Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle de Cuir" in All Categories

In an attempt to soothe growing Cold War tensions between America and Russia, Premier Nikita Khrushchev visits the US to see all that his “enemy” has to offer. Top of his to-do list? A trip to Disneyland and an introduction to sexual icon Marilyn Monroe. Thanks to the impossible security requirements, Disneyland is out of the question. Marilyn, on the other hand, jumps at the chance to put on a show for the Russian official. During her appearance, she overhears the details of an assassination plot designed to spark an atomic holocaust and devastate both superpowers.

Here are 10 stories from the May and June 2003 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, including a tribute to SF great Barry M. Malzberg.

Immediately the words from Anna Karenina take on a significance for the women who have gathered over good food and good wine for their first book club meeting of the year. These six very different women are not quite friends, not quite strangers but, bonded by their love of literature, they share a deep understanding of one another - or so they think.

Agatha Webb and her cook are found dead in the early hours of the morning after a successful party, and it seems just about anyone could be the killer. Some suspect her aging husband; others think it a robbery gone too far. A few nosy villagers draw a connection between this murder and the deaths of her six children so many years prior: Was she truly a victim, a grieving mother? Or did she play some role in these deaths? The list of suspects grows when a certain wealthy townsmen is blackmailed by someone who believes he murdered Agatha Webb and her cook.

Mercy Rathbone, 15 years old, is the diminutive scion of the Rathbone clan. Mercy's memories of her father grow dimmer each day, and she spends most of her time in the attic hideaway of her reclusive uncle Mordecai, who teaches her the secrets of Greek history and nautical navigation through his collection of specimens and moldering books. But when a strange, violent visitor turns up one night, Mercy and Mordecai are forced to flee the crumbling mansion and set sail on a journey that will bring them deep into the haunted history of the Rathbone family.

All Cyn wants is justice. Kolya Kurev murdered her family in cold blood and got away with it. Single-minded in her determination, Cyn becomes the killer she needs to be. Until she meets Lee, a man also deeply wronged by Kurev. Cyn's new problem? Lee. Lee is stealing her revenge and screwing with the carefully carved life she’s made for herself. As if his mere presence and counter-productive ambitions weren’t enough, he’s going to get her caught.

On Macy’s list of things to do, taking on a new crime syndicate wasn’t at the top. Patrolling the city as Stellar, balancing crime-fighting with romance as she fans a budding relationship, and finding Luminesa, her elusive co-superhero, are her priorities. But when she stumbles upon a new enemy and the Alderwoman’s plans to retake the city, she must become more than just the muscle and venture into a world beneath Port Saint Dominic. With the help of old friends and some peculiar new ones, she sets out to unravel the mysteries of the city’s hidden past.

Portland has a coven problem. Sixteen-year-old Sophie Harris wishes magic could solve all her problems. It created them, after all. It made her a disappointment, a pathetic waste of space in her mom’s coven. Every time they pat her on the head for being a good little girl, they push her down a little more. She can’t protect herself or help with anything that matters, or so they tell her again and again. Armed with new friends who care more than her family ever has, Sophie plunges into a quest to prove herself worthy to a mother who can’t see her as anything but a weak child.

After years of living in boarding houses and working to pay for the care of her mentally ill husband, Dawn O’Hara feels closer to fifty than twenty-eight—and on the edge of a mental breakdown. The stress of her life in the big city sends her to the doctor, who advises her to return to her small hometown in Michigan to recuperate. With help, Dawn is able to get a job as a newspaper reporter, meet people, and have a year’s worth of adventure. She is ready to start fresh, but with the memory of her husband, she fears she will never truly be free to love—or to be herself—again.

Even if the act of travel has been transformed beyond recognition in a mere decade or two, how much has actually changed in our favorite destinations in the past two hundred years? Listeners are invited to compare their impressions with those of veteran travelers and literary legends: Charles Dickens on Rome; Mark Twain on Paris and Versailles; and Washington Irving on Stratford On Avon. Added to this mix is elegiac verse by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti.

This final volume of Orson Scott Card's five-volume anthology of short works features the "hidden stories", including his first published piece, some tales about Mormon family life and other stylistic departures, and several stories that were later developed into acclaimed novels such as Ender's Game, Songmaster, Invasive Procedures, and the Tales of Alvin Maker series.

In the spring of 1338, young William of Leaves knows only of remedies, herbs, and his mother’s kindness. When he is forced to watch as she is dragged to a witch’s pyre by a mob led by the bishop of London, the mysterious immortal apothecary Albion Ravistelle promises the boy a chance at vengeance. In the summer of 1972, Helen Storm is a stoned groupie on the Sunset Strip with a very special condition: She is immortal. When her life intersects with a famous guitar player, she is introduced to her future as a deadly and remorseless assassin.

The testimony that the author has gleaned for this audiobook from the 30-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee focuses on HUAC's treatment of artists, intellectuals, and performers. This highly readable and absorbing collection of significant excerpts from the hearings shows with painful clarity how HUAC grew from a panel that investigated possible subversive activities in a "dignified" manner to a huge, unrelenting accusatory finger from which almost no one was safe.

Sixteen-year-old Claire wants her father back. His death left her only memories and an empty locket. After six difficult years in foster care, her vocabulary no longer includes "hope" and "trust". But everything changes dramatically when she encounters Justin, a Spirit Knight restlessly hunting dangerous ghosts that devour the living, who rides into her path on his magical horse and takes her under his wing. When an evil spirit threatens Claire's life, she'll need Justin's help to survive.

As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages - of hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted, so-called “cozy” murders in Britain - the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, with his fierce devotion to science and logic, gave way to street smarts on the one hand and social insight on the other, but even though these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required intelligence and clear-sightedness as characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured here.

Four years after Aletto, the rightful duke of Zelharri, is restored to his throne, Lialla, the outcast duchess of Zelharri must use her secret powers of Hell-Light to determine her fate.

The challenges of today and tomorrow demand new ways of leading organizations, building collaborations, and creating communities. Since its premiere issue, the award-winning journal Leader to Leader—published by The Drucker Foundation—has presented the best thinking from leaders for leaders. This recording collects some of the best contributions to the journal from the likes of management pioneer Peter F. Drucker, Southwest Airlines leader Herb Kelleher, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In the aftermath of a cataclysmic eruption, America becomes a wasteland trapped in a suffocating volcanic winter. In 16-year-old Sera Donner's isolated Pacific Northwest town, thousands are dead and hundreds are missing - including her own mother. With precious resources running low, neighbor turns against neighbor, sparking a brutal civil war, and when the new survivalist regime decides Sera's disabled brother isn't fit to live, she picks up the rifle she's vowed never to touch and fights to defend those she loves.

The Long List Anthology is designed to recognize the short works that were nominated for the 2015 Hugo Awards but did not make it into the top five short list for the final ballot. Thus, voted into the Hugo Award's long list of works - the top 15 works nominated for each category - were these nine short stories and three novelettes, now made available to a wider audience by award-winning narrators.

In 1902 Lithuania, a group of rebels armed with books triumphs against the mighty Russian Empire. Part folktale, part thriller, The Last Book Smuggler tells the story of Ada and her grandfather Viktoras, an old book smuggler tired of his forty-year battle to keep his language alive despite the attempts of the Russian Empire to destroy it. Into their world steps Jonas, a young man in love with Ada and ready to join the underground book smugglers. But there is a traitor in their midst who must stop them or lose everything.