Showing results by narrator "Lesa Lockford" in All Categories

It's not you; it's your schedule. Does it sound like magic? It's not. We've all heard of circadian rhythms - those biological processes that give us jet lag and make us night owls or early birds. But few of us know just how profoundly these diurnal patterns affect our overall health. Bad habits - like skipping meals, squeezing in workouts, working late into the night and then trying to catch up on sleep during the weekend - disrupt our natural cycles. A growing body of research on chronobiology reveals just how sensitive the human body is to these rhythms all the way down to the genetic level.

Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias, where artificial minds help unlock and enhance human creativity. Delve into the minds of robot painters, AI poets, drone forgers, and electronic theater curators. These and other possible futures are imagined by award-winning and bestselling human authors from the USA, UK, China, Ukraine, Chile, Japan, Madagascar, Brazil, Czech Republic, and Sri Lanka.

From the snow-covered prairie to the remote Australian Outback, a cowboy's loving kiss makes this Christmas merry and bright in each of these novellas.

Can love survive the ultimate test? Brett Rutland, Carter Engineering's top troubleshooter, is sent to the L.A. office to crack a case of embezzlement. Brett's a hard man, so it hit him like a sledgehammer when he fell in love with Tessa Conway. Half the men in the office had been in love with her for years, but Brett was the first she'd loved in return. Their love is perfect, too perfect to last. And when Brett discovers the identity of the embezzler, his whole world is about to come crashing down.

With his trademark wit and distinctive voice, legendary Ball Four author Jim Bouton recounts his battle against local elites' efforts to replace Wahconah Park, one of the oldest parks in the United States, against the wishes and votes of local citizens. But Foul Ball is more than just a lively romp about saving an old ballpark near Bouton's home in Massachusetts.

In her celebrated fiction, Shirley Jackson explored the darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town America. But in Life Among the Savages, she takes on the lighter side of small-town life. In this witty and warm memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont, she delightfully exposes a domestic side in cheerful contrast to her quietly terrifying fiction. With a novelist's gift for character, an unfailing maternal instinct, and her signature humor, Jackson turns everyday family experiences into brilliant adventures.

Reese Duncan wanted a wife, pure and simple. Someone to have children with, someone to help him rebuild his ranch, someone uncomplicated...and someone very different from his first wife, the woman who'd destroyed his life. But he hadn't bargained on Madelyn Patterson.

Nothing could have prepared Jay Granger for the arrival of two FBI agents at her door - or for the news they brought. Her ex-husband, Steve, had been in a terrible accident that had left him gravely injured. The FBI needed Jay to confirm his identity. The man Jay finds lying in the hospital bed is almost unrecognizable. Exhausted and afraid, Jay tentatively declares that he is Steve Crossfield. But the man who awakens from the coma is not at all as Jay remembers Steve.

Mystery writer Kimberly Sawyer lives alone and likes it that way. But when she is threatened by a hooded figure, and a blood-red rose with a needle thrust into its heart is left on her doorstep, she knows she needs protection. So it seems like perfect timing when Napa Valley vineyard owner Darius Cavenaugh returns to Kimberly's life, offering help and a place to stay. But how did he know she needed him? Was it the deep, intuitive intimacy of a soulmate... or was it witchcraft?

There was no doubt that the woman who called herself Evie Shaw was the key to the high-tech conspiracy that threatened Robert Cannon's computer company - and he meant to take her down personally. But as he trailed her into the heart of a long, hot Southern summer, he found himself questioning everything he believed. For he was face to face with a breathtaking passion - for a woman who had to be as guilty as sin....

In a compelling narrative that introduces historical and contemporary research on self-directed education, Unschooled also spotlights how a diverse group of individuals and organizations are evolving an old schooling model of education. These innovators challenge the myth that children need to be taught in order to learn.

When Cathryn Ashe was 17, she ran away to the anonymity of the city after a romantic encounter with Rule Jackson, the manager of her father's ranch. Now, eight years later, her father has passed away, leaving her the ranch, and Cathryn returns to claim what's hers...and to challenge Rule like never before.

Dan "The Man" Currington is back in fighting form with a mission that takes him 4,000 miles south of BKI headquarters, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. Dan's searching for a rogue CIA agent selling classified government secrets to the highest bidder when Penni DePaul appears. Keeping Penni safe becomes Dan's priority. A lot has changed since former Secret Service Agent Penni DePaul last saw Dan. Now a civilian, she's excited about what the future might hold.

After a terrible accident, Blake Remington struggles to regain the ability to walk. Therapist Dione Kelly is his final hope - if he can bring himself to trust the woman whose past is shrouded in mystery. Dione's soul is as paralyzed as Blake's body. Dione wants only to help Blake recover, but as his strength returns, so does his desire to unearth her secrets. When they give in to the passion that flares between them, Dione just might find that her patient is the only one who can heal her private pain.

On June 19, 1953, Harry Truman got up early, packed the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker, and did something no other former president has done before or since: he hit the road. No Secret Service protection. No traveling press. Just Harry and his childhood sweetheart Bess off to visit old friends, take in a Broadway play, celebrate their wedding anniversary in the Big Apple, and blow a bit of the money he’d just received to write his memoirs. Hopefully incognito. In this lively history, author Matthew Algeo meticulously details how Truman’s plan to blend in went wonderfully awry.

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

This essay collection from renowned journalist and novelist Slavenka Drakulic, which quickly became a modern (and feminist) classic, draws back the Iron Curtain for a glimpse at the lives of Eastern European women under Communist regimes. Provocative, often witty, and always intensely personal, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed cracks open a paradoxical world that through its rejection of capitalism and commoditization ends up fetishizing both.

For anyone burdened by stress and anxiety, just the thought of trying to make a positive life change can feel utterly overwhelming. Wanting to live a healthier life may sound easy, but what about the time needed for meal prepping? What about the added meal-plan costs to your budget? Do you have to wake up at dawn to take that meditation class? When you are surrounded by stress, it’s all too easy to completely derail yourself...with more stress. Life is hard enough - the road to a stress-free life should feel easy!

Blackout! The entire Southeast was without power...but there was still more than enough electricity between Elizabeth Major and Tom Quinlan! They were stranded together in a Dallas high rise for the duration...and setting off enough sparks to light up the darkest night.

Charles Darwin first visited the Galápagos Islands almost 200 years ago, only to discover a land filled with plants and animals that could not be found anywhere else on Earth. How did they come to inhabit the islands? How long will they remain? Thoroughly researched, this historical and scientific book tells the epic saga of the life of an island - its birth in fire, its rise to greatness, its decline, and, finally, the emergence of life on new islands.