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ID: 699497

Title: Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism

Author: Mark Harrison

Narrator: Michael Page

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10:16:16

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Global Politics, Political Advocacy

Summary:

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged: it raised transaction costs, incentivized indecision, compromised the effectiveness of government officials, eroded citizens' trust in institutions and in each other, and led to a secretive society and an uninformed elite. The result is what this book calls the secrecy/capacity tradeoff: a bargain in which the Soviet state accepted the reduction of state capacity as the cost of ensuring its own survival. This book is the first comprehensive history of Soviet secrecy in the English language. Harrison combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to evaluate the impact of secrecy on Soviet state capacity from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Based on multiple years of research in once-secret Soviet-era archives, this book addresses two gaps in history and social science: the core role of secrecy in building and stabilizing the communist states of the twentieth century; and the corrosive effects of secrecy on the capabilities of authoritarian states.

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ID: 681528

Title: Mammoths at the Gates

Author: Nghi Vo

Narrator: Cindy Kay

Format: Unabridged

Length: 02:55:13

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction & Literature, LGBTQ+, Epic Fantasy

Summary:

The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.

Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass-and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather's body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honoring their mentor's chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.

But as Chih and their neixin Almost Brilliant navigate the looming crisis, Myriad Virtues, Cleric Thien's own beloved hoopoe companion, grieves her loss as only a being with perfect memory can, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate . . .

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ID: 699529

Title: Healing Your Inner Child: Re-Parenting Yourself for a More Secure & Loving Life

Author: Natasha Levinger

Narrator: Elisabeth Ashby

Format: Unabridged

Length: 05:32:29

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Non-Fiction, Self Development, Health & Wellness, Marriage & Family, Psychology

Summary:

What if you could reach the most innocent part of yourself and treat that essential being with kindness? Author Natasha Levinger teaches how to locate this inner child, get to know them, and parent this most vulnerable part of yourself so that you can self-soothe even when the world around you is chaotic. By eliminating false personal narratives and creating a nurturing inner voice, you can heal past traumas and live in the present with understanding and grace. Levinger investigates crucial questions, such as:

- How can dysfunction from our caregivers affect us?

- How and in what way can we feel loved and regulate our nervous system?

- How can we access our higher self through chakra-based meditation, then use that protective force to communicate with our inner child?

Levinger is the perfect guide on this journey, providing plenty of useful exercises, strategies, and journal prompts along the way.

Contact: [email protected]

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ID: 697608

Title: Truth of Who You Are

Author: Sheila Myers

Narrator: Cody Roberts

Format: Unabridged

Length: 09:04:46

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Coming of Age

Summary:

When his family is plunged into poverty during the Great Depression, Ben Taylor takes a job with the US Civilian Conservation Corps developing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A tragic accident puts him in a dilemma: does he let someone else take the fall for what he did so he can keep his position? The repercussions of his decision plague him all the way to the Battle of the Bulge in World War II where Ben is reunited with an old friend from his time with the Corps. Inspired by actual events and the people who once lived in the Smoky Mountains before it became a National Park, this saga explores how people use stories to hide uncomfortable truths and the lengths they'll go to protect their home and family.

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ID: 695369

Title: Oranges

Author: John McPhee

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Format: Unabridged

Length: 04:15:52

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Cooking, Non-Fiction

Summary:

A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a magazine article, but John McPhee kept encountering so much irresistible information that he wrote a book. It is perhaps the last word on the subject (the first came in 500 BC and is attributed to Confucius). McPhee writes about the botany, history, and industry of oranges, from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida, who may be the last of the individual orange barons.

Oranges developed in Southeast Asia, and they spread through the world with a timing closely parallel to the spread of Western civilization. It was Columbus himself who brought the first orange seeds to the New World. Botanically, they are spectacularly complicated. They can be completely unripe when they are a brilliant orange and deliciously ripe when they are green as emeralds. Citrus is so genetically perverse that oranges can grow from lime seeds. Most Florida oranges grow on lemon roots. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too-with elements in it that range from the customs of French kings to those of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

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ID: 695409

Title: Play a Lone Hand

Author: Luke Short

Narrator: Chris Abernathy

Format: Unabridged

Length: 05:29:55

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Western, Suspense, Action & Adventure

Summary:

A desperate man is caught in a range war in Oklahoma cattle country in this tale from a Western Heritage Trustees Award-winning author.

Giff Dixon doesn't remember how he got to the town of Corazon. All he knows is that some cowboys found him way off the beaten path in Oklahoma cattle country, barely alive, and carrying a belly full of buckshot. Now, he's broke, friendless, and at the end of his rope.

Everything changes when, out of the blue, he's offered a job guiding a government expedition to investigate reports of homesteaders being forced off their land by the all-powerful Torreon Cattle Company. It seems an easy enough ride until Grady Sebree, the iron-fisted boss of Torreon, approaches Dixon. Sebree has a proposition: Keep him informed of what the government men are up to and get a prime job after the dust settles.

But Dixon isn't the kind to betray the men who gave him a chance for redemption. And soon enough, he finds himself caught in a brutal range war he never wanted-and has no choice but to finish . . .

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ID: 697582

Title: Devil of the Provinces

Author: Juan Cardenas

Narrator: Asa Siegel

Format: Unabridged

Length: 03:23:00

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Fiction & Literature, Mystery, Thriller & Horror, Literary Fiction, Noir

Summary:

After a series of failures, a biologist returns to his hometown to live with his grieving mother. But in this gripping crime novel that upends the genre's conventions, strange events unravel what he thought he knew of his past, his present, and himself.

When a biologist returns to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly bizarre present: the unsolved murder of his brother, a boarding school where girls give birth to strange creatures, a chance encounter with his irrevocably changed first love. A brush with a well-connected acquaintance leads to a biotechnology job offer, and he's gradually drawn into a web of conspiracy. Ultimately, he may be destined to remain in the city he'd hoped never to see again-in The Devil of the Provinces, nothing is as it seems.

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ID: 695317

Title: Guardian of Torment

Author: Michelle Manus

Narrator: Desiree Ketchum

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12:29:41

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary Fantasy

Summary:

Just once, Nyx Fortuna would like something in her life to be easy . . .

Nyx has finally managed to dismantle the magic keeping her from her missing memories, but things are a bit . . . fractured. Her mind keeps slipping into different points in her past, and she's not always aware of when the present is.

The issue couldn't have come at a worse time, because she finally has a lead on the Kumir-the race of identical assassins who have hunted the Hidden to the brink of extinction-but following that lead involves another interstellar trip. Recognizing that covert operations on a foreign planet aren't a good idea with her current problems, Nyx reluctantly agrees to let her friends go without her.

But when a malfunctioning memory combines with an unintended use of portal magic, Nyx ends up right where she shouldn't be. Complications prevent her from returning to Earth, leaving Nyx to navigate an alien metropolis while hoping her skipping memory doesn't get her killed.

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ID: 700824

Title: Murder Investigation Team: Jack the Ripper: A 21st Century Investigation

Author: Steven Keogh

Narrator: Michael Chance

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12:18:48

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: Non-Fiction, True Crime, Mystery, Thriller & Horror

Summary:

London, 1888, and one man's brutal campaign of violence has taken the lives of unsuspecting victims, cut the city to the core, and carved his name into history. Well, not his name, exactly. Whomever this man was, remains a mystery but there are few people who haven't heard of his nickname: Jack the Ripper.

The same is true for those said to have died at his hands. If Polly Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly had not fallen to his knife, their names would have been lost to history. Instead, they themselves are as much a part of the folklore as their killer. Then there are those who investigated the crimes: the ordinary men, doing their jobs as best they could, who will always be associated with the failed attempts to catch this monster.

But if those crimes had happened today, how would they be investigated and how would the approach differ? There is no doubt, how detectives work has changed dramatically over those 130 years. Although, in many senses, things are very much the same. Solving murders relies on an understanding of people, be that the victims, the witnesses and, most importantly, the killers themselves.

Contains mature themes.

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ID: 695361

Title: Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance

Author: Nikki M. Taylor

Narrator: Machelle Williams

Format: Unabridged

Length: 07:57:17

Language: English

Release date: 09-12-23

Publisher: Tantor Media

Genres: History, Non-Fiction, World, North America, Social Science

Summary:

From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody Revenge strongly challenges assumptions that enslaved women only participated in covert, non-violent forms of resistance, when in fact they consistently seized justice for themselves and organized toward revolt. Nikki M. Taylor expertly reveals how women killed for deeply personal instances of injustice committed by their owners. The stories presented, which span centuries and legal contexts, demonstrate that these acts of lethal force were carefully pre-meditated. Enslaved women planned how and when their enslavers would die, what weapons and accomplices were necessary, and how to evade capture in the aftermath. Original and compelling, Brooding Over Bloody Revenge presents a window into the lives and philosophies of enslaved women who had their own ideas about justice and how to achieve it.

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