Showing results by narrator "Paul Costanzo" in All Categories

Dear Listener: Lindsay Foxe is a successful model in New York - a woman who hides behind a new name to protect herself from a past of betrayal and treachery and a present that becomes fraught with danger. The product of old San Francisco wealth, the daughter of a man who despises her, her life is forever changed when she is brutally assaulted by her sister’s husband, and then rejected by her family. Lindsay is finally forced to face up to her past when she meets S. C. Taylor, a tough ex-cop turned private investigator and computer troubleshooter.

Franklin Roosevelt is the assistant secretary of defense. Thomas Dewey is running for president with a blunt-speaking Missourian named Harry Truman at his side. Britain holds on to its desperate alliance with the United States' worst enemy while a holocaust unfolds in Texas. In Harry Turtledove's compelling, disturbing, and extraordinarily vivid reshaping of American history, a war of secession has triggered a generation of madness. The tipping point has come at last.

In 1914, they called it The Great War, and few could imagine anything worse. For nearly three decades, a peace forged in blood and fatigue has held sway in North America. Now, Japan dominates the Pacific, the Russian Tsar rules Alaska, and England, under Winston Churchill, chafes for a return to its former glory. But behind the façade of world order, America is a bomb waiting to go off. Jake Featherston, the megalomaniacal leader of the Confederate States of America, is just the man to light the fuse.

Rookie crime reporter Jason Wade, a troubled loner from the wrong side of the tracks, pursues the story of a murdered Seattle nun. The case leads him to a hermit nun who founded a mysterious religious order; and ultimately to the dark secret that has tormented his ex-cop father for decades. It culminates in a life and death struggle against the clock. With time running out, Jason and his father battle the odds to confront a terrible truth.

Yale professor Dr. Edward Kender’s father is undergoing chemotherapy when the supply of a critical accompanying drug, Culovort, suddenly runs out. Unwilling to accept the drug manufacturer’s disingenuous excuse of production line problems, Dr. Kender hires private investigator Erin Pulaski to prove that something more sinister is going on at Schiffer Hartwin.

Rafaella Holland, a Pulitzer Prize winner, now a journalist for the Boston Tribune, discovers from her comatose mother’s journals that her "real" father is Dominick Giovanni, a wealthy, very powerful arms dealer who lives and runs his operations from his own private island compound in the Caribbean. She wants revenge for what he did to her mother. She wants to gather enough proof to send him to prison for the rest of his miserable life. Marcus Devlin manages the resort on Giovanni’s Island, a private playground for the wealthy and powerful. He’s very good at what he does, but Rafaella wonders if he’s really what he seems.

Entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, and upward mobility: These traditions are at the heart of the free enterprise system, and have long been central to America's exceptional culture. In recent years, however, policymakers have dramatically weakened these traditions - by exploding the size of government, propping up their corporate cronies, and trying to reorient our system from rewarding merit to redistributing wealth. Arthur C. Brooks shows that this trend cannot be reversed through materialistic appeals.

Johnny Edge, a former carnival barker, schemes and plots his way to the top while Peter Kessler turns his back on a staid life of small-town stability to stake his fortune on the movie business. Beautiful starlet Dulcie Warren is willing to use her sexuality and to play dirty to get to the top, if that's what it takes. When the lives of these three ambitious, determined characters collide, they have the potential to build a dream - or shatter one.

Organized crime - the Italian American kind - has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise - from the 1880s to the post-World War II era - that is as exciting as it is authoritative. Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia.

Judith Campbell prides herself on her level head. She's a scientist with a 10-year plan, a well-managed bank account, and a clear understanding of what she wants out of life. Currently, that means a summer of fun touring Europe with her friends. She intends to see some amazing scenery, flirt with a cute guy or two, and return home ready to settle down for good. Falling madly in love with an Italian playboy is definitely not on her life goals to-do list. But then her eyes meet those of Cesare D'Angelo across a crowded piazza.

A man is murdered in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The killer is caught just blocks away, blood still on his hands. When it's discovered that both killer and victim belong to the same Native American tribe, the tribe asserts jurisdiction, and homicide DA Dave Brunelle has to prosecute the case in their tribal court. It's bad enough when the defense attorney claims the killing was justified under the ancient custom of "blood revenge". It gets worse when blood revenge turns into a blood feud.

Published when Theodore Roosevelt was only 23 years old, The Naval War of 1812 was immediately hailed as a literary and scholarly triumph, and it is still considered the definitive book on the subject. It caused considerable controversy for its bold refutation of earlier accounts of the war, but its brilliant analysis and balanced tone left critics floundering, changed the course of U.S. military history by renewing interest in our obsolete forces, and set the young author and political hopeful on a path to greatness.

Homicide prosecutor David Brunelle faces the most difficult case of his career. An innocent young girl is murdered in a heinous, unforgivable way. The only evidence against the killer is the full confession of his accomplice - another young girl he also victimized. But the accomplice is charged with the murder as well, which means that she has the right to remain silent. And she's so scared of the killer, she refuses to take a deal to testify against him.

In April 1945, the Allies are charging toward Berlin from the west, the Russians from the east. For Hitler, the situation is hopeless. But at this turning point in history, another war is about to explode. To win World War II, the Allies dealt with the devil. Joseph Stalin helped FDR, Churchill, and Truman crush Hitler. But what if "Uncle Joe" had given in to his desire to possess Germany and all of Europe? In this stunning novel, Robert Conroy picks up the history of the war just as American troops cross the Elbe into Germany. Then Stalin slams them with the brute force of his enormous Soviet army.

Whether driven by mass psychology, fear, or greed of investors, the forces of supply and demand, or a combination, technical analysis has flourished for thousands of years on the outskirts of the financial establishment. In The Evolution of Technical Analysis: Financial Prediction from Babylonian Tablets to Bloomberg Terminals, MIT's Andrew W. Lo details how the charting of past stock prices for the purpose of identifying trends, patterns, strength, and cycles within market data has allowed traders to make informed investment decisions based in logic, rather than on luck.

Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off. Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television programs, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test? Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers.

Sometimes the easiest cases are the hardest. The defendant absolutely, positively murdered her own mother. She is also absolutely, positively mentally ill. Homicide prosecutor David Brunelle is tasked with holding her responsible despite the best efforts of her defense team, which includes a psychologist who's convinced that she's innocent. As the case proceeds, the pressures mount, and Brunelle begins to question his own sanity. Will Brunelle crack the case, or will the case crack him?

A serial killer is on the loose, and it’s up to FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock to bring him down. They soon discover the killer has blood ties to an infamous and now long-dead monster. Savich and Sherlock are joined by agents Lucy Carlyle and Cooper McKnight, and the chase is on. At the same time, Agent Lucy Carlyle learns from her dying father that her grandfather didn’t simply walk away from his family 22 years ago: he was, in fact, murdered by his wife, Lucy’s grandmother.

The team of Tom, Warner, and Buck set out to help liberate a captive town from insurgents. But just when they think they're almost in the clear, their mission takes a twist, teaming the trio with two Marine Raiders, and leading them into even more danger.

The rich are not only getting richer, they are becoming more dangerous. Starting in the early 1980s the top one percent broke away from the rest of us to become the most unstable force in the economy. An elite that had once been the flat line on the American income charts - models of financial propriety - suddenly set off on a wild ride of economic binges. Not only do they control more than a third of the country's wealth, their increasing vulnerability to the booms and busts of the stock market wreak havoc on our consumer economy, financial markets, communities, and government finances.