Showing results by narrator "Christian Rummel" in All Categories

Getting cast in a Vegas show was my ticket out...but I quickly realize that doesn’t mean I’m actually free as a bird. I’m not who I think I am. Not even a little. I meet my castmates - five men who say they were sent to protect me. They take me under their wing, but they’re keeping secrets from me, too.... They aren’t ordinary men. They are hawk-shifters, and they claim I’m part of a bigger purpose. I just wanted to dance, to move across a stage. But maybe I was meant for more. Maybe I was meant to fly. In fact, maybe I was meant to soar.

The Drop Edge of Yonder begins in the mountains of Colorado and ends in the far reaches of the Northwest, a journey that includes the beginnings of a Mexican revolution, a voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields. Along the trail, Zebulon becomes involved in a series of tragic love triangles, witnesses the death of his mother and father, and confronts the age-old questions of life, love, and death.

The city of Mera is a fortress hidden from the rest of humanity, a sanctuary for the diverse group of people rescued from death by the Oraclethat rules the city. The Oracle has brought together the citizens of Merafrom every land and every time period, protecting them from the ravages oftime, death and the evil demon forces that howl outside the city at night.

This short story is from the anthology Mitigated Futures. Twelve science fiction stories about the oncoming future, each of them representing a possible glimpse of what could be just around the corner... or much further down the corridor. These stories previously appeared in places like Clarkesworld Magazine, The Year's Best SF, Subterranean Magazine, and in various anthologies. They deal with the future of war, our climate, and technology's effect on our lives.

In a riveting novel rooted in one of American history's great "what ifs," Jim Lehrer tells the story of two men haunted by the events leading up to John F. Kennedy's assassination. November 22, 1963. As Air Force One touches down in Dallas, ambitious young newspaper reporter Jack Gilmore races to get the scoop on preparations for President Kennedy's motorcade. Will the bubble top on the presidential limousine be up or down? Down, according to veteran Secret Service agent Van Walters.

In the far future, in the aftermath of a mysterious galactic catastrophe, a false prophet comes face to face with his greatest adversary yet: a man who thinks he's God - and might very well be right. While the battle for Earth rages around them, they face off, one wanting to conquer the world and the other to redeem it. The victory may well decide the future of the galaxy, and of humanity itself.

Rinda Sue McCarthy, born at the precise moment the atomic bomb burst over Hiroshima, sits in a Mexican jail awaiting execution by firing squad. As the Mexican soldiers practice their marksmanship outside her cell, she writes her confession: a tale of the crimes committed against her by the leaders of a Conspiracy She Is Not At Liberty To Name, and her murderous, but utterly apt revenge. Who are They? Old boyfriends, professors, doctors, her former husband.

On the darkest night of 1945, a 20-year-old B-24 navigator assists in the liberation of a German concentration camp. His haunting trauma is prologue to destiny. Flash forward to present-day Manhattan. Warren Hunter, reigning master of the financial universe, is poised to close the world’s first trillion dollar deal. Coincidences are not what they seem as the past collides with the present in a way that will change lives forever.

A yacht captain is on trial for murdering a woman he hired with more than the boat's cooking in mind. Circumstantial evidence abounds, so the slick defense attorney coaches his client in ways to influence the jury. Millar is more interested in developing engaging, three-dimensional characters than in solving the crime here. The judge, the lawyers, the clerk, and several witnesses all have different reasons for being concerned with the outcome, and the listener gets to see that justice can be very fragile in a realistic courtroom setting.

Six hundred thousand years after Imre Bergamasc's abdication, the Host rules the supposedly peaceful galaxy. But revolution is fomenting - and Imre's unexpected return may be all it takes to light the final fuse.

Growing up in Virginia's Allegheny Mountains, 11-year-old Charlie York lives at the foot of an endless peak called Angel's Rest, a place his momma told him angels rested before coming down to help folks. In 1967 his town was a poor boy's paradise...until a shotgun blast killed Charlie's father and put his mother on trial for murder.

This is not your father's financial system. Jimmy Stewart, the trustworthy, honest banker in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, is dead. And so is his small-town bank, Bailey Savings & Loan. Instead, we're watching It's a Horrible Mess with Wall Street (aka the Vegas Strip) playing ever larger craps with our economy and our tax dollars. This audiobook, written by one of the world's most respected economists, describes in lively, humorous, simple, but also deadly serious terms the big con underlying the big game. But is also proposes a solution - Limited Purpose Banking.

The Earth is dying. Humanity - over-breeding, over-consuming - is destroying the very planet they call home. Multinational corporations despoil the environment, market genetically modified crops to control the food supply, and use their wealth and influence and private armies to crush anything, and anyone, that gets in the way of their profits. Nothing human can stop them. But something unhuman might. Once they did not fear the sun. Once they could breathe the air and sleep where they chose.

Imre Bergamasc's life has been nothing if not interesting. Returning from the grave to rule the galaxy, one might be tempted to say that he's taken the worst the universe could throw at him and emerged triumphant. But Imre's problems are only beginning.

Dicky Flanagan has been the crown prince of Shadow Beach his entire life. The grandson of the man who built it from nothing into a homey surf town, the son of the volatile father who ruled over the pier and beach below with a tripwire temper and a charming grin, and the brother of an odd, but gifted, murdered child - an event that kept Dicky out of the water and buried deep in a drug-fueled haze.

When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, ten years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, the stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant.

In the 878th millennium of human history, Imre Bergamasc awakens after 150,000 years to the realization that he has been the victim of an elaborate murder plot - one that has destroyed the intergalactic transport milieu known as the Continuum. But now that Imre has been reborn, he will stop at nothing to help bring forth the rebirth of the galaxy.

Pull down the shades and settle in for pleasure with this trio of erotic novellas - handpicked by Susie Bright - showcasing stories that are hot and masterful. Susie Bright, hailed by The New York Times as "the avatar of American erotica", is the undisputed grandmaster of the genre. Now she has handpicked three rising stars - new masters - whose stories will delight, arouse, and captivate you. Connected by a central theme - the idea that one sexual moment can change a person forever - each story is wildly different from anything you have read or heard before.

It's the 23rd century, and Nasir Deepra is 248 years old, wealthy, kept young by all-pervasive nanotechnology, a corporate executive, and bored with life. To spice things up, he has become an Agonist, dipping into war zones—many of them in satellites orbiting the Earth—and filming his daredevil antics.

The best-selling author of Final Epidemic is back. Police officer John Davey, once set-up on bribery charges, has been given a chance to save his career-by investigating the baffling murder of two of Chicago's most prominent art collectors. But in the charred ruins of their North Shore mansion are clues to something more sinister than premeditated arson.