Ground

Cherry Press

Audiobook Publisher

The Elves

When young Mary decides to take a shortcut through the gypsy camp, her life will be forever altered. An excellent example of the German kunstmärchen, or “literary fairy tales,” The Elves tells the story of a young girl who learns both the wonders and the perils of encountering these magical beings. It’s a story of friendship, loss of youth, prejudice, and broken promises.

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The Elf Trap

Biology professor Theron Tademus cares about his work above all else, certainly more than friendship or romance. In fact, he doesn’t really like people in general. While spending his summer holiday in the mountains of North Carolina, Tademus meets a beautiful, mysterious young lady named Elva who is unlike anyone he’s ever met. Try as he might, the professor can’t stop thinking about her. Elva, though, maybe more than she appears, and Tademus may be in serious danger. Is the professor’s love of science any match against the elf trap?

Available Audible and iTunes (through the Books app)

Vitamin C: A 500-Year Scientific Biography from Scurvy to Pseudoscience

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Vitamin C: A 500-Year Scientific Biography from Scurvy to Pseudoscience is the compelling story of the history and science behind vitamin C.

Vitamin C begins with scurvy, which afflicted Europe for four hundred years and killed millions. The reasons that a disease whose cure was known from the outset persisted over that time are at once baffling and familiar, and these trials eventually lead to invention of the science of epidemiology. Author Stephen M. Sagar MD then chronicles the discovery of vitamins at the beginning of the twentieth century, a story that encapsulates the rise of a scientific approach to nutrition but with surprising twists and turns. As vitamin science became more acquainted with the mainstream, scientist Linus Pauling reached new heights of fame and influence by popularizing the practice of taking megadoses of vitamin C to prevent colds – a claim that was not necessarily backed by data. This kickstarted the growth of the $40 billion vitamin and supplement industry, which has since prospered all while ignoring science.

This unique and engrossing narrative reveals how medical science functions in the real world and how it has changed over the centuries. Featuring swashbuckling sailors, arctic explorers, penny-pinching bureaucrats, academicians with clashing egos, and intrepid scientists working in malaria-infested jungle laboratories, the story of C is in many ways the story of how science gets done (and undone). From the trial and error of early explorers to the scientific breakthroughs made by biochemists and the birth of the modern supplement industry, this revelatory book tells the story of how cherished beliefs, self-interest, and politics often intertwine with scientific progress.

Silence on Cold River

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On a run through the woods outside her north Georgia hometown, defense attorney Ama Chaplin encounters a mysterious hiker and recognizes him, too late, as a sociopath she successfully defended when he was a teenager. In the intervening seventeen years, Ama changed her name and moved to Atlanta, anxious to put her past behind her. Michael Walton, her young client, grew into a ruthless and inventive murderer. And now that he’s caught her, he can put a twisted, years-in-the-making plot into motion.

Neither of them knows that someone else saw her go into the woods alone: Eddie Stevens, whose daughter Hazel vanished on the same spot a year ago. The police think she ran away. Eddie believes the truth is much worse. Grieving and desperate, he’d planned to kill himself to return attention to his daughter’s cold case, but he can’t shake the feeling that something happened to Ama, the runner he saw disappear into the trees. When she doesn’t come back out, he heads into the woods with a loaded gun to check on her.

Meanwhile, the local police department’s newest detective connects the dots between two cold cases and begins to suspect he’s dealing with a serial killer—but time is running out to save Ama, and he’ll need to make some unlikely allies to face down the dangers lurking in the woods.

Metamorphoses by Ovid

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The first female translator of the epic into English in over 60 years, Stephanie McCarter addresses accuracy in translation and its representation of women, gendered dynamics of power, and sexual violence in Ovid’s classic.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an epic poem, but one that upturns almost every convention. There is no main hero, no central conflict, and no sustained objective. What it is about (power, defiance, art, love, abuse, grief, rape, war, beauty, and so on) is as changeable as the beings that inhabit its chapters. The sustained thread is power and how it transforms us, both those of us who have it and those of us who do not. For those who are brutalized and traumatized, transformation is often the outward manifestation of their trauma. A beautiful virgin is caught in the gaze of someone more powerful who rapes or tries to rape them, and they ultimately are turned into a tree or a lake or a stone or a bird. The victim’s objectification is clear: They are first a visual object, then a sexual object, and finally simply an object. Around 50 of the epic’s tales involve rape or attempted rape of women. Past translations have obscured or mitigated Ovid’s language so that rape appears to be consensual sex. Through her translation, McCarter considers the responsibility of handling sexual and social dynamics.

Then why continue to study Ovid? McCarter proposes Ovid should be heard because he gives us stories through which we can better explore ourselves and our world, and he illuminates problems that humans have been grappling with for millennia. Careful translation of rape and the body allows listeners to see Ovid’s nuances clearly and to better appreciate how ideas about sexuality, beauty, and gender are constructed over time. This is especially important since so many of our own ideas about these phenomena are themselves undergoing rapid metamorphosis, and Ovid can help us see and understand this progression. The Metamorphoses holds up a kaleidoscopic lens to the modern world, one that offers us the opportunity to reflect on contemporary discussions about gender, sexuality, race, violence, art, and identity.

Untangling Your Marriage

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Divorce is hard, but it doesn’t have to be so painful. Collaborative divorce offers a different, more peaceful path to ending a marriage, and this book shows you how to do it.

Divorce is like a death in the family, except no one is bringing you food.

This book is a myth buster and an antidote to the negative messaging about divorce. It offers hope and encouragement for the listener to choose a divorce process that aligns with their own core values. Values such as dignity, mutual respect, integrity, and compassion. It offers the listener an introduction to collaborative divorce, both the mindset and the process, as it has been established and practiced for the past thirty years. Collaborative divorce is an interdisciplinary, non-adversarial divorce model. It is like a meditation on steroids.

Divorce is a complex process. It involves legal, psychological, and financial considerations. Collaborative divorce uses an interdisciplinary approach, it is not dominated by lawyers and is more cost-efficient. A skillful mental health coach addresses emotional issues such as anger, sadness, rage, betrayal, guilt, shame, excitement, relief, and acceptance for everyone in the family. The financial neutral will collect, organize, analyze, and present the financial resources of the couple in a way to ensures an equal understanding of what can often feel like an overwhelming amount of data. The lawyers provide legal advice.

The core focus of the book is to reframe divorce from a shame and blame game to a paradigm where divorce is viewed through the lens of grief. It offers each listener an opportunity to show up for their divorce and present their best selves, even if they don’t feel like it. It emphasizes honor and respect for everyone involved.

This book is an open and honest portrayal of divorce from the perspective of a veteran divorce attorney, who has also been divorced. We live in a time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. A divorce is just like that, and the antidote to those conditions includes concepts like collaboration, deep listening, innovation, flexibility, and an ability to pivot.

Collaborative divorce is the best-kept secret of family lawyers. It is an opportunity to emerge from a divorce, healthy and wholehearted, not bitter, and resentful. Learn how to do it here.

So You Want to Work in a Museum?

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A one-stop guide to museum careers!

People who love art, are fascinated by archaeology or are history buffs may have considered the idea of working in a museum. But experience as a museum visitor reveals only the public-facing side of the museum, and not its complex, dynamic internal structure. So You Want to Work in A Museum? helps to demystify museums as institutions and to prepare prospective museum staff to explore the field further.

After listening to this book, listeners will be able to:

  • Understand how non-profit museums are governed, funded, and staffed, and how they define and meet their missions.
  • Explore museum divisions and departments and specific roles within them—not just prominent roles like directors and curators, but also less visible ones like registrars, preparators, development officers, conservators, and more.
  • Consider the contemporary function of museums, and how yesterday’s cabinets of curiosity have evolved into today’s community catalysts. Examine how the contemporary function of museums has affected the types of positions available and the work museum staff do on a daily basis.
  • Look at the skills required for different types of positions, and how listeners aspiring to work in those positions can best prepare themselves to land their dream jobs and be successful in them.
  • Understand the benefits and potential challenges of working in a museum.
  • Access a wealth of resources that will inspire further study of the field, and outline the next steps to pursue a museum career.

The Publisher

After graduating from Lafayette College with a B.A. in English, Jeff Wren attended New York University, where he received his M.A. in Cinema Studies. He later returned to New York University to obtain his J.D. After working as an attorney in Manhattan, Jeff eventually moved to New Orleans, where he now lives with his wife, son, and two dogs. A lifelong lover of the written and spoken word, Jeff is excited to publish exceptional audiobooks through his company Ground Cherry Press LLC.