Showing results by narrator "Keith Szarabajka" in All Categories

Russell Mullins has left intelligence work. When his wife died of cancer, Rusty quit the Secret Service to repurpose his life. He joins a private protection company in Washington, DC, and is assigned to guard Paul Luguire, a Federal Reserve executive and chief liaison with the US Treasury. Mullins and Luguire form a strong friendship. So when a police detective calls in the middle of the night with word of Luguire’s suicide, Mullins doesn’t buy it.

His doubts are reinforced by Amanda Church, a former Secret Service colleague now in the Federal Reserve’s cybersecurity unit. She uncovered a suspicious financial transaction initiated by Luguire only days before his death.

After 35 years of living on the Moon, cranky old oxygen farmer Millennium Harrison has stumbled onto a hidden facility in the shadows of the Slayton Ridge Exclusion Zone with a radiation leak and a deadly secret. Mil's discovery leads to the death of a young astronaut, sabotage, murder, and cover-ups that may go all the way to the Chief Administrator of the space agency. Unfortunately, she happens to be Mil's estranged daughter, busy trying to secure her own legacy—the first international mission to Mars.

In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories - Kiernan's 12th collection of short fiction since 2001 - she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir.

Jerome Frederick Kincannon is a medicine man—an apothecary by trade and a healer at heart. But when his wife and young son are murdered by the notorious Benjamin Gang, his world crumbles around him. Kincannon can’t forgive the four Benjamin brothers for their transgressions, and he’ll never forget. His ambitions from that day forward are simple: kill them all.

When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it’s what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt—kill or be killed. Here are fifteen all-new stories of such “close encounters,” written by many of today’s most extraordinary authors. Set during the events of all four Alien films, sending the Marines to alien worlds, to derelict space settlements, and into the nests of the universe’s most dangerous monsters, these adventures are guaranteed to send the blood racing—one way or another.

Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the post-traumatic stress disorder that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel he hung on long enough to get into recovery.

Time is up in Old Town. As the pace of gentrification reaches frenzy in Portland, Oregon, Darby Holland’s beloved tattoo parlor, Lucky Supreme, is destroyed by a bomb that ripped through an entire city block. Only a warning call from his favorite prostitute saved his life. Developers have been like wolves at the door of Dmitri (the drunken landlord) for the past few years, but this is different.

With the premiere of two new film versions of the Snow White tale, Blackstone enters the fray with its own adult, edgy, and not altogether serious full-cast exposé of fairy-taledom. At last it can be told! Was Snow White really as pure as the driven snow? Did her allegedly wicked stepmother get a bum rap from the Grimm brothers? What went on behind the closed Dutch doors of the dwarves’ cottage? How many handsome princes does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Mint-addicted aliens. Talking horses. Little girls in wheelchairs who get the chance to pilot starships. Odd little jade carvers who save the last great Mayan city by magic. A sexy wolf girl who saves a teddy bear boy and her clown boyfriend's heart. A famous director who cloned herself and now is dying of cancer, only she's raised her clone like a normal child. Guys at the end of the world who discover they're not the world's greatest poet, they're about as bad as it gets.

The acclaimed and endlessly entertaining novel about a Navy pilot, based on real events from the author’s life. Vinny Vesta, the hero of Mafia Summer, returns as a dashing Navy pilot in Fighter Squadron 176 in the late 1950s, living a glorious bachelor’s life. But a torrid affair with his copilot’s widow, Kat Pennington, pulls him away from his beloved all-night revels - and back into the family business. As Kat’s mafioso father tries to poison her new relationship, Vinny finds himself at the heart of a major Mafia feud.

After decades apart, the five siblings find themselves together again at their ailing mother’s bedside, caught in a deadlocked feud over her hospice care. Into the morass steps Murron Teinetoa, one of their bastard children, who carries an idealistic hope of finally fitting in among her estranged relatives.In an interweaving narrative, Malae portrays the Felices in their formative years of the fifties; he excavates the personal lives of the siblings in the eighties and nineties; and he follows Murron in the present as she raises her son as a single mother.

Zack is unemployed, overweight, recently divorced, and lives with his mother. Whilst a lesser man would wither away in emo-laden angst, Zack has found inspiration during this difficult stretch of life. A renaissance man, Zack conjures up brilliant ideas (soap on a rope, a Sammy Davis, Jr. biopic starring Tom Cruise, vases of flowers in Port-a-Potties nationwide), offers services (babysitter for Sophia Coppola, compiler and burner for a Beatles Best-of), and attempts to woo unsuspecting ladies with his lifelike sketches of firearms.

This collection of short stories from king of suspense Jeffery Deaver grips with every listen. An aging actor attempts to revive his career by entering a celebrity poker game for a reality TV show. A successful crime writer dies under seemingly natural circumstances, but for one cop, doubts are lingering. Lincoln Rhyme is at the end of the line, or is it just another twist in the tale?

Midnight Rider Productions is a dark-web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day, and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him.

Mike loves Philomel. Always. Philomel loves Mike. Sometimes. After doing something stupid that drives away the love of his life, Mike begins to notice that the world itself seems to be suffering the aftereffects of his bad decision. Reality as he knows it has … changed. And before he can fully understand the ramifications, he’s on an odyssey unlike any other, trying to figure out how to repair the universe and return his lost Philomel to his side. It’s not time travel. It’s not dimension-hopping. It’s something deeper. And to Mike’s surprise, this isn’t the whole story.

This is the inspiring and terrifying tale of one man's journey to the Middle East to save his child from radical Islam. Dimitri Bontinck lived every parent's worst nightmare: His teenage son, introduced to Islam by his girlfriend, fell into the clutches of a radical mosque. Dimitri watched helplessly as his son Jay transformed from a gentle boy to a soldier in training, wearing traditional robes and following a strict diet. Completely brainwashed, Jay snuck out of the house and traveled to Syria, all but vanishing.

It all started with some businessmen bankrolling Richard Nixon to become a "salesman against socialization". But in this precursor to current campaign finance scandals, Nixon had some explaining to do to keep his place on Eisenhower’s Republican ticket, so he took to the airwaves. In making his speech, Nixon left behind lines about a "Republican cloth coat" and a black-and-white cocker spaniel named Checkers. The speech saved and bolstered Nixon’s political career and set the tone for the 1952 campaign. Just Plain Dick is political history and more.

Orchard Grove is a town like any other, with quiet neighborhoods and apple groves...though Ethan, the depressed screenplay writer, and his secretive wife, Susan, would tell you differently. So would the seductive serial killer living next door. The apple trees are fertilized with evil, and the backyard fences aren't enough to stop the manipulative mind games and dangerous lies. The lines between good and evil are blurred and then erased as Ethan does what it takes to survive.

Marc Spector is used to voices in his head. He’s used to waking up disoriented, unsure what his alters, Jake and Steven, might have been up to. He’s used to having an Egyptian god command him as Moon Knight, his avatar of justice and revenge. What he’s not used to: staring into the face of a literal, out-of-body doppelganger. Another Marc, crash-landed from an alternate reality, begging for help? Yeah, that is a new one, even for him.

As part of their trafficking in counterfeit merch, they are looking to turn a few pallets of grade Z computer chips into some military hardware sure to interest dictators and despots and drug lords around the globe. Bankrolled by a greedy local crime boss, they hope to promote a half-genius, half-addlepated invention from a naive and principled inventor into a bonanza. But no one ever counts on complications arising.