Showing results by narrator "Roxanne Hernandez" in All Categories

Fairytales are a universal part of childhood. No matter what time or what place you grew up, you have at one point or another heard that classic phrase “once upon a time.” They are usually the first stories we ever hear or read. These types of tales set us up to understand the art of stories and storytelling, and they are certainly worth revisiting. Here in The Blue Fairy Book, the first of Andrew Lang’s beloved collections of classic fairy stories, you will return to the tales you already know.

For 2,000 years, the Mayan Calendar has prophesied the end of mankind on a date equating to December 21st, 2012. As that day approaches, greed, corruption, economic collapse, and violence seem to be pushing our species to the predicted brink of disaster. But there is another doomsday threat looming in our near future, a very real threat that can wipe out not only humanity but our entire planet. Phobos: Mayan Fear, Steve Alten's third book in the Mayan prophecy-based Domain series, is a doomsday rollercoaster ride of adventure.

From Dan Wells, author of the New York Times best-selling Partials Sequence, comes the first book in a new sci-fi-noir series. Los Angeles in 2050 is a city of open doors, as long as you have the right connections. That connection is a djinni - a smart device implanted right in a person's head. In a world where virtually everyone is online 24 hours a day, this connection is like oxygen - and a world like that presents plenty of opportunities for someone who knows how to manipulate it.

What happens to us when we die? Is there really an afterlife? Do we possess souls? Does God exist? For Michael Gabriel the answers to these questions lie in another dimension, a realm of eternity where there is no concept of time, only pure life force, pure existence, and pure evil. Now, as was foretold 500 years ago in the Mayan Popol Vuh, Michael's sons are born: white-haired, azure-eyed Jacob, blessed with inhuman physical prowess, intelligence, and insight into the cosmos; and dark-haired Immanuel, who refuses his genetic calling, desiring only a normal life.

Luis Fuentes has always been sheltered from the gang violence that nearly destroyed his brothers' lives. But that didn't stop him from taking risks - whether he's scaling a mountain in the Rockies or dreaming of a future as an astronaut, Luis can't stop looking for the next thrill.

A family is murdered as they sleep. FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera and her new team are tasked with determining whether there is any link between this attack and another triple homicide from four years earlier and more than 2,000 miles away. In the process, they’ll discover a serial killer so cunning that his grisly trail of death spanning nearly three decades has gone undetected. Each crime scene reminds Nina of the ghostly Latin folktale of La Llorona, which terrified her when she was an abandoned and vulnerable child. Now it’s back to haunt her.

Six female undergrads at an elite university vanish. The media descends. The families demand action. And as Special Agent Nina Guerrera follows clue by chilling clue, she realizes she’s tracking the most cunning predator of her career. The case takes a turn for the worse, and the bizarre, when several victims are found perfectly preserved in an underground chamber of an abandoned mine. No signs of violence, no hint of how they died. Just more evidence that the killer is cruel, calculating, and a master of mind control.

The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart as he tries to care for his father; daughter Dina, beleaguered by fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them―could this be the reason for all their troubles?

alaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies. The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

It's been one year since a virus triggered junk DNA and people all over the world started changing, becoming something else, craving blood. It's been 10 months since the word vampire stopped being something from old monster stories and Hollywood movies. It's been six months since our world and theirs erupted into war, two since an uneasy peace was signed, and one hour since that peace was shattered. The war is here again - the vampire war.

Two unknown producers struggle to fulfill their dreams to change lives through the power of film. With millions of investors’ dollars on the line, everything starts to fall apart and they realize they may be in over their heads. Is it possible to beat the odds and make a movie unlike anything ever done before? Or, will they lose everything in the process?

The daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small Midwestern town. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that people would find out the truth: that she was INTF. Incompetent. Nerd. Terrified. Failure. Yet in the span of just six years, Cecilia became the first Latina pilot to secure a place on the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Team and earn the right to represent her country at the Olympics of aviation, the World Aerobatic Championships. How did she do it?

Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna. No one had seen any sign of other space-faring races; everyone expected that First Contact, if it came, would happen in the future, in the empty reaches between the stars. Then a young navigator on a distant mining ship saw something moving too fast, heading directly for our sun.

Every year in the United States there are fifteen thousand murders, give or take a few hundred. Of those, nearly forty percent go unsolved. In this six-part audio series, Christina Walsh is determined to change that. After struggling with the loss of her father, she sets out on a journey to bring the justice that has eluded her to the families of other victims. And she starts with a particularly strange case. The murder of world-renowned violinist Leona McPherson who mysteriously disappeared years ago after a concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Six feet tall and spicy hot, Sheriff Daniel Galvez isn't the kind of man women say no to. Unless you're Lauren Maxwell. Years ago, Daniel had worked a case that had destroyed her family - and her trust in men. Now Lauren's come home, a trauma doctor, all cool eyed and distant. Still, something about this brave woman stirs up Daniel's emotions. Lucky for him Lauren needs a strong lawman to help her safeguard a battered teenage patient.

Keith Ellison and Dayne Matthews have finally inked a deal to have the nation’s top young actor star in their current film. But at the same time, the actor takes a very public fall that threatens his reputation among his fan base. Meanwhile, healing happens for Andi Ellison in her relationship with God, her family, and those she loves, but is it too late?

Devastated by the consequences of her wrong actions, Andi ventures out on her own and decides on a course of action that could destroy her. Meanwhile, Bailey Flanigan is caught up in her own drama with Cody Coleman. A Campus Crusade retreat gives them time alone along the shores of Lake Monroe and lets them face a possibility they've avoided for years.

Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel - welcome to the surprisingly potent world of the novelette. The award-winning magazine Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show has been an online haven for this powerful form of storytelling since 2005. Now its editors have selected their all-time favorite science fiction novelettes from the magazine's eight-year history and reprinted them together in one big book of listening pleasure.

A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California's most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable: dignity and contracts for farm workers. Four decades later, Cesar Chavez's likeness graces postage stamps, and dozens of schools and streets have been renamed in his honor. But the real story of Chavez's farm workers' movement - both its historic triumphs and its tragic disintegration - has remained buried beneath the hagiography.

Written with compassionate realism and wit, the stories in this mesmerizing collection depict the disparities of town and village life in South America, of the frightfully poor and outrageously rich, of memories and illusions, and of lost opportunities and present joys. Stories include "No One Writes to the Colonel", "Tuesday Siesta", "One of These Days", "There Are No Thieves in This Town", "Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon", "Montiel's Widow", "One Day After Saturday", "Artificial Roses", and "Big Mama's Funeral".