bearing a prophecy claiming that Lila is the lost heir of Roskilde, a born dragon rider.

Women are, and have always been, all these things and more. Looking through the ages and across the globe, Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency, along with Ebony Adams, PhD, have reclaimed 25 stories of remarkable women who dared to defy history and change the world around them.

A proudly humanist portrayal of sexual impulse and impropriety in the City of Angels, The First 50 is a chronological recapitulation of 50 erotic encounters that take place between the ages of 13 and 33. Columbine, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Great Recession set the stage as a young woman navigates the ambient decadence that has long defined Los Angeles.

Business as usual is over. The age of hyper-change is upon us, and technology is at the forefront. Since the dawn of the microchip, exponential growth has defined modern technology. Today, entire industries are being upended by software, sensors, cameras, LiDAR, processors, and optics — all growing smaller by the day.

In nine stories that range from the real to the unreal, strange to familiar, funny to frightening, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum reminds us why her wildly original debut, Madeleine Is Sleeping, and her masterful Ms. Hempel Chronicles have become contemporary classics - celebrated and beloved.

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.

Dena was a busy midwife trapped on the hamster wheel of working motherhood. Adam was an eccentric Buddhist yogi passing as a hardworking dad. Bella was 14 and wanted to be normal. Sophia was up for anything that involved skipping school. Together, they shouldered backpacks, walked away from their California life of all-night births, carpool schedules, and Cal Skate, and crisscrossed India and Nepal for eight months - a journey that led them to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the tree where the Buddha sat, and the arms of Amma the Divine Mother.

Dinah Caldwell has been filling her father's role since he abandoned their family four years ago. She and her grief-stricken mom run their subsistence farm deep in the Ozarks, making sure her younger brother never has to worry. Until the day Gabriel Gates, who owns everyone in Charlotte County, kills her mother to steal her family's well.

Callie Delgado always puts family first, and unfortunately her brother knows it. She’s emptied her savings, lost work, and spilled countless tears trying to keep him out of trouble, but now he’s in deeper than ever, and his debt is on Callie’s head. She’s given a choice: Do some dirty work for the mob, or have her brother returned to her in tiny pieces.

This collection of true, feel-good holiday stories celebrates the gift of dogs. It's the perfect companion for those magical Christmas evenings in front of the fireplace with your favorite canine companion. It also makes a heartfelt gift for dog-loving friends. Contributors include Lauraine Snelling, Melody Carlson, Amy Shojai, and many more.

A blue girl lives in the woods, eating secrets baked into moon pies and shaking up a small lakeside town. In this small lakeside town, mothers bake their secrets into moon pies they feed to a silent blue girl. Their daughters have secrets too - that they can’t sleep, that they might sleep with a neighbor boy, that they know more than they let on. But when the daughters find the blue girl, everyone’s carefully held silences shake loose.

1962. In the middle of Brooklyn Heights sits the Starlite: boutique dress shop by day, underground women's club by night. Started by the shop's proprietor after her councilman ex-husband, Fred Abbott, ruined her reputation, Madeline's social club soon becomes a safe haven for women from all walks of life. These after-hour soirées soon bring two very different women into Madeline's life - Elaine, a British ex-pat struggling to save her marriage, and Lisa, a young stewardess whose plans for the future are suddenly upended.

Dragons, magic, princesses of mighty kingdoms: elements of fantasy that have carried on throughout the many ages and yet may one day be forgotten. Enter, and delve into the roots of fantasy, rediscovering the fantastic, and exploring lost worlds. This is storytelling at its best. This collection of original works will take listeners back to the moment when they first fell in love with the genre; featuring stories from writers across the spectrum such as Mark Lawrence, R.S. Belcher, Miles Cameron, and many more.

From the depths of German and American archives comes a story one soldier never wanted told. The first volunteer killed defending Robert E. Lee’s position in battle was really a German assassin. After fleeing to the United States to escape prosecution for murder, the assassin enlisted in a German company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Mexican-American War and died defending Lee’s battery at the Siege of Veracruz in 1847.

Six months ago, Harper Cody stressed out over finding the right college. Now, she’ll be thrilled if she makes it to her 18th birthday. Unexpected nuclear war destroyed the world she knew, along with her dreams for a future. Violent thugs took away her parents and home, sending her fleeing into the ashes with her traumatized little sister. Following her best hope for survival, she chased a rumor of safety in the mountains.