Showing results by narrator "Tim Lounibos" in All Categories

Mona and Duncan used to be best friends. Now they can’t stand each other. Too bad that’s not a good enough excuse to miss their two families’ annual trip to the cabin. But things get really complicated when they accidentally drive through a wormhole together on the way. Look what playing nice and carpooling gets you. Now they’re stranded indoors by an epic storm and stuck in an alternate timeline where things are just slightly ... off.

Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic and disgraced ex-physician, has discovered a conspiracy. Someone is inflicting magical comas on the inhabitants of the massive city of Astrum, and no one knows how or why. Caught between a faction of scheming magical academics and an explosive schism in the ranks of Astrum's power-hungry military, Adrien is swallowed by the growing chaos. Alongside Gennady, an unruly, damaged young soldier, and Malise, a brilliant healer and Adrien's best friend, Adrien searches for a way to stop the spreading curse before the city implodes.

At the heart of them is Nexus Reach—a place of floating islands and rigid structure. Kaito quickly learns that his hard-won strength no longer affords him the same advantages that it once did. There are people in Nexus Reach with the same or greater Feats and Titles that not just match his own but even put some of them to shame. He is woefully behind the curve. Yet that isn't the only obstacle in his way—a bottleneck bars his path forward. Until he can surmount the Lady's requirements, he cannot evolve his Class, leaving him to stagnate while his enemies grow their strength.

After triumphing over Tyrox, the one-eyed plane guardian of Serpent's Way, Kaito Bao has successfully ascended into the next tier of planes. With three different possible realms to choose from, he must decide how difficult he wants his future to be. Does he take it easy? Relax and recover from his recent trials? Or should he push forward headlong into the unknown? As he does his best to navigate the new series of interconnected planes, clandestine forces work behind the scenes, conspiring to upend the balance of the whole tier.

Investigative crime journalist Signe Gates’s life became a nightmare the day she was kidnapped and drugged. After forty-eight missing hours, she woke to a blur of unsettling memories and a warning from her unknown abductors: tell anyone what happened and they’ll die. They’ve already proved they will deliver on that threat. For two years, Signe has been haunted by what she knows she did and terrified of what else could be buried in her memories.

Aim for Neutrality. We Need Better Sources. Anonymity is Fundamental. Keep Developing. The editors know these principles. The editors follow them every day—usually. The editors may not be recognized on the street, but they craft the information that is seen on nearly every internet search. Through Infopendium, a global, crowd-sourced internet encyclopedia, the editors influence the world. Freelance journalist Morgan Wentworth attends the Global Infopendium Conference in New York expecting a straightforward story to help pay the rent. But the so-called “pendium people” are full of surprises.

In Money Machine: A Trailblazing American Venture in China, Weijian Shan delivers a compelling account of one of the most significant deals in private equity history: the first and only foreign acquisition of control of a Chinese national bank. Money Machine is the fascinating inside story of the transaction as told by the man who led it, from the intrigues of dealmaking to the complex and uncharted process of securing control by a foreign investor of a Chinese nationwide financial institution, a feat that had never before been attempted, nor has it been repeated.

Harlan Ellison’s work shaped the science-fiction, fantasy, and horror genres in the twentieth century, and this collection of his best-known and most-acclaimed stories is a perfect treasury for old Ellison fans as well as listeners discovering this zany, polyphonic writer for the first time.

From the creators of the theory of ethical blindness comes an investigation into how corporate scandals happen, revealing the common pattern behind them and how your organization can avoid them.

Orla O’Connor hasn’t been to the isolated New England enclave of Hadley Island since she graduated from high school a decade ago. As a teenager, her best friend Alice disappeared from its shores without a trace—but with plenty of rumors. Now, Orla returns to her family’s beachfront home to clean it out before her parents sell it. The island and her best friend’s house next door, abandoned after her family left in grief, are stirring up memories she would like to avoid.

After quitting his job at a toxic company, Shiro Amata moves into the house his grandmother left him in her will. There, he soon makes two life-changing discoveries: one, his grandmother was really a witch from another world, and two, said other world is just on the other side of her closet door! Thanks to a book she left for Shiro, he also manages to obtain an all-powerful skill called "Equivalent Exchange," which allows him to turn money from his world into otherworldly currency and vice versa.

Army veteran Cameron Pope arrives back in Jubilee, Kentucky, for the first time in years. He barely has time to catch his breath when he becomes embroiled in a race of life or death for his little niece and a deadly hunt for the human traffickers who are destroying the peace of his mountain town. When he's reunited with Rusty Caldwell—a woman from his past he's never stopped thinking about—he wants to believe they can finally be together.

For the last four years, humanity has been facing its greatest challenge yet—a trial known as the Crucible. This harrowing ordeal has tested the mettle and determination of individuals, weeding out the weak and transforming the survivors into warriors. They have been forced to conquer dungeons and battle horrific creatures with magical powers so they can gain abilities of their own. However, the Crucible was merely the beginning. As the trial concludes, the survivors find themselves on the precipice of an entirely new realm—the Endless Planes.

In a mostly underwater near-future Los Angeles, aging combat-drone veteran Orr Vue now lives a simple and small life, trading snippets of what's become the most valuable currency: information. So when the cops show up at his door looking for data on a murder he’s not even aware has happened, things get interesting for the first time in 25 years.

When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "Doc" Savage and his girlfriend Kira Sunlight land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts. But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth.

Just as Shiro's settling in to his peaceful life as a merchant in Ninoritch, he is rocked by the news that the grandmother he believed to be long deceased is, in fact, very much alive. What's more, she's apparently somewhere in Ruffaltio, the fantastical world Shiro can visit through his closet.

Ten years ago, Jorie Stroud was the rising star of the October Film Haunt–a trio of horror enthusiasts who camped out at the filming locations of their favorite scary movies, sharing their love through their popular blog. But after a night in the graveyard from Proof of Demons–perhaps the most chilling cult film ever made, directed by the enigmatic Hélène Enriquez–everything unraveled.

In a world of criminals, thugs, con artists, cheats, and swindlers, there must be a man to stand against the powers of darkness and corruption. A man not afraid to walk the mean streets—whether they be those of 1930s Los Angeles, an ancient fantasy realm, or some far-flung planet of a future star empire. He is a man who knows that a “good man” is not always a “nice guy”. But when the chips are down, he understands that a hero does the right thing, even if it means losing everything.

For a generation, falling yields and soaring asset prices have boosted realized returns. However, this past windfall leaves retirement savers and investors now facing the prospect of record-low future expected returns. Emphasizing this pressing challenge, the book highlights the role that timeless investment practices—discipline, humility, and patience—will play in enabling investment success. It then assesses current investor practices and the body of empirical evidence to illuminate the building blocks for improving long-run returns in today's environment and beyond.

Humans have always been fascinated by darkness. Especially the darkness of a city at night, when the black sky is made ever more inky by the pools of illumination dropped under streetlights. Whether the mean streets be in an alternate past charmed with dark magic or the dirty alleyways of futuristic crowded space stations, the city—and its darkened streets—will always fascinate us. Here then, an anthology of all new stories of science fiction and fantasy with a hardboiled noir twist that acknowledge that the city is a living, breathing entity...and it isn’t always on our side.