Showing results by narrator "Fleet Cooper" in All Categories

Weird, funny, and deliciously creepy, "Bottoms Up" shows us a twisted not-so-distant future where technology is used to control even the most intimate of human acts. A mismatched pair of socks brings two people together, but once they find out they’re perfect for each other, their obsession with a clean bill of health drives them to seek the ultimate in safe sex.

Learn about the game of Poker with iMinds insightful knowledge series. Poker is a family of card games, first popularised in the United States, and now played throughout the world. Traditionally played with a deck of fifty-two cards, it has many rule variations and is played at both amateur and professional levels. Regarded by many as a game of equal parts luck and skill, poker is a mainstay of modern popular culture.

Dr. Ibrahim Bihi of Somaliland has an advanced degree in economics and, as far as worldly goods go, a goat with three legs. Using his knowledge of temporary market inefficiencies and the propellers of a UN food plane, he turns his goat into capital and sends the global economy into a speculative frenzy. Soon most of the world's wealth is tied up in goat-backed securities. What could possibly go wrong? Only everything, and with our faithful orphan Jude as guide, we can sit back and laugh our way toward the resolution of this uproariously instructive satire.

Nora, a middle-aged woman who is ignored by her husband and tech-savvy teenage daughter, reconnects with a childhood crush via Facebook. Soon a flurry of daily text messages controls her life, and she wonders whether or not she should make her online life real. But Nora has bigger problems, and we learn that everyone in this family is straddling the line between their authentic and hidden selves.

Funny, absurd, and heart-wrenching, Cam Terwilliger's Happy Trails introduces us to a young man whose visions of Roy Rogers - his abusive, dying father's childhood hero - guide him through his family's tough past.

Honored in the Best American Short Stories 2014, the hilarious and dreamy "Love on Mars" takes us to that melancholy place where even though we desire intimacy, we’re too afraid to show our real selves. In Louisville, Kentucky, Dylan, a down-and-out substitute teacher goes to Craigslist to make a connection and meets a woman who whisks him away to her imaginary life on Mars. Dylan plays along with the ruse; online, he’s a Sanskrit scholar and penguin hunter in Antarctica.

It has been 20 years since The War, and Major John Karnage has finally settled into retirement: locked up in an insane asylum, with an explosive device embedded in the back of his neck to curb his violent tendencies. Karnage and his troopers have been deemed unfit to live in normal society. Like a bit of old chewing gum stuck under a coffee table, the world has left The War and its scarred, unstable veterans behind.

In these disturbing, haunting, yet strangely beautiful stories, the terrible carnage of the Middle East is rendered in unforgettable form. In "An Unwelcome Guest", a young Jewish settler from New York plays a deadly game of backgammon with a ghostly old Arab while his pregnant wife sleeps unaware. In "The King of the King of Falafel", a restaurant rivalry ends in apocalyptic violence. And in the brilliant, horrifying title story, a lonely shepherd wanders a broken no-man's land, carrying with him the burden of an unspeakable act.

An experiment in space gone horribly wrong; that’s usually how it all starts. The result? Hundreds of thousands of hostile aliens watch and wait for their chance to invade Earth and exterminate the human race. Payback.

Surgeon Getorius Asterius, his wife Arcadia, the eunuch archpriest of a pagan fertility cult, the female head of a heretical Arian church, and an ambitious senator in league with a Chinese merchant: These are the prime movers in this mystery set in Ravenna, Italy, in A.D. 440. When Getorius is summoned to examine the castrated body of a youth found by Thecla in her Arian church, who is the sobbing "Vestal Virgin" nearby? Is there any connection between this crime and the fact that a senator is smuggling counterfeit Western coins to the Eastern Empire, and contraband Chinese products back to Ravenna?

The global outbreak of a new strain of virus wiped out over 99% of the population. The lone hope rests on the slim, unready shoulders of Dr. Justin Kaes and a small team of specialists from the Center for Disease Control. The researchers have discovered a cure for the plague in the blood of a cantankerous 102 year old. But there's one minor problem: the old man couldn't care less whether humanity lives or dies. And he most certainly doesn't feel like going on a road trip to sunny California.

A disgraced Hong Kong pop star wavers between acceptance and revenge after a sex tape scandal. An OKCupid hookup becomes a missed connection even while it's happening. A couple's quest for ever-safer sex leads to a near-fatal love triangle.

An unforgettable voyage of the imagination from the bestselling author of Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes. In parched Port-la-Nouvelle in central Africa, Dr Mallory watches his clinic fail as constant warfare between a ragged band of guerrillas and the local chief of police causes the tribal residents to flee. In this drought-plagued and poverty-ridden country he dreams of discovering a third Nile tributary to make the Sahara bloom.

This collection of five stories and four essays showcases the work of Mike Heppner, the writer whom Entertainment Weekly calls, "A fearsome cultural critic disguised in a novelist's clothing," and whose funny and biting fiction has been praised in Esquire, The Washington Post, and The Millions. Most of these pieces have not been published before. Featured performers include: A deluded Lothario, a man obsessed with corn, Charlie Watts, the dude from Def Leppard, and a sweet old lady who meets her untimely end at a Boston Market.

The Wolfensberger brothers barely escaped the Lost Isles. Now, back in Etria, they long to return to their normal lives. Unfortunately, fresh danger is closing in fast. Trouble begins with Princess Ella’s disappearance. As Jules and Borus hunt for her, they find themselves fighting against oddly familiar circumstances.

In celebrated Canadian author Clark Blaise's eerily rendered Cold-War-era suburbia, a teenage boy faces an enemy that is much closer to home when his brother is diagnosed with a debilitating disease.

Eurik was found adrift by the San and raised by them. Though he had read much about the outside world, he'd never considered leaving home. Not until his teacher revealed what he had inherited from his parents: a living sword, a sentient blade of rare power...and with it, the names of his father and mother. Reluctant to go, yet curious, Eurik sets out to discover who they were and what happened to them. But is he ready for all the attention his heritage will earn him? Can he survive in a world he has only read about?

1990. Vietnam and America have not yet made peace. Vietnam is freshly wounded from fighting border wars with China and on the eve of becoming a market economy. The first bombing of the World Trade Center is three years away, so America is not yet awake to the dangers of Islamic terrorism. Nevertheless, Vietnam and America recognize the importance of ending their differences.

The first novel by Wm. Hovey Smith relates the adventures of a third generation Louisiana family of Sicilian origin, who takes a vacation to their home island and unexpectedly discovers when they arrive on Monday that their two sons are to be married on Friday, or none of the family will leave the island alive. He is richly drawing from his experiences as an exploration geologist, decorated combat engineer officer, outdoorsman, art enthusiast, and storyteller interested in archeology.

In their groundbreaking book Renewal Coaching, Douglas Reeves and Elle Allison offered coaches, managers, teachers, and consultants a research-based, sustainable approach to individual and organizational improvement that involved a disciplined and collaborative sequence of information, experimentation, feedback, and support. The proven Renewal Coaching framework consists of these seven elements.