Showing results by narrator "Kevin Collins" in All Categories

Working for Zach Montgomery is challenging on many levels - coming from a wealthy and powerful family, he lives by his own rules and doesn't answer to anyone. But Gabriella Martine has no intention of backing down. She's used to handling stubborn men, and it doesn't hurt that Zach is smart, charismatic...and gorgeous.

Without warning, something has gone terribly awry. In the remote and unnoticed places of the world, small pockets of death begin occurring. As the initially isolated extinctions spread, the world's eyes focus on this unimaginable horror and chaos. Out of the ecological imbalance, something new and extraordinary is evolving and surviving to fill the voids left by these extinctions. Evolution is operating in ways no one could have expected, and environmental damage may be the catalyst.

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

Strange Candy”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in 2012 on robertmccammon.com.

Summer Montgomery wants to be taken seriously almost as much as she wants her brother's best friend, Ethan. But with a long resume of seemingly random career choices and a protective brother on watch, those things are nothing more than pipe dreams....

Russia, 1940. Fifteen-year-old Misha’s life is about to transform when his father is offered a job in Stalin’s inner circle. They move into a luxurious apartment in the Kremlin, but doubts about the glorious new Russia quickly surface. Misha realizes that the secret police can do whatever they like. His own mother is arrested and sent to prison, but Misha and his father daren’t complain. Then as German troops advance on Moscow, the atmosphere in the Kremlin ignites.

Like his father before him, Arthur Winthrop is the Headmaster of Vermont’s elite Lancaster School. It is the place he feels has given him his life, but is also the site of his undoing as events spiral out of his control. Found wandering naked in Central Park, he begins to tell his story to the police, but his memories collide into one another, and the true nature of things, a narrative of love, of marriage, of family and of a tragedy Arthur does not know how to address emerges. Luminous and atmospheric, the novel is part mystery, part love story and an exploration of the ties of place and family.

Meanwhile, on another side of the Universe. . .Meet Gem ser'Edreth, a wizard with electronics -- and a freelance thief. Deliberately solitary, unencumbered by family or friends, he immerses himself in his profession, rising to a pinnacle of skill so exalted that the planetary crime boss seeks him out with a commission to steal. Refusing the commission, of course, is his first mistake.

It takes a certain amount of courage to step beyond one's day-to-day experiments and look at the big picture - and the origin of the Moon is a big picture question par excellence. Perhaps it makes sense that William Hartmann, one of the two scientists who unraveled the Moon's biggest mystery, is not only a scientist but also a part-time artist and science fiction writer. It took someone with an artist's eye and a fiction writer's speculative temperament to see the big picture....

Donovan was shot by a cop. Four of the nine shots were lethal or would have been, if their target had been anybody else. The Foundation picked him up, brought him back, and trained him further. “Lethal” turns out to be a relative term when magic is involved. When Marci was 15, she levitated a paperweight and threw it at a guy she didn't like. The Foundation scooped her up for training too. “Hippie chick” Susan got well into her Foundation training before they told her about the magic, but she's as powerful as Donovan and Marci now.

UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin, but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It’s about us, our longings and terrors, especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them, to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, as a species.

Autumn, 1864. Rebel bushwhackers have seized and looted a small town in Missouri. Wounded and left for dead by his half-brother, 17-year-old Owen Wainwright is captured and conscripted by the Confederate Army. As the troops' blacksmith, he witnesses the horrors of war firsthand: the savagery of General Selby's Iron Brigade, the massacres of Union troops, the bloody battles at Lexington, Westport, and Mine Creek. Against all odds, Owen survives with the help of an unlikely ally-a new friend in arms and the only person he trusts. But if fate is cruel, war can be crueler.

Megan Montgomery has always been careful...except that one time she threw caution to the wind and hooked up with a sexy groomsman at her cousin's wedding. But that was two years ago? So why can't she stop thinking about Alex Rebat? Alex has been living the good life. He loves his job, has a great circle of friends, and doesn't answer to anyone. The problem? There's only one woman he wants, and she ran out on him after one amazing weekend. But now that Megan's coming back to town, Alex hopes he can convince her to take another chance on him.

"Yellachile's Cage", a story by Robert McCammon, was first published in his short fiction collection Blue World.

Eleven writers largely unknown outside Cuba depict a world that veers from a hyper-real Havana in decay, against a backdrop of oblivious drug-toting German tourists, to a fantasy land (or is it?) where vigilant Cubans bar the door to zombies masquerading as health inspectors. Sex and knife-fights, stutterers and addicts, losers and lost literary classics: welcome to a raw and genuine island universe closed to casual visitors.

The 12-year solstice has come. And with it, a sinister carnival brings a new sense of terror and wonder to a small coastal town. An enormous shoe is washed up on the shore...a tiny man disguises himself as a mouse...a crow provides eyes for a blind innkeeper...and three curious adventures discover the gateway to the Land of Dreams - where you don't always get what you want, you get what you deserve....

Just after noon on a spring day in 2006, aspiring singer-songwriter Hilary Williams and her sister Holly - the granddaughters of country legend Hank Williams and daughters of country music star Hank Williams, Jr. - were driving through Mississippi down a rural stretch of Route 61 on their way to their grandfather’s funeral. Suddenly, the front wheel of the truck became caught in one of the many deep ruts and gravel lining the road, causing the vehicle and its passengers to flip over several times, crushing steel and breaking fragile bones as it crashed.

A nature audiobook unlike any other, Jordan Fisher Smith's startling account of fourteen years as a park ranger thoroughly dispels our idealized visions of life in the great outdoors. Instead of scout troops and placid birdwatchers, Smith's beat - a stretch of land that has been officially condemned to be flooded - brings him into contact with drug users tweaked out to the point of violence, obsessed miners, and other dangerous creatures. In unflinchingly honest prose, he reveals the unexpectedly dark underbelly of patrolling and protecting public lands.

On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas... and, unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.

Santana Sokolov - John "Dick" Chambers' client and a woman he wouldn't mind getting to know much better. Well, if her opinion of him wasn't already so low, it had to look up to see the bottom of her boots. His case is moving forward, but for every two steps forward, it seems someone is trying to kill him. That gets annoying after a while. Make a little head-way, dodge bullets, get into a fight, run for your life. Wash, rinse, repeat. Atlantica isn't giving up her secrets easily, and others are now playing in the game.