Showing results by narrator "Michael Kirby" in All Categories

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”

For decades, performance management has been seen as an annual chore by managers and HR alike. But this process is changing, and there are ways to make it more effective for your organization and more useful for employees. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on performance management in your organization, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you assess performance more accurately, have more effective feedback conversations, and encourage the growth of your employees.

Big-band frontman Johnny Favorite was singing for the troops when a Luftwaffe fighter squadron strafed the bandstand, killing the crowd and leaving the singer near death. The army returned him to a private hospital in upstate New York, leaving him to live out his days as a vegetable while the world forgot him. But Louis Cyphre never forgets. Cyphre had a contract with the singer, stipulating payment upon Johnny's death—payment that will be denied as long as Johnny clings to life. When Cyphre hires Harry Angel to find Johnny at the hospital, Angel learns that the singer has disappeared.

The Underpainter is a novel of interwoven lives in which the world of art collides with the realm of human emotion. It is the story of Austin Fraser, an American painter now in his later years who is haunted by memories of those whose lives most deeply touched his own, including a young Canadian soldier and china painter and the beautiful model who becomes Austin's mistress.

The annals of movie history are full of lost treasures – spectacular scripts from world-renowned writers that could have been classics, had they only been made. Now, for the first time, some of these forgotten gems have been brought to life, fully realised as vivid, cinematic radio productions. Scripted by major 20th Century writers, they star a host of A-list actors and feature richly evocative, atmospheric soundtracks.

A 25,000-copy best seller in Quebec, Arvida, with its stories of innocent young girls and wild beasts, attempted murder and ritual mutilation, haunted houses and road trips heading nowhere, is unforgettable. Like a Proust-obsessed Cormac McCarthy, Samuel Archibald's portrait of his hometown, a model town designed by American industrialist Arthur Vining Davis, does for Quebec's North what William Faulkner did for the South and heralds an important new voice in world literature.

In the summer of 1938, Layla Beck's father, a United States senator, cuts off her allowance and demands that she find employment on the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal jobs program. Within days Layla finds herself far from her accustomed social whirl, assigned to cover the history of the remote mill town of Macedonia, West Virginia, and destined, in her opinion, to go completely mad with boredom.

In this poignant new series, Patricia Johns introduces an Amish family striving to reclaim the promise of love, marriage, and community after a shocking change in circumstance. Her sensitive storytelling and realistically flawed, yet endearing characters bring depth and heart to this tender story about faith and second chances, as a young man and woman.

Get ready for a completely improvised and unscripted Audible Original that invites you to listen in on the funniest phone calls from the world’s weirdest town. “Welcome to South Grampers! Please enjoy our world-famous movie theater butter, and kindly stay away from the glowing toxic waste.” Ever been on a terrible conference call where nothing gets solved? Stuck on hold trying to cancel your cable service? Lonely and needed to talk to a friend? (Even if they’re a cat?) Bad Reception is an entirely improvised comedy, set entirely on the phone. A cast of over 40 top comedians and improvisers brings to life (and completely makes up) the story of South Grampers, Northern California – the Movie Theater Butter Capital of the World.

A multicultural nexus, Toronto hosts Indian, Portuguese, African, Italian, and Chinese communities that provide fertile backdrops for Toronto Noir's corrosive exposés. Features brand-new stories by RM Vaughan, Nathan Sellyn, Ibi Kaslik, Peter Robinson, Heather Birrell, Sean Dixon, Raywat Deonandad, Christine Murray, Gail Bowen, Emily Schultz, Andrew Pyper, Kim Moritsugu, Mark Sinnet, George Elliott Clarke, Pasha Malla, and Michael Redhill.

After serving as a US Marine during World War II and attending college on the GI Bill, Sam Keith decided to seek adventure in Alaska as a laborer on the Adak Navy base. There he befriended Dick Proenneke, whose shared love of the outdoors, hard work, and self-reliance quickly bonded an alliance between the two. Together they explored the wilds of South Central Alaska, while working on the Navy base, hunting and fishing with friends and breathing in the great outdoors.

This audiobook will guide and teach you how you can start putting your hard-earned money to work for you. It's true - money does make money! And today, you have the opportunity to learn how to do this with your money, even if you have never "invested" a single dollar in your life. Larry brings you the most important information, investment strategies, tips, savings plans, and the exact advice that expensive financial advisors charge clients thousands of dollars for.

Dava Sobel’s thoughtful play brings to life the story of Nicolaus Copernicus, the Renaissance astronomer, and mathematician who proposed the heliocentric model of the universe in which the Sun stands at the center. Plagued by self-doubt and threatened by religious censure, Copernicus resisted the publication of his work until just before his death in 1543. The play follows Copernicus in those final years as he works to complete his research with the help of Georg Rheticus, a young disciple from Wittenberg, Germany.

Inspired by true events, this adaptation by director/producer May Wuthrich and Grant Overstake, author of the acclaimed novel, recaptures the trials faced by a generation of young teens. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s slaying sparks riots as the bitter divide over civil rights and the Vietnam War wracks the country, and Wichita, Kansas is no exception. There, 13-year-old TJ Crowley, who’s about to face his first year of junior high at a newly integrated school, lives alone with his unstable mother, Kate.

There are two sides to every story. The surface reality that’s presented to the world. And then, there’s the other side. The real one. The one that matters. Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed asshole Toby Page is alone. No friends. No family. He trades maintenance work in exchange for room and board. Every day, he fights demons no one else can see. Every day, he wants to give up. But he can’t. Not yet. When Alice Eliot moves in downstairs, she offers Toby some light in his dark world.

With her preacher father in prison for fraud, Elizabeth Yoder's life in the community of Bountiful has been painfully uprooted. Mindful of wearing out her welcome with her family, she jumps at the chance to stay with elderly Bridget Lantz while the woman's daughter is away. Elizabeth has secret plans to leave for another Amish community where she might get a fresh start, but here with Bridget, she feels comfortable - until Bridget's strapping grandson, Solomon, returns from eight years with the English and inspires feelings that shake Elizabeth's resolution....

Waking in the hospital after a car accident, Lovina Yoder doesn’t remember the Amish family who claim her as their own - or the man who says he’s her fiancé. Thoughtful and handsome, Johannes Miller clearly cares for her, and Lovina longs to recall the walks and buggy rides he describes, and the plans they once made. Life in the Amish community seems full of joy, faith, and warmth. And yet, Lovina senses there is something more in her past, just beyond her grasp….

Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship that becomes a lifeline during dark times.

In this deeply felt, compulsive and edgy work, Sarah Meehan Sirk shines a distinctive light on love and death in their many incarnations. In "The Dead Husband Project", an artist who has planned to make an installation out of her terminally ill husband’s dead body has to recalibrate when his diagnosis changes. In "The Date", an online dating match takes an unusual turn when the man who shows up to the restaurant has no face. In "Ozk", a young girl longs to connect with her socially isolated mother, a professor of mathematics who makes a radical discovery.

Private investigator Harry Angel is in a jam. Handcuffed in his apartment along with the cops and a corpse, he stands accused of violently murdering three people. The good news is he knows who did it. But in order to exonerate himself, Harry must first make his escape—and figure out his own identity.