Showing results by narrator "Basil Sands" in All Categories

In 2006, the shock and awe campaign of securing the major cities had ended, and the Iraq War had moved into an alien phase for the operators of Black Flag One. With their motto “swift, silent, deadly,” the Marine operators of 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion were trained for unconventional warfare but they were tasked with holding and securing swathes of the country, facing Insurgents who were adapting their tactics to kill as many Coalition soldiers as possible using IEDs.

Medraut is the eldest son of Artos, high king of Britain and, but for an accident of birth, would be heir to the throne. Instead, his younger half-brother, Lleu, fragile and inexperienced, is chosen. Medraut cannot bear to be commanded and contradicted by this weakling brother who he feels has usurped both his birthright and his father's favor. Torn and bitter, he joins Morgause, the high king's treacherous sister, in a plot to force Artos to forfeit his power and kingdom in exchange for Lleu's life.

Temperature contributed to our evolution - our upright walking, our loss of fur, and our big brains - and now continues to affect our lives in unexpected ways, and the link from a warm mug to our emotions is anything but straightforward. Studies have shown, for example, that a chilly deliberation room can predispose a jury to convict and that a cold day can make us more likely to buy a house. Our mind-body connection works the other way, too: Thinking about friendly or caring people can make us feel warmer.

Former marine Royce Haverton had needed a break from the bloodshed he'd witnessed time and again during his last combat tour. He'd fulfilled his contract to the corps, and it was now time to move on. Little did he know the job he'd just accepted would lead him down the same violent path as before.

Rick Banik is a new patriot for a new age. He leads a Joint Intelligence Tiger Team in pursuit of a terrorist plotting an attack on Washington DC. Da'esh's agent stays one step ahead by hiding in plain sight, always there, but never being seen.

In Head Strong: Psychology and Military Dominance in the 21st Century, Michael D. Matthews explores the many ways that psychology will make the difference for wars yet to come, from revolutionary advances in soldier selection and training to new ways of preparing soldiers to remain resilient in the face of horror and to engineering the super-soldier of the future. These advancements will ripple out to impact on the lives of all of us, not just soldiers.

Defining Moments is the award-nominated collection by author David Niall Wilson. This book collects a lot of stories written over a lot of years. It was first published by Welsh publisher Sarob Press. Defining Moments was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award as a collection. The story "The Gentle Brush of Wings," first published in this collection, WON the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction.

For decades, the Mexican drug cartels looked at the United States of America as a business partner. The cartels supplied the drugs, and the millions of American addicts supplied them with an endless amount of money. But when the War on Drugs heats up and the money alone is not enough, the cartels decided to up the ante. With the help of a ruthless Russian mercenary, they unleashed a lethal bio-weapon, initially conceived during the Cold War to quickly bring the West to her knees.

Following the invasion of the previous year, Brad Stone has become the figurehead of Alaska’s resistance movement. He’s now head of the largest militia in the former state, including the Chiknik Rangers, making him enemy number one to the Chinese leadership based in Anchorage. At the same time his sons, Ben and Ian, find themselves waging a bloody guerrilla operation against Russian troops in the east.

Coen Flynn has always done the right thing, even it meant siding against his own family. His sense of justice was what led him to take a job in law enforcement, though his choice of agency was a bit unorthodox. His current assignment was believed to be a simple protection detail. He was never supposed to be identified by his charge, but a murder took priority and changed the course of his mission.

Colin Farnsworth was a loser. Eking an existence from writing cheap sci-fi novels and the few dollars he makes at Fantasy Underworld card game tournaments, he lives in the house where he grew up. His only companion is Heimdall, a three pound Yorkie with big plans. Until, that is, The Brothers Four arrive on his doorstep looking for rooms to rent and with a giant troll in pursuit

Once we step on the treadmill of progress, it's hard to step off. Yet Edward Tenner shows that human ingenuity can be applied in self-preservation as well, and he sheds light on the ways in which the users of commonplace technology surprise designers and engineers, as when early typists developed the touch method still employed on today's keyboards. And he offers concrete advice for reaping benefits from the devices that we no longer seem able to live without. Although dependent on these objects, we can also use them to liberate ourselves.

Into Enemy Waters is the story of World War II's most elite and daring unit of warriors, the direct precursors to the Navy SEALs, told through the eyes of its last living member, ninety-five-year-old George Morgan. Morgan was just a wiry, seventeen-year-old lifeguard from New Jersey when he joined the Navy's new combat demolition unit, tasked to blow up enemy coastal defenses ahead of landings by allied forces. His first assignment: Omaha Beach on D-Day. When he returned stateside, Morgan learned that his service was only beginning.

Experience the awesomeness of my unexpected voyage to an undiscovered land where I survive shipwrecks, arena death match spectacles, rampaging rhinoceraptors, naked and rather surly giants, and even dragons! Well, a dragon.... All in my pursuit of fame and glory. Every word of it is true. Totally true. How do I know? Because it's all about me. Gustav Gustavson, Legendary Viking Warrior.

Brody Novak has been given his first assignment for Safeguard Security & Investigations, and it has nothing to do with his lead role as a communications specialist. With the rest of the team occupied on a hunt for a serial killer, he's the only one left behind to handle what everyone thought to be an open and shut case. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

The Seventymile Kid tells the remarkable account of Harry Karstens, who was the actual—if unheralded—leader of the Hudson Stuck Expedition that was the first to summit Mount McKinley in Alaska. All but forgotten by history, a young Karstens arrived in the Yukon during the 1897 Gold Rush, gained fame as a dog musher hauling U.S. Mail in Alaska, and eventually became the first superintendent of Mount McKinley National Park (now known as Denali National Park and Preserve).

Church leaders who focus on programs, strategy, and curriculum can easily miss what ties them all together: culture. Cultivating culture is the difference between churches who flourish and those who flounder at disciple-making. Leaders must cultivate a healthy disciple-making culture. But how? Brandon Guindon's book Disciple-Making Culture provides a how-to guide for cultivating a healthy disciple-making culture throughout your church.

Edward Abbey, who never much liked Alaska, called it "our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state." To others, it has been a cure for despair. When Michael Engelhard moved to Fairbanks more than three decades ago, he was a cheechako, a subarctic tenderfoot. Gathering skills and experiences the hard way, he attained "Sourdough" status while realizing there would always be more to learn, see, and do in the land of midnight sun and auroras.

A terrible judge comes like a thief in the night. While the world sleeps, everything changes. In the diseased light of a festering sun, planes drop from the sky, machines sputter and stop, and the graves of the shrieking damned burst open. Angels from hell clothe themselves in the flesh of corpses to form an unholy army. Dreaming of his father hammering his way out of a coffin, Gary Holland is jolted awake by the phone to learn that his father is dead. Bickering over infidelity and religion, the family gathers for the funeral…and confronts hell on earth at the Jersey Shore.

Retired Marine Master Sergeant Marcus Johnson returned to his family homestead in rural Alaska after 20 years chasing bad men. Now he wants nothing but to hunt and fish and run his trapline in peace and quiet, and no more war. Meanwhile, lurking deep in a long forgotten bunker in the remote arctic hills is a decades-old secret that could not be destroyed, and was never meant to be rediscovered.