Showing results by narrator "Nick Podehl" in All Categories

I thought I knew everything there was to know about my parents, like what they always eat for breakfast. Then one morning, everything changes. Mom suddenly hates tea and loves cornflakes and Dad’s scarfing down poached eggs like there’s no tomorrow - which, by the way, there may not be unless I can figure out what’s gone wrong. Can it really be that Mom and Dad have been replaced by aliens from another world? And what the heck happened to our dog?

Seventeen-year-old Banyan is a tree builder. Using salvaged scrap metal, he creates forests for rich patrons who seek a reprieve from the desolate landscape. Although Banyan's never seen a real tree - they were destroyed more than a century ago - his missing father used to tell him stories about the Old World. Everything changes when Banyan meets a mysterious woman with a strange tattoo-a map to the last living trees on earth, and he sets off across a wasteland from which few return.

Ever open your locker and find that some joker has left something really weird inside? Seventh grader Dorso Clayman opens his and finds a dead body. Thirty seconds later, it disappears. It’s not the first bizarre thing that has appeared in his locker and then vanished. The ultimate gamesters have decided to make Dorso and his buddy Frank the target of some strange techno-practical jokes. They’ve hacked into the time line, and things from the past keep appearing in the present. Soon, the pranks aren’t funny anymore - they’re dangerous.

In 1839, after decades of conflict, the Russian army and the Muslims of Chechnya are on the verge of a truce. To prove his commitment to peace, warrior chief Imam Shamil offers a hostage: his son, Jamal Eddin. But once the truce is signed, the Russians spirit Jamal Eddin back to Russia, where Czar Nicholas “adopts” the boy. Immersed in imperial court life, Jamal Eddin matures into the consummate courtier. Still, he maintains his Muslim faith - until he falls in love with a beautiful Russian aristocrat.

In a beautiful, tragic testament to the liberating power of forgiveness, Kate Grosmaire finally tells the whole story of her daughter's death at the hand of her boyfriend - and the stunning, deliberate forgiveness and help that Kate and her husband offered to the young man who shattered their world. That forgiveness meant not only telling him face-to-face that they forgave him but even working to reduce the time he would spend behind bars.

Nick has a problem. He has a cat named Horace, and cats are quite illegal on Earth. In fact all pets are illegal on Earth, and Horace has been reported to the anti-pet man. The only way for Nick and his family to keep Horace is to emigrate to Plowman's Planet. Little did they know that, rather than the pastoral paradise Nick's father envisioned, they would land in the middle of a planetwide war against an entity known as Glimmung, a conflict in which Nick and Horace would play a pivotal role.

Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He's the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders - the human/machine hybrids who run the world - in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever. Worse, Eli's not even entirely human. Few know about the ascenders' genetic experiments that left him...different. Fewer know about the state that creates his transcendent art - as well as a bridge that lets him speak to the dead.

Master grifter Billy Cunningham has built a lucrative career conning a long list of Las Vegas casinos. In fact, he's never walked into one he couldn't rip off. Now he's scheming a "super con" with a gang of high-profile cheats - a one-time-only scam that could rake in a cool multi-million-dollar payday.

The war is on! Never have the stakes been so high. Never have the trenches been so deep. Never has one soda vending machine been so vital. When the high school cheerleading team takes over the machine's funds previously collected by the pep band, Gabe will not stand for it. Something must be done.

On a hot summer night in a midwestern town, a high school teenage prank goes horrifically awry. Alcohol, guns, and a dare. Within minutes, as events collide, innocents becomes victims - with tragic outcomes altering lives forever, a grisly and unfortunate scenario all too familiar from current real-life headlines. But victims can also become survivors, and as we come to know each character through his/her own distinctive voice and their interactions with one another, we see how, despite pain and guilt, they can reach out to one another, find a new equilibrium, and survive.

Nestled in the Pennsylvania countryside, Florence University frames an idyllic college world, complete with cute coeds and handsome jocks - not to mention plenty of booze and sex with virtually no responsibility. For three seniors, the vagaries of life have rarely been so terrifying. Drawn together by their struggles for identity, the three students form a fateful friendship that will change the courses of their lives forever. Sexy, fast paced, and layered with intimate insight about life’s most formative years, The Fall is a compelling coming-of-age story.

Rosa Guerrero beat the odds as she rose to the top of the corporate world. An attractive woman of a certain age, the longtime chief of human resources at Ellery Consumer Research is still a formidable presence, even if her most vital days are behind her. A leader who wields power with grace and discretion, she has earned the devotion and loyalty of her staff. No one admires Rosa more than her doting lieutenant Leo Smalls, a benefits vice president whose whole world is Ellery.

When he’s recruited by Walker & Company, the most distinguished investment bank on Wall Street, starry-eyed MBA Richard Blum can’t believe his luck. Sadly, his fantasy world comes to a crashing end when he learns that some crooks have a taste for Gucci loafers and Saville Row suits. CEO Jack Grass and Mickey Steinberg, head of Mergers and Acquisitions, are running an insider trading ring right under his nose. Even worse, to keep the Feds off their trail, they made sure Richard appeared to be a key player.

The hot indie rockers introduced by In the Band return in this compelling second installment of the Luminescent Juliet series. This time the focus is on Justin, the band’s gorgeous lead singer - and a notorious womanizer - who sails through life without a second thought. His only problems stem from the power struggles he has with his band mates, some of whom are living with dark troubles that he wants no part of. Then one night Justin stumbles into a tattoo parlor and meets Allie.

In these absorbing and exquisitely made novellas of relationships at home and abroad, both historical and contemporary, we meet the ferocious Simone Weil during her final days as a transplant to New York City; a vulnerable American grad student who escapes to Italy after her first, compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of the title novella, who gets more out of life than most of us; and Thomas Mann, opening the heart of a high-school kid in America.

For Lance (level 19 zombie sorcerer), and his friend, MrsKeller (level 23 hobgoblin brigand), life's a battle, and then you die. And then you rez. And then you battle again. At least that's how it is in Discordia, the addictive online game that makes real life seem dreary in comparison. At his new school, Lance feels weird and out of place, but in beautiful and complex Discordia, his zombie sorcerer is doing great: leveling fast, learning new skills, and making friends.

In the tradition of Colson Whitehead's Zone One, a visionary debut novel about shelter, escape, family, violence, and dumpster diving. It's the story of a restless group of young squatters. They've run away from their families and their pasts, questing after knowledge of their most wild selves, roaming the half-empty suburbs of America, occupying the homes of the foreclosed or vacationing, never staying in one place long enough to attract attention while shoplifting beer at the local Speedy Stop.

The darling daughter of a champion Thoroughbred breeder, Camille "Cami" Hines has a pedigree that rivals some of her father’s best horses. Other than feeling a little suffocated at times, Cami thought she was happy with her boyfriend, her life, and her future - until she met Patrick Henley.

"Trick" blurs the lines between what Cami wants and what is expected of her - and he just happens to be so sexy she can’t keep her hands off him.

Rust and Metro live life to the fullest in the small Finnish city of Kotka. The lovers work together by day and write graffiti by night, always staying one step ahead of the law. But their luck runs out after an ambush by rogue security guards causes Rust to fall to his death. Having literally left their marks all over the city, Metro cannot help but be reminded of Rust everywhere she goes, making it impossible for her to move past the tragedy.

Set in San Francisco in 1956, The Broken Bubble traces the ups and downs and ins and outs of four characters who are not quite sure of the lives they’re living. Jim Briskin, local radio DJ, his ex-wife Pat, the young married couple Art and Rachel Emmanual – all are acutely observed and sympathetically portrayed. Briskin is suspended from his job for refusing to read a particularly repellant ad, while Art foolishly gets mixed up in a group of absurd would-be revolutionaries. As they all get entangled and not quite disentangled with each other, it becomes apparent they are seeking only – in typical Dick fashion – to live more or less happily - if not ever after, then at least for a while. Modest as it may seem, it is an ambition very difficult to achieve.