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.

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.

A woman's desperate search to find out what happened to the daughter who disappeared seven years ago leads her from a quaint collectibles shop in New Orleans into a murky Louisiana bayou and the shadowy ancestral home of an eccentric dollmaker whose "portrait" dolls resemble missing children. Set in the steamy, violent world of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, The Dollmaker is the story of obsession, redemption, and a love reborn from the ashes of despair.

Instead of going where other journalists have gone in search of this story - the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall Street firms - Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene, beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the New Deal.

When Beau Delaney, the Halifax hotshot whose exploits are the subject of a new Hollywood film, is charged with the murder of his wife, Peggy, it’s lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins who takes the case. But when Beau’s family dynamics and the appearance of a mysterious child alert Monty that his client is keeping secrets, others join in to help keep Beau from a life in prison. Monty’s pal Father Brennan Burke has a hand in the investigation, as does Monty’s estranged wife, Maura. Watching all this is Normie, Monty and Maura’s daughter, who has the gift of second sight.

Mia Reynolds isn't interested in relationships. She refuses to follow the same troubled path her codependent mother traveled. Now that she has graduated from college and found a real job, paying her loads of money, the world is hers for the plucking. She doesn't need a man at her side, keeping her from having fun. Especially Regi, whose brandy-brown eyes and gravelly voice have haunted her since high school. Together they're gunpowder and fire, explosive but dangerous. She's only willing to give him her body, but never her heart.

A rich man and a poor man are found dead of gunshot wounds outside a seedy bar on Barrington Street. The police declare it a murder-suicide, but bluesman/lawyer Monty Collins suspects it's a double murder. Helped by his friend, Father Brennan Burke, and hindered by his femme fatale law partner, Felicia Morgan, Monty explores the dark side of Halifax society: hookers, drug addicts, boozers, gamblers and people desperate to cover up a series of parties that got way out of hand.

The finale of the second series of Deadlocked. The High Rollers are ready to take revenge against the forces aligned against them. A hard and long winter has forced them into hiding, but has also given them a respite from something else…something far worse than anything they’ve battled so far. The Noah Initiative has begun, and the land will soon be devastated by a new virus. The people lined up against the High Rollers are fighting among themselves as well, and everyone is at risk. This isn’t just a fight for survival anymore, it’s a fight to save the entire human race.

In the seventh audiobook of the deftly written Collins-Burke Mystery series, Father Brennan Burke's patience is pushed to the limit when a young woman announces to the world that the Virgin Mary has appeared to her in the churchyard, and hordes of pilgrims, souvenir hawkers, and reporters converge on the scene. But, as unwelcome as these guests may be, they pale in comparison to yet another aggravation in Father Burke's life, a controversial talk show host who clashes with Burke upon arriving in town.

After beholding the destruction of the Well-Built City, physiognomist Cley is now a simple healer seeking peace and atonement in the happy village of survivors. When the town falls into a deadly sleeping sickness, Cley must make a dangerous trip to the ruins of Citynow beset by mechanical birds and werewolves to seek out an antidote. The evil Master Below is still alive, but an accidental exposure to the sickness that he created has put him into a coma.

Speed: the most demonized - and misunderstood - drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil. Yet speed - crystal meth, amphetamines, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, Adderall; crank, spizz, chickenscratch, oblivious marching powder, the go-fast - is the most American of drugs: twice the productivity at half the cost, and equal opportunity for all.

When spray-painted graffiti appears on the wall of Christy Burke's pub, indicating that there's a killer on the premises, Burke's grandson, Father Brennan Burke, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Though not at all keen on probing into the lives of the bar's clientele, he has little choice once a body is found on the property. Issuing orders from a cell in Mountjoy Prison, the pub's current owner wants the problem solved without the police anywhere near his building.

The third and final chapter of Cley's strange life journey dispatches him to the inconceivable ends of his world - and strands him in the perilous heart of a sentient wilderness.

Lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins is used to defending murderers - and occasionally investigating murders himself - but he's never come up against anything like the case of Reinhold Schellenberg, a world-renowned German theologian who has been found dead on the altar of an old church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saint Cecilia's Day. The controversial priest, once a top insider in the Vatican, was known to provoke strong feelings in Catholics, and now those feelings have overflowed with horrifying results.

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 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.

The last place you'd expect to find a team of criminals is at a prestigious Philadelphia prep school. But on a class trip to the US Mint - which prints a million new coins every 30 minutes - an overlooked security flaw becomes far too tempting for a small group of students to ignore. United by dire circumstances, these unlikely allies - the nerd, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student - band together to attempt the impossible: rob the US Mint.

Brand-new stories from David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, Bruce Rubenstein, K.J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Brad Zellar, Mary Sharratt, Pete Hautman, Larry Millett, Quinton Skinner, Gary Bush, and Chris Everheart.

Angela Watts loved being the life of a party. Until one night changed everything. Now, she just wants a fresh start. With one semester left of college, she's intent on finishing it and moving on. That means no more distractions and no more boys. Especially womanizers like Jackson. His cocky smile and mesmerizing eyes ignite her like none other. Which is exactly why she vows to stay away from him. Except he's always there when she needs him. His hungry kisses and fiery touch inflame her. She hadn't wanted a relationship, but in his arms, she is safe again.

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.