Showing results by narrator "Elisabeth Rodgers" in All Categories

Catherine Ling is one of the CIA's most prized operatives. Raised on the streets of Hong Kong, she was pulled into the agency at the age of fourteen. If life has taught her anything, it is not to get attached, but there are two exceptions to that rule: her son Luke and her mentor Hu Chang. Luke was kidnapped at age two, and now, nine years later, he has astonishingly been returned to her. Catherine vows never to fail him again.

Katharine Congreve, a Boston society figure, is summering at her country house in Hawthorne, Maine, in the late 1930s, looking after the children of her cousin Maeve, as she does every year. Maeve and her husband, John Shipley, spend their summers in Europe, leaving their son and two daughters in Katharine’s care, but something is different this time: Shipley has promised to leave his wife for Katharine if his failing marriage with Maeve can’t be revived before the end of their vacation.

In 1902, a young girl watches her family's life destroyed by corrupt officials and inscrutable natives. In 1954, the wife of the American ambassador becomes trapped in the intrigue of a Cold War love affair. In 1983, an evangelical missionary discovers that the Good News may not be good news at all to the Mayan refugees she hopes to save. And in 1999, the mother of an adopted Mayan daughter embarks on a roots tour only to find that the history she seeks is not safely in the past.

We're all used to encountering even the most hardcore porn from the comfort and privacy of our computer screens, but how many of us would go see it live? Thought Catalog editor Chelsea Fagan did, spending an evening in the world of live sex shows and hardcore pornography. Here, she gives us the guided tour to everything from rules about condoms to the pressure of facials, showing us a world that is at once completely familiar and something we've never quite seen before.

When it comes to Eve Duncan, never say never....Is she dead or alive? That is the question on everybody’s lips. Eve appears to have been the victim of James Doane, the psychopath who kidnapped her and forced her to use her skills as a forensic sculptor to reconstruct the skull of his depraved son. That’s what everyone attending her funeral thinks, at least.

Billionaire Alex Ben Raschid can’t remember the last time he heard the word “no.” As Houston’s economic powerhouse and heir to a vast, oil-rich Middle Eastern sheikdom, Alex is used to getting what he wants. And when he lays eyes on Sabrina, the sensuous redhead hired to belly dance for his party, he wants her...and immediately sets out to possess her - heart and soul. But it is clear that his virile and arrogant manner will never win him Sabrina’s heart. Could Alex ever be humble enough to sway her?

Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan knows what it’s like to be haunted by the past. For years after her daughter, Bonnie, was stolen from her, she fought for closure. When her mother, Sandra, asks Eve to find a missing friend named Beth Avery, she wants to help but is sure that Sandra is hiding something. The fact that she adamantly refuses to go to the police reinforces Eve’s suspicions that something is very wrong. Eve learns that Beth has been locked away in a mental hospital for years....

They marched under the heat with 40-pound rucksacks on their backs. They fired weapons out of the windows of military vehicles, defending their units in deadly battles. And they did things their male counterparts could never do—gather intelligence on the Taliban from the women of Afghanistan. Beyond the Call follows the groundbreaking journeys of three women as they first fight military brass and culture and then enemy fire and tradition. And like the men with whom they served, their battles were not over when they returned home.

Pittsburgh police officer Kate O'Hern is on the trail of a killer targeting cops. Only problem, he's already killed her once. Trauma surgeon Joshua Lightner saved Kate's life, only to have her awaken suffering from an unexpected side effect: visions of other people's deaths. As a doctor, he refuses to believe in "psychic mumbo-jumbo", but as a man, he can't deny his feelings for Kate. When the killer targets them both, are they living on Borrowed Time?

On July 6, 2011, Richard Oland, scion of the Moosehead brewing family, was murdered in his office. The brutal killing stunned the city of Saint John, and news of the crime reverberated across the country. In a shocking turn, and after a two-and-half-year police investigation, Oland's only son, Dennis, was arrested for second-degree murder.

Paris Metro is the gripping story of an American journalist compelled to reexamine her convictions as terrorism threatens to engulf her family. It's 2015, and Kit is living in Paris, estranged from her Iraqi diplomat husband and raising their teenage son, Ahmed. When Charlie Hebdo is attacked and a cartoonist friend of hers is killed, and then terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit's Parisian world is shattered. As she is drawn back into reporting, she begins to suspect that Ahmed may be running with the terrorists.

A music therapist who thrives on helping others, Kendra Michaels cherishes the ordinary life she has achieved after stem cell surgery restored her sight. The skills she perfected during those sightless years - the ability to pick up the most subtle audio, olfactory, and tactile cues in the world around her - coupled with her laser-sharp mind - have made her a uniquely potent observer and problem solver. Kendra’s uncanny way of connecting the dots is as baffling to law enforcement as it is legendary.

It took the near annihilation of humanity for Liz Phoenix to understand the true meaning of her premonitions. Liz is one of the sacred few on earth who has the psychic powers to fight the malevolent forces that have tried to wipe out the human race since the beginning of time. She battled these beings once, thwarting Doomsday but losing most of her soldiers in the massacre. Now she must replenish her troops quickly - because the supernatural war isn’t over yet.

Lena is a fingerprint expert at a crime lab in the small city of Syracuse, New York, where winters are cold and deep. Suddenly, a series of crib deaths - indistinguishable from SIDS except for the fevered testimony of one distraught mother with connections in high places - draws the attention of the police and the national media and raises the possibility of the inconceivable: could there be a serial infant murderer on the loose?

Elizabeth Phoenix is one of a select few with the power to battle those who have escaped from the darkest level of hell - demons bent on destroying humanity and reclaiming earth once and for all. Liz is determined to stop yet another Doomsday. But this time, it’s going to be more difficult than ever because someone she thought was dead isn’t dead anymore...and is bound and determined to destroy Liz and everyone she loves in the upcoming Apocalypse.

After a demon comes calling and Megan Murphy’s bar blows sky-high, she’s suddenly on the run with her klutzy day shift bartender, the exceedingly gorgeous Quinn Fitzpatrick. Quinn has been in love with Megan from the moment he saw her. Too bad he’s living a lie. He isn’t as klutzy as he makes out, nor as human as she believes. Quinn was sent to protect Megan from anything that slithers. But there’s danger afoot, and the best place for them both is one that’s far, far away.

Four years ago, after Cory Brandel’s passionate affair with Sheikh Damon El Karim ended, she gave birth to his son - and kept it secret from him. When Damon finds out the truth, he kidnaps the boy and takes him across the world to his desert kingdom, knowing that Cory will follow. Damon vows to punish Cory for depriving him of his son and heir, but does he really mean to imprison her in his palace until she surrenders to him? It is savage, unthinkable - but because she is fighting for her son, Cory has no choice.

Laura, a student from a modest background, escapes her small town to join the ranks of the academic elite on a Weatherfield fellowship to study at Oxford University. She enthusiastically throws herself into her coursework, yet she is never able to escape a feeling of unease and dislocation. Years later, back in the United States with a PhD and dissertation on Henry James, she loses her job as an adjunct and reconnects with the Weatherfield Foundation. Commissioned to write a history for its centennial, she becomes obsessed by the Gilded Age origins of the Weatherfield fortune.

Drawing heavily on Lovecraftiana and myth, these are tales of devil’s bargains, love songs to monsters, and the people—human and otherwise—who inhabit liminal spaces. Ghosts, gods, and ghouls make their way as best they can, one step sideways from the mortals around them. Many are connected; some are puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. Spanning a decade of writing, Still So Strange is Amanda Downum's first collection of short fiction, and includes stories originally released in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, as well as original, unpublished work.

Black Market Billions blows the lid off the world's fastest-growing illicit industry: organized retail crime. Hitha Prabhakar reveals how criminals with ties to terrorist groups around the world are committing huge product thefts, and using the profits to fund terrorist acts. Prabhakar connects the dots and follows the money - from consumers dying for a deal to terrorist cells eager to do the killing.