Indiana Covered Bridges album

New York City Album Slideshow

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Audiobook "Lone Wolf" by Jodi Picoult

Edward Warren, 23, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose in a NH hospital, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara.
Cara, 17, still holds a grudge against her brother, since his departure led to her parents’ divorce. In the aftermath, she’s lived with her father – an animal conservationist who became famous after living with a wild wolf pack in the Canadian wild. It is impossible for her to reconcile the still, broken man in the hospital bed with her vibrant, dynamic father.
With Luke’s chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father’s organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge? And to what lengths will his sister go to stop him from making an irrevocable decision?
LONE WOLF looks at the intersection between medical science and moral choices. If we can keep people who have no hope for recovery alive artificially, should they also be allowed to die artificially? Does the potential to save someone else’s life with a donated organ balance the act of hastening another’s death? And finally, when a father’s life hangs in the balance, which sibling should get to decide his fate?

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Audiobook "Promise me" by Richard Paul Evans

Promise Me

As you read my story, there is something I want you to understand. That in spite of all the pain—past, present and that still to come—I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Nor would I trade the time I had with him for anything—except for what, in the end, I traded it for.

Summary
Beth Cardall has a secret. For eighteen years, she has had no choice but to keep it to herself, but on Christmas Eve 2008, all that is about to change.
For Beth, 1989 was a year marked by tragedy. Her life was falling apart: her six-year-old daughter, Charlotte, was suffering from an unidentifiable illness; her marriage transformed from a seemingly happy and loving relationship to one full of betrayal and pain; her job at the dry cleaners was increasingly at risk; and she had lost any ability to trust, to hope, or to believe in herself. Then, on Christmas Day, as she rushed through a blizzard to the nearest 7-Eleven, Beth encountered Matthew, a strikingly handsome, mysterious stranger, who would single-handedly change the course of her life.
Who is this man, and how does he seem to know so much about her? He pursues her relentlessly, and only after she’s fallen deeply in love with him does she learn his incredible secret, changing the world as she knows it, as well as her own destiny.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Audiobook "Shadow Zone" by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen





While mapping the ancient (now underwater) city of Marinth in the Mediterranean Sea, submersible designer Hannah Bryson discovers the shocking cause of the civilization's doom from a submerged fresco in the city center--the surrounding waters for hundreds of miles were afflicted with what we now call an Oxygen Minimum Zone or a "Shadow Zone", a condition in which oxygen has been leached from the waters, devastating plant and marine life. For an island dependent on such life for their survival, this caused a famine that many did not survive. In Marinth's case, it was caused by a rare algae. Hannah recovers samples of this algae and hands them off to a sister research vessel to take back to land for further analysis, but the samples never reach the lab. The truck en route to the vessel is brutally attacked. Not coincidentally, Kirov finally appears after disappearing for many months and Hannah suspects that the intrigue surrounding her discovery is what brought him back. Soon it becomes clear that someone has nefarious plans to build a master weapon out of this algae and in their desperate race to stop him, Hannah finds herself catapulted into an adventure in which she finds herself even doubting the intentions of her fiercest protector, Kirov.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Currently reading "Fragile" by Lisa Unger


Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on each other’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a kid, Maggie found the microscope of small town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she’s happily returned to The Hollows’ insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son Rick disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case – and also dangerous.
Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.
“I know how a moment can spiral out of control,” Jones says to a shocked Maggie, as he searches Rick’s room for incriminating evidence. “How the consequences of one careless action can cost you everything.”
As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret – one that could destroy everything she holds dear. This thrilling novel about one community’s intricateyet fragile bonds will leave readers asking, “How well do I know the people I love?” and “How far would I go to protect them?”

Audiobook "The Dirty Secrets Club" by Meg Gardiner

An ongoing string of high-profile and very public murder-suicides has San Francisco even more rattled than a string of recent earthquakes. A flamboyant fashion designer burns to death, clutching the body of his murdered lover. A U.S. attorney launches her BMW off a highway overpass, killing herself and three others.
Enter forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett, hired by the SFPD to cut open not the victim’s body but the victim’s life. Jo’s job is to complete the psychological autopsy, shedding light on the circumstances of any equivocal death. Soon she makes a shocking discovery: All the suicides belonged to something called the Dirty Secrets Club, a group of A-listers with nothing but money and plenty to hide. As the deaths continue, Jo delves into the disturbing motives behind this shadowy group – until she receives a chilling message that dredges up dark secrets Jo thought she’d left deep in her past.