Showing results by narrator "Scott Aiello" in All Categories

The problem is, we didn't come home alone. No one has ever seen anything like this. What they're calling it sends shivers down my spine: a parasitic alien pathogen. It could be a virus, a toxin, or maybe something even worse. And believe me: what we don't know definitely can hurt us. It's too late for me—I've been exposed. But this has never been about me. It's going to take some incredible risks and another long-shot space mission to get to the bottom of this, but I'll fight until my last breath to undo the damage I've done.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Nils Hansen, Commissioner of Security Forces, must venture into the forbidding environs of Northworld, where previous explorations have mysteriously vanished.

Five months after the horrific accident that left him near death and worried that he'd never fly again, master-pilot Alex Romanov lands a new job: captaining the sleek passenger vessel Mirror. Alex is a spesh - a human who has been genetically modified to perform particular tasks. As a captain and pilot, Alex has a genetic imperative to care for passengers and crew - no matter what the cost.

Death stalks Corvis by night, and only an unlikely group of heroes known as the Black River Irregulars can put an end to the terror. The labyrinth of tunnels beneath Corvis is home to some of the city's worst criminals, but now even these hardened thugs have reason to watch their step in the dark, shadowy undercity. Death moves in that darkness, leaving behind a trail of horribly mangled bodies.

Dak Korasa believed he was a galaxy-exploring archaeologist and expert in alien antiquities. But his body is merely a vessel, grown in a laboratory to find and play host to an alien parasite species known as the chok’tal. Possessed by this entity, Dak was granted superhuman abilities as well as the consciousness of the chok’tal’s previous host: special forces soldier Jekra Modri. Now, he’s a Purifier, one of the deadliest predators in the universe. But to survive, Dak must earn “kill points” in combat—or the chok’tal within his body will kill him.

The lives of Toronto teens Crystal and Becca Hatcher revolve around helping their mother out at the family's used bookstore, The Speckled Muse. It's a relatively uneventful after-school job, until an package arrives addressed to her mother, Julia. Thinking it's nothing more than run-of-the-mill inventory, Becca opens it and removes the book inside, unwittingly triggering an ancient magic and intertwining their fates with the powers that flow from the mysterious leather-bound book.

A terrifying debut novel about the evil in each of us: when clones of infamous serial killers escape from a secret government facility, it’s up to a former Army Ranger to stop them- with the help of a teenage killer clone.Trying to develop a new breed of bio-weapons, the US Department of Defense has secretly cloned the world’s most notorious murderers, hoping to study their DNA and isolate a genetic predictor for evil.

On a cold February day in the small town of Clayfield, Kentucky, an unsuspecting and unprepared museum director finds himself in the middle of hell on earth. A pandemic is spreading around the globe, and it’s turning most of the residents of Clayfield into murderous zombies. Having no safe haven to which he can flee, the director decides to stick it out near his hometown and wait for the government to send help. But the disease and those infected are not his only concerns....

Four years after his father died a hero's death fighting a fire, Tim Ginocchetti was behind bars for killing his mother. How one tragedy led to another is a true story that puts a horrifying twist on the familiar one of bullied gay teens. In this case, the bully was the teen's own mother, and instead of harming himself he killed her in a momentary but irreversible explosion of rage.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: Basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story - and gets in the game.

Hank is walking home from the bar when the Model T pulls alongside him. It's been decades since he saw a car this old, and the sound of it takes him right back to his 20s. The door is open, and when he climbs in, the car takes off - without a driver. Before he knows what's happened, Hank is right back at Big Spring Pavilion, where he spent his youth drinking bootleg whiskey and chasing pretty girls. He will find the past is not quite as he remembered it, but still a lovely place to go for a drive.

In the penultimate book of the second series of Deadlocked, the High Rollers struggle to find their way after an enormous loss. They fell into the trap of a madman and the horde is closing in even as the town burns around them. Meanwhile, Hero is dealing with his contraction of what is known as the Tempest Strain, a virus capable of infecting any mammal. He knows that if the virus gets out, it could threaten every species on the planet, and he's ready to make the ultimate sacrifice if he has to.

When Samuel, a lonely linguistics lecturer, wakes up on New Year’s Day, he is convinced that the year ahead will bring nothing more than passive verbs and un-italicized moments - until an unexpected visitor slips into his Barcelona apartment and refuses to leave. The appearance of Mishima, a stray, brindle-furred cat, becomes the catalyst that leads Samuel from the comforts of his favorite books, foreign films, and classical music to places he’s never been (next door) and to people he might never have met (a neighbor with whom he’s never exchanged a word).

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 Getting to Green, Frederic C. Rich argues that meaningful progress on urgent environmental issues can be made only on a bipartisan basis. Rich reminds us of American conservation's conservative roots and of the bipartisan political consensus that had Republican congressmen voting for, and Richard Nixon signing, the most important environmental legislation of the 1970s.

In the Undercity of Corvis, a ruthless crime lord has made a bold move to establish a stranglehold on Corvis' underworld and make it his own. When Canice Gormleigh becomes the target of a foreign crime syndicate called the Black Dogs, Colbie Sterling and the rest of the Black River Irregulars are prepared to defend her. Yet what begins as a bodyguard job turns personal when the syndicate marks the Black River Irregulars as the sole remaining obstacle keeping the Black Dogs from taking over the Undercity.

Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic. That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape.

Life is good for the four humans in Cleveland who know that mice have evolved into possibly the smartest species on Earth. Eleven-year-old Megan and her cousin Joey have great summer jobs at the mouse-powered factory that makes Thumbtops - the tiny computers mice use to spread the word about climate change. But suddenly, the Big Cheese, leader of the Mouse Nation, needs their help. There's trouble at his Headquarters in California.