Showing results by narrator "Ray Chase" in All Categories

In 1202, a 32-year-old Italian finished one of the most influential books of all time, which introduced modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Devised in India in the 7th and 8th centuries and brought to North Africa by Muslim traders, the Hindu-Arabic system helped transform the West into the dominant force in science, technology, and commerce, leaving behind Muslim cultures which had long known it but had failed to see its potential.

2040: Ruins of ancient civilization uncovered on Mars reveal startling truths about the creation of humankind. 2042: In the gray dust of the Earth's Moon, an extinct enslaving race left behind more answers, more questions...and a grim warning. 2067: As Earth's warring factions clash in space for scraps of alien technology, a strange artifact lies trapped beneath the ice-locked oceans of Europa: a machine that holds the key to the final human destiny. It is called "The Singer" for the eerie tone it emits.

Evan Gabriel wasn't always a feared and respected North American Federation Navy Commander. Before dangerous missions to the ice-bound planet of Poliahu, the deadly jungle world of Eden, and politically corrupt Mars, he was a simple recruit, fighting to make his mark in the elite Naval Special Forces…and was part of a top-secret military experiment that would change his life forever. Zero Point tells the tale of a young man faced with difficult choices and dangerous trials.

In Mississippi Noir, literary crime fiction master Tom Franklin has assembled a phenomenal short-story collection that highlights a mesmerizing and diverse set of styles and subject matter. Urban, suburban, and rural settings alike unveil new shades of darkness that fall upon Mississippi's past and present.

Funny Boy, a superhero who disarms villains with his powerful sense of humor, must save the Earth from a trio of bubble-headed barbers from another planet.

Do you live in constant fear? Do you worry that something terrible is about to happen? Do you have trouble breathing, relaxing, and sleeping? Do you think you're losing control, and that you're going to die? Are you trapped in your own personal hell, and don’t know how to get out? I've been there, and I know what it’s like. Shallow breathing, tension in the gut, chest pains, rapid heartbeat... Every moment is exhausting, crushing, and painful. Anxiety destroys your confidence, your productivity, your relationships, and your ability to enjoy life.

Three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII? It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket - called Silbervogel - begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt.

Legend has it there lives a beast we really want to meet. He's extra huge with snow-white fur and giant, fuzzy feet! I know the Yeti does exist, and I can prove it, too! And with my friends, we'll find him fast before the day is through! When our brilliant Catch Club Kids hear about the legendary Yeti, they head to the mountains to catch a glimpse and prove it really exists! Full of hilarious high jinks and clever traps, How to Catch a Yeti is a fun-filled ride you won't want to miss!

Raina was just a girl when the plague came. She survived. Her parents didn't. Neither did the world. As civilization fell, she took to the ruins of Los Angeles, eating whatever she could catch. After two years alone, she's found and adopted by a fisherman and his wife. Their makeshift family lives a quiet life - until a man named Karslaw sails in from Catalina Island with an army of conquerors. Driven by visions of empire, he executes Raina's new father as a traitor and takes her mother captive. But Karslaw's people aren't the only ones vying for control of the ruined land.

Funny Boy, a superhero who disarms villains with his powerful sense of humor, is summoned to save Earth from a planet-gobbling alien from outer space.

David Toland, a decorated Korean War veteran, has done all he can to leave a life of combat behind. Now director of preservation for the Library of Congress's National Film Archive, Toland has made it his mission to preserve what he loves most: the Golden Age of American cinema, moving pictures full of romance, adventure, and American dream. That is, until CIA Agent Lana Welles drops in unannounced with a film canister, smuggled over the Berlin Wall at great cost, that may prove WWII never really ended - it just went underground.

Is the top still spinning? Was it all a dream? In the world of Christopher Nolan's four-time Academy Award-winning movie, people can share one another's dreams and alter their beliefs and thoughts. Inception is a metaphysical heist film that raises more questions than it answers: Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of "self" and "other"?

In 1992, Count Phillippe Pozzo di Borgo, on the heels of his wife's diagnosis with a terminal illness, suffered a paragliding accident that left him a quadriplegic. Forty-two years old, trapped inside his luxurious Paris town house, he was an outcast for the first time in his life. Abdel, an unemployed Algerian immigrant who had been an outcast for his entire existence, would become Phillipe's unlikely caretaker. Quick-thinking, unsentimental, and more than a little wild, Abdel surprises both himself and his employer.

Frederick the Demon (formerly A Warm Place to Call Home): Frederick is a demon. Born in Maryland in the early 1980s, he hasn't a clue where he came from or why but feels an irresistible desire to occupy a human body. Once inside, he finds the previous occupant's consciousness and memories forever erased, an inevitable side effect that gives Frederick pause when switching bodies but not so much as to truly halt his ongoing enjoyment of human lives.

As Lady Justina Wincott's brutal guardian, Viscount Biddeford promises any disobedience from her will cost her son dearly. A pawn in his games of court treachery, the beautiful widow is forced to tempt secrets from his enemies and seduce allegiance from his friends. Yet even Biddeford's wrath won't make Justina sully the only man of honor she's ever known.... Sir Synclair has earned his honor in blood and muck. War taught him the way to victory is rarely clean - but the passion Justina sparks in him is not to be ignored.

From the heights of sacred sexuality to the depths of human foible, they ultimately have to choose: surrender to this love or shrink back to mediocrity, work through their emotional baggage or flee the connection, open to the next portal of possibility or postpone it until the next lifetime. Shaped and reshaped in love's cosmic kiln, Sarah and Lowen become a symbol of our own longing for wholeness in the presence of another.

The future should have been perfect. Microscopic robots known as nans could repair any damage to your body, keep you young by resetting your cellular clocks, and allow you to download upgrades like intelligence, muscle strength, and eyesight. You were supposed to be able to have anything you wanted with a simple thought, to be able to fly without the aid of a machine, to be able to live forever. But when a small group of five terraformers working on Venus return to Earth, they discover that every other human in the solar system has been gruesomely murdered.

In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers.

Dispatched to fight the Taliban as part of the NATO forces, the soldiers of the Third Platoon arrive in a desert hell intent on testing their courage and endurance. Among them are the charismatic platoon leader Schrøder, a former games designer fascinated by the imaginative potential of war; Colonel Steffensen, whose negotiating tactics will have deadly consequences; Sidekick, the LifeLogger whose online “war memorial” will blur into horror; and the hardened but vulnerable Hannah, who must bury her womanhood - or sacrifice her soul.

As an agent of the Department of Advance Analysis, she's one of a handful of people who knows about the spread of a new virus - one she believes will wipe out mankind. With her bosses in denial, she flies to New York to get her ex-fiancé, Chip, to safety. But he's already been scooped up and quarantined - and so has his adopted daughter. Pursued by her own agency, Ellie will stop at nothing to break Chip out before the virus claims them all.