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

Psychologist Loche Newirth becomes hunted when he sees a painting that opens a window onto the afterlife. An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness, and beyond. The first part of Michael B. Koep's the Newirth Mythology The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder, and madness. Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: The 50-foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating?

Two tales from the golden age of supernatural fiction.

Micah Abrams has been transformed. No longer the bully who tormented David Donner, he faithfully follows a divine mission to spread hope and healing across the ashy wastelands of the Pacific Northwest. But when Sera Donner is taken from him once again, doubt comes prowling for Micah's own soul, and he makes a shocking choice that changes everything. Running from an enemy he once believed couldn't destroy him, adrift in a lawless land where people will do anything to survive, Micah must come to grips with a God whose power is perfected in weakness.

Shipwrecked on the far side of the “crack in the world,” Eric’s companions find themselves trapped on the roots of Yggdrasil, the Great Norse Tree of Life. Lost and bereft of supplies, the companions wander blindly and soon find themselves in the worst land of Norse Mythology: Niflhiem, the realm of the unfortunate dead. Facing starvation, the companions have no choice; they must seek and beg for assistance from Loki’s daughter, Hel, the Norse Goddess of Death.

The year is 1666. The king and parliament vie for power, fighting one another with politics and armies alike. Below, the faerie court has enemies of its own. The old ways are breaking down, and no one knows what will rise in their place. But now, a greater threat has come, one that could destroy everything. In the house of a sleeping baker, a spark leaps free of the oven - and ignites a blaze that will burn London to the ground.

Memories and magic recovered, Frey is restored to the throne. But as she works to regain control of the North, a small silver dagger nearly brings her end.

In truth, Percy just wants to lead a normal life – low-key, boring, and predictable. So when a mysterious hag appears with a (fake) luck talisman, Percy jumps at the chance for a bit of normalcy. But as strange coincidences start to converge around him, Percy finds himself in the middle of all sorts of misadventures.

Nothing is as it seems. Frey's life is a lie. She doesn't remember being bound from magic. She didn't intend to discover this dangerous secret, to get entangled in Council business. But she did. And now she's on the run. With the aid of a stranger, she discovers a world beyond the elves who bound her. But it's a world of shadows and dark magic, a world she's been warned not to trust. The farther she strays, the more she finds a forgotten past. As she fights to reclaim her true identity, Council trackers hunt her down.

Basic training is over. For 11-year-old Robbi, the real work on the Laddertop station begins…even as its strange, dark secrets grow more compelling. With the help of mentally linked robot companions, she and an elite crew of children perform the dangerous maintenance work on the Power Web. But only Robbi keeps having urgent dreams from The Givers, the alien species who bestowed upon humans all the Laddertop technology.

Meet Stellar - an urban crime-fighter who tackles injustice with swift and decisive action, carrying the burden of freeing society from oppression, fighting for the weak and wounded. She is brave. She is beautiful. She is just a comic book character…or at least she was. Macy Davis is an athletic high school student with an eye for Patrick Newell, the young artist who created Stellar. When Macy’s best friend, Keri Cartwright, discovers Patrick’s comic book heroine, she convinces Macy to masquerade as Stellar.

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.

Rich with unforgettable characters and history, intricately plotted and utterly absorbing, City of Dreams is a stirring saga of early Manhattan and the beginnings of medical science told by a master storyteller.

In The Dragon's Son, there is new hope in the form of a special offspring who might be able to bridge the anarchy that is disrupting the delicate and unseen order that the Parliament has tried to protect. The twin offspring of a high priestess and a dragon hold the key to man's future, but their identity must be held secret, even from each other, until they have matured. One is raised in a human court, the other in hiding.

Silvariah Frandelle, a brilliant and beautiful business woman, falls from wealth and success into exile and poverty, indentured - barely one step above slavery - as an off-world laborer to escape prison. Her last calculated risk as a free woman, paid for with years of service, becomes the key to surviving hostile environments. Space, gravity, and Mars wastelands were expected. Intrusive AIs, obscure experiments, and shadowy foes were not.

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.

Fairytales are a universal part of childhood. No matter what time or what place you grew up, you have at one point or another heard that classic phrase “once upon a time.” They are usually the first stories we ever hear or read. These types of tales set us up to understand the art of stories and storytelling, and they are certainly worth revisiting. Here in The Blue Fairy Book, the first of Andrew Lang’s beloved collections of classic fairy stories, you will return to the tales you already know.

When an explosion of the rocket launching the Mars Transit Vehicle kills four crewmen, the US decides to redirect its energies to near-Earth projects, killing the manned mission to Mars. But tycoon John Axelrod assembles a consortium to fund the project, and he expects to net billions. But a European-Asian airbus will make a similar expedition. Now, the race is on to get to the Red Planet first.

Science fiction dwells mostly in the realm of possibility, where mysteries proliferate nevertheless, meaning is never static, and “time and history have convinced us that things are not as they seem”. So, too, does all language, argues Samuel Delany, in his vigorous justification for the writing life. Chronicling his struggle with dyslexia, the evolution of his gay and Black identity during the AIDS crisis, and his experiences and relationships through five decades as a writer of fiction and nonfiction, Delany is a longtime observer of language’s inner workings.

This collection of short stories displays Ed Gorman's talents as a masterful storyteller across a range of genres.

A mysterious and beautiful girl who teaches arrogant young men about true love, a lonely traveling salesman who learns that his passenger is Death, children who can absorb the psychic pain of their parents, a desperately pursued serial killer who hides his face under gauze in a hospital room, and a woman who loves the alien infant nobody else wants - these stories and 10 others make up this collection by award-winning author Ed Gorman. Here are stories that led him to be called "one of the best" by Dean Koontz and "one of the most original writers in crime fiction today" by Kirkus Reviews. Here, you'll find the extraordinary range of storytelling skill and powerful emotions that won Gorman the prized International Fiction Award.

Included in Different Kinds of Dead, and Other Tales are "Different Kinds of Dead", "Deathman", "A Girl Like You", "Loverboy", "Muse", "Riff", "The Brasher Girl", "Survival", "Masque", "Second Most Popular", and others.

This collection reveals the extraordinary range of storytelling skill and powerful emotions that won Gorman the prized International Fiction Award. His protagonists, gritty and gruff, are strangely likable, and his writing, according to Mystery News, is "powerful, disturbing, [and] often poetic".

Imagine… Ghosts, gods, and devils - heavens and hells - cities in the sky and cities beneath the sea. Time machines, spaceships - certainly you can imagine Martians, but what about interplanetary vampires? Or a mouse that isn't a mouse? Honeymoon in Hell proves that Fredric Brown has a special vision, a sight beyond our wildest nightmares, a perception of things we couldn't even begin to imagine.