Showing results by narrator "Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

His very name inspires awe, horror, and, for some of the greatest masters of contemporary science fiction, a strong affection. Find out why in this special collector's edition of the original 1932 novelization of Wallace and Cooper's movie that includes commentary by masters of science fiction Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, Orson Scott Card, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Catherine Asaro, Jack Williamson, and Marc Zicree.

Starting with Captain Amos January, who quickly loses it, and then the others who fought, schemed, and killed to get it, we travel around the complex, decadent, brawling, mongrelized, interstellar human civilization that the artifact might save or destroy. Collectors want the Dancer, pirates take it, rulers crave it, and all will kill, if necessary, to get it. This is a thrilling yarn of love, revolution, music, and mystery, and it ends, as all great stories do, with shock and a beginning.

Far out in the Pacific, among the sunny islands of Hawaii, a dark, venomous plot is engineered by a rogue agent, an angel-faced man called the Monk, who has a special fondness for high explosives. His target is an American troopship with 3,000 US soldiers scheduled to blow sky high - unless Matt Helm can stop him. But first Helm has to trust the beautiful stranger who claims to be his sister-in-law and insists that his former "wife" had just willed him half a million dollars.

Emeritus Pope Benedict commands both adulation and unremitting criticism. In this second volume of Peter Seewald’s authoritative biography, the story runs from the Second Vatican Council (1965-68) that shaped Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s conservative ideas about the role of the Catholic Church, through his short, scandal-ridden papacy and unprecedented resignation. Volume two introduces listeners to the Pope Emeritus living in the Vatican Gardens, contemplating the future of the church and his controversial legacy within it.

In this incisive, fast-paced history, New York Times best-selling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics. Through the end of World War I, countries marched into war only to increase or protect their national interests. After World War I, countries began going to war over ideas. Together, Lenin and Wilson unleashed the disruptive ideologies that would sweep the world, from nationalism and globalism to Communism and terrorism, and that continue to shape our world today.

This is the epic sea adventure, a harrowing tale of slavery and revolt aboard a Spanish ship, is often regarded as Melville's finest short story. The balance of forces is complete, the atmosphere one of epic significance, the light cast upon the hero intense to the highest degree, the realization of the human soul profound, and the telling of the story orchestrated like a great symphony.

Earth is an old planet, and her teeming masses are running out of resources - and time. It is up to men such as Jeff Holman to discover a haven for Earth’s millions. Altair VI is one such planet, and Holman is determined to transform this world into one where the human race can survive. Star probes long ago informed Earth that Altair VI had a flourishing ecology with one very tough beast at the top of the food chain, one that will have to be dealt with before the human colony ships arrive. The beast is not only tough, it is as smart as a man. Holman is faced with a soul-wrenching decision - for to make Altair VI habitable for humans, all native life must die.

Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. Now, his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

An escapee from a Spanish prison hunts for his best friend's killer in New York. For more than a year, Kit McKittrick languishes in a Fascist prison, his days spent in darkness and his nights tortured by fear of his limping jailer, whose name he never learns. He escapes Spain with the help of Louie Lepetino, a childhood friend who came with him to fight on behalf of the Republican cause.

From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.

Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.

A young gunslinger is changed for the better by meeting a beautiful woman. A classic range-war Western, this novel features that powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West for which L'Amour's fiction is known. In the author's words, "It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes."

Finding one's calling is not just about finding something we can do - it is about finding what we can't not do. "Let your life speak" is a time-honored Quaker admonition to live one's life as witness to the deepest truths one knows. But as Parker Palmer explains, those words can also mean "listen to your life, and let it tell you what your truth is."

It's obvious that Cletus Graeme - limping, mild-mannered scholarly - doesn't belong on a battle field, but instead at a desk working on his fourth book on battle strategy and tactics. But Bakhalla has more battlefields than libraries, and Graeme sees his small force of Dorsai - soldiers of fortune - as the perfect opportunity to test his theories. But if his theories or his belief in the Dorsai lead him astray, he's a dead man.

Terraform hones the predictive capacity of science fiction and seeks new, vivid, and visceral ways to depict the future we’re hurtling toward, translating the decay and anxiety that surround us into something else, something unexpected, something that burns like a beacon and upends the conventional ideas of where we’ll end up next. Section by section—Watch/Worlds/Burn—the book takes on surveillance, artificial intelligence, and climate collapse. With a potent roster of established names and rising talents, it confronts the issues that orbit our everyday existence.

Prince Roger is coming home, but home isn't what it was when he left. Traitors have murdered his brother and sister, his nieces and nephews. His mother, the empress, is still alive but in the hands of Roger's own biological father, who controls her through drugs and physical and psychological torture. A new heir to the throne has been conceived, and once the child is born his mother will no longer be necessary to the traitors' plans.

There is a book that is shrouded in mystery. Some even say it's a myth. Within its pages is a play - one that brings madness and despair to all who read it. It is the play of the King in Yellow, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. The King in Yellow is a collection of stories interwoven loosely by the elements of the play, including the central figure himself.

Two hundred years after the Raintree clan defeated and abandoned them on a small Caribbean Island, the Ansara wizards are rising again to take on their bitterest foes. Despite their extraordinary powers and supernatural origin, the Raintree have largely blended into the modern world. They are bankers, cops, husbands, wives, and lovers in the society of humankind. But now, from Nevada to North Carolina, the rejoined battle will measure the endurance of their people.

Matt Helm was aware of Bultman—a legendary assassin, the leader of a group of fanatical revolutionaries, an ambitious criminal—but he had no business with taking him down. Until now. Bultman blew up a restaurant on the Florida coast full of innocent people, including Helm’s son. Now, it’s very personal.

Mikhail Sholokhov’s groundbreaking epic novel gives a sweeping depiction of Russian life and culture in the early 20th century. In the same vein as War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, And Quiet Flows the Don gives listeners a glimpse into many aspects of Russian culture, and the choices a country makes when faced with war and destruction.