Showing results by narrator "Christian Rummel" in All Categories

For alcoholic former actress Leigh Baker, the moment will always be suspended in time: Seeing her daughter plunge to her death from the terrace of a sixth-floor apartment. Months later, the man responsible is convicted by a jury of his peers. Four years after that, he is out on parole. And one by one, those whose testimony helped put James Delancey away meet violent ends. Manhattan doyenne Oona Aldridge is the first. She is found in the dressing room of a trendy Manhattan boutique, her throat slashed.

Caribbean born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering readers a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining. Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time.

Growing up in Virginia's Allegheny Mountains, 11-year-old Charlie York lives at the foot of an endless peak called Angel's Rest, a place his momma told him angels rested before coming down to help folks. In 1967 his town was a poor boy's paradise...until a shotgun blast killed Charlie's father and put his mother on trial for murder.

A yacht captain is on trial for murdering a woman he hired with more than the boat's cooking in mind. Circumstantial evidence abounds, so the slick defense attorney coaches his client in ways to influence the jury. Millar is more interested in developing engaging, three-dimensional characters than in solving the crime here. The judge, the lawyers, the clerk, and several witnesses all have different reasons for being concerned with the outcome, and the listener gets to see that justice can be very fragile in a realistic courtroom setting.

This is not your father's financial system. Jimmy Stewart, the trustworthy, honest banker in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, is dead. And so is his small-town bank, Bailey Savings & Loan. Instead, we're watching It's a Horrible Mess with Wall Street (aka the Vegas Strip) playing ever larger craps with our economy and our tax dollars. This audiobook, written by one of the world's most respected economists, describes in lively, humorous, simple, but also deadly serious terms the big con underlying the big game. But is also proposes a solution - Limited Purpose Banking.

Straight out of today’s hospitals and labs–and tomorrow’s headlines–comes a frightening, scalpel-sharp thriller from medical insider Joshua Spanogle. In an astounding debut, Spanogle takes us on an all-too-real race against time…as a young doctor enters the dark side of scientific research, desperate to stop a terrifying epidemic before it is too late….

The Earth is dying. Humanity - over-breeding, over-consuming - is destroying the very planet they call home. Multinational corporations despoil the environment, market genetically modified crops to control the food supply, and use their wealth and influence and private armies to crush anything, and anyone, that gets in the way of their profits. Nothing human can stop them. But something unhuman might. Once they did not fear the sun. Once they could breathe the air and sleep where they chose.

NYPD homicide cop Vince Cardozo must unmask a cunning killer in best-selling author Edward Stewart’s powerhouse tale of crime and punishment. When it comes to the dark side of humanity, Vince Cardozo has already seen plenty. But his encounter with cult leader Corey Lyle will challenge even Cardozo. Lyle stands accused of a brutal terrorist bombing and the murder of a Manhattan power couple. His trial transfixes the city - but nothing about the case is what it seems.

Six hundred thousand years after Imre Bergamasc's abdication, the Host rules the supposedly peaceful galaxy. But revolution is fomenting - and Imre's unexpected return may be all it takes to light the final fuse.

Imre Bergamasc's life has been nothing if not interesting. Returning from the grave to rule the galaxy, one might be tempted to say that he's taken the worst the universe could throw at him and emerged triumphant. But Imre's problems are only beginning.

On the darkest night of 1945, a 20-year-old B-24 navigator assists in the liberation of a German concentration camp. His haunting trauma is prologue to destiny. Flash forward to present-day Manhattan. Warren Hunter, reigning master of the financial universe, is poised to close the world’s first trillion dollar deal. Coincidences are not what they seem as the past collides with the present in a way that will change lives forever.

The City Imperishable's secret master and heir to the long-vacant throne has vanished from a locked room, as politics have turned deadly in a bid to revive the city's long-vanished empire. The city's dwarfs, stunted from spending their childhoods in confining boxes, are restive. Bijaz the Dwarf, leader of the Sewn faction among the dwarfs, fights their persecution. Jason the Factor, friend and apprentice to the missing master, works to maintain stability in the absence of a guiding hand. Imago of Lockwood struggles to revive the office of Lord Mayor in a bid to turn the City Imperishable away from the path of destruction.

Globalization is about Americans outsourcing product development and services to other countries. Globality is the next step, where rapidly developing economies from around the world are now competing with us head to head. The authors present a strong case that the economic climate in which we have lived is going to change in unprecedented ways.

In the far future, in the aftermath of a mysterious galactic catastrophe, a false prophet comes face to face with his greatest adversary yet: a man who thinks he's God - and might very well be right. While the battle for Earth rages around them, they face off, one wanting to conquer the world and the other to redeem it. The victory may well decide the future of the galaxy, and of humanity itself.

Dicky Flanagan has been the crown prince of Shadow Beach his entire life. The grandson of the man who built it from nothing into a homey surf town, the son of the volatile father who ruled over the pier and beach below with a tripwire temper and a charming grin, and the brother of an odd, but gifted, murdered child - an event that kept Dicky out of the water and buried deep in a drug-fueled haze.

After a series of murders is discovered along the trail of the Shifter Underground, wolf soldier Jensen Tate is assigned to find and protect a missing stray. But Lia Crawford doesn't seem to want his protection. When she eludes his watch and returns with mysterious injuries, Tate knows she's hiding something.

The beach... A breathtakingly beautiful supermodel disappears from a swimsuit photo shoot at the most glamorous hotel in Hawaii. Only hours after she goes missing, Kim McDaniels's parents receive a terrifying phone call. Fearing the worst, they board the first flight to Maui and begin the hunt for their daughter.

Ralphie Styles had a way with women, lots of women. Country-singer-turned-bartender Phoebe Jacks ought to know, she'd been married to him before he'd moved on to her best friend. And then her other best friend. But you just couldn't stay mad at Ralphie. Or could you?

She lies in a pool of her own blood. More blood decorates one wall in macabre finger paintings. The victim is a fortune teller from the Little Saigon community of Westminster, California; a seemingly random murder. Detective Seven Bushard wonders cynically if she saw it coming.

This short story is from the anthology Mitigated Futures. 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.