Results narrated by "Erica Martin" in All categories

Rico Kline is finding that the life of a summoned being isn’t an easy one. At any moment he could be summoned to another world and ordered to participate in a battle, be experimented on by strange species, or even babysit a deadly monster. His life on Earth isn’t any easier, as mysterious people and organizations try to track him down for their own nefarious purposes. Despite the dangers, Rico’s power continues to grow as the system rewards his efforts.

In a grim, not-so-distant future, humanity is in crisis. A deadly pandemic has confined billions to their homes, leaving society completely isolated in their homes and utterly dependent on the mega-global Chum Corporation. For some lucky beta testers, the only escape is to log into New Arcadia—a real-as-life role-playing game set in a gleaming 1990s-inspired city. There, they can enjoy the freedoms denied to them in the real world—like Prime Beta Tester John Chambers, who has reinvented himself in New Arcadia as street-fighting hero Blaze.

The modern American casino resort was born on a lonely stretch of road that, within a decade, would become known as the Las Vegas Strip. This was a place where America could cut loose, enjoying pleasures denied at home. As visitors flocked to Las Vegas, casinos became a business and then an industry. This book shares stories about how Las Vegas became—and stayed—America’s gambling capital, focusing on the casinos that made it famous and the hustlers, gangsters, number-crunchers, and dreamers who made them.

Drawing on an array of primary sources in multiple languages, Farzin Vejdani argues that the ambiguity in defining the boundaries between private and public in Qajar Iran often corresponded with the jurisdictional friction between government authorities and religious scholars regarding who had the authority to police and punish public crimes.

A massively entertaining oral biography of the golden era of critically derided yet monumentally popular radio rock, when Journey, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Toto, and more ruled the airwaves Paul Rees’s Raised on Radio is, remarkably, the first biography of AOR (“Album-Oriented Rock”)...

Dr. Anarchy has succeeded! He's won! He took over the world! Well...one small corner of it at least. Now that he is God-Emperor of Rhode Island, he intends to show the world he's a lot more than an ordinary supervillain.

With their towering, cinnamon-colored trunks and dusky green canopies, ponderosa pine has long been a charismatic icon of the American West. Yet a quiet unraveling has begun: in the past decade, in a vast area from Santa Fe to the Sierras, more than two hundred million ponderosa have died. While some trees will survive in cooler places, scientists estimate that by mid-century less than five percent of the ponderosa in the American Southwest may remain. As the very character of this vast region shifts, what will be left behind? And how can we come to terms with such profound loss?

Being summoned to random worlds by others is becoming a familiar event for Rico, and with each bizarre challenge the system throws at him, his strength grows. Dungeons, deadly creatures, and powerful foes are commonplace in these other worlds, but what happens when they start showing up here on Earth? Rico gladly joins the other summoned beings to defend his world, but if he dies at home, there is no respawn waiting to bring him back.