Showing results by narrator "BJ" in All Categories

The TV is on, and I’m on the couch, leaning as far back as I can. My heavy, indecisive brown eyes - their lenses blurred ever since my tumultuous, too-soon entrance into the world - flutter between open and shut. I am half-watching half-listening to a football game on a Sunday afternoon. Was that the doorbell? “Who is it?” I call out, expecting to hear my daughter, Megan’s, voice. These days, she is the one person who visits me. The only person who knows I’m making my home in this little oasis fashioned from wood felled by my own hand. “Terry, it’s Mom.

Fat, bald, and bored, Mike the merchant is steadily losing his business to attrition. Customers just aren’t coming in anymore. He blames his misfortune on the lack of adventurers; they are migrating toward other settlements in droves. For the love of trade, what else is happening around this settlement? When a passerby drops dead in Mike’s General Store, the guards begin pointing fingers. Settlement Council is devising nasty quest lines to manipulate the locals, and the rewarding attraction once keeping this place alive is closed.

Widely regarded as “the most popular western novel of all time”, Zane Grey’s adventure set in the sunbaked deserts of southern Utah is an unparallelled classic. When Jane Withersteen, a wealthy Mormon, is pressured to become Elder Tull’s third polygamous wife, she resists. Gunslinger Jim Lassiter rolls into town on a mission of his own. Jane hires him to help resist the powers that be in her efforts to extend help to everyone in need, regardless of religion or creed.

In Roadhouse Blues, Bob Batchelor presents an epic tale of one of rock's (and America's) most significant periods, as the "Age of Aquarius" gave way to a new age of mayhem, presidential misdeeds, and murder. Batchelor combines cultural history, musical and lyrical analysis, and a broad stroke of pop-culture mythos to give fresh perspective on a pivotal time. Candid, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Roadhouse Blues is a biography of a man, a band, and an era that set the tone for the contemporary world.

A couple looks for a new home in southern England—but it has to be haunted. They stay in the legendary house of Lyng, where it is said that the inhabitants don’t know that they’ve encountered the ghost until long afterward. Artfully crafted in five different parts, Wharton spins an ironic story of greed, guilt, and revenge.

Guido has lost it all. At rock bottom and wandering the shore, Guido spies a misshapen creature floating toward him in the water, riding on a huge chest. The creature offers Guido a path of revenge – switching bodies for three days in exchange for the untold riches in the chest. Guido unfortunately fails to see a potential downside. Through skillful handling of the gothic motif of the doppelgänger, Shelley’s tale explores concepts that would eventually culminate into her masterpiece – Frankenstein.

Exiled society princess Francine Hayward Duvall has learned to stand on her own two feet in the Alpha colony hiding in plain sight in Alienn, Arkansas. It helps that the residents don’t give a hoot about who she used to be, only who she is. She’s a hard-working supermarket clerk who takes pride in earning her way. There’s really only one thing missing from her new life. Ichor-Delta bounty hunter Luther Raphael Boudreaux left his family and all the royal trappings behind long ago and is fully aware that there’s no place for a woman in the nomadic lifestyle of his chosen career.

While on holiday in France, a young Englishman becomes obsessed with aiding a young countess to escape from her jealous, elderly husband. Ingenious and entertaining, Le Fanu combines Gothic horror with Victorian style in his elegant tale of passion, intrigue, and murder.

When magical abilities awakened in Sulrad, it cost him everything. His family, his home, and his dignity. Getting invited to study magic in the wizards' city of Amedon was a step in the right direction, but it set him on a path that would land him in even more trouble than he was already in. Outcast from the wizarding society, Sulrad falls back on the obscure and unpopular religion his father clung to, taking it to heights even his father's god had never imagined.

Southern lawyer and Civil War veteran, Reed Jackson, returns to his family's plantation in a wheelchair. His father deems him unfit, and deeds the Jackson holdings, including his intended bride, to a younger brother. Angry and bitter, Reed moves west to Fenton, Missouri, home to a cousin with a successful business, intending to start over. Belle Richards, a dirt poor farm girl aching to learn how to read, cleans, cooks, and holds together her family's meager property.

The Flying Stars are missing. Three brilliant diamonds, whose fame has spread throughout England, have been purloined during an innocent Christmas pantomime. Can Father Brown discover the culprit before the curtain falls?

Mrs. Peerybingle is bright and sharp as a tack. Her husband John is a carrier, a profession as lumbering and sturdy as he is himself. When the crafty Tackleton seeks to cause mischief to forward his own nefarious plans, John’s steady heart is sorely wounded. Luckily there is a cricket on the hearth to act as a guardian angel for all of them. A huge commercial success when it was first published in 1845, this Christmas fantasy is a lovely portrait of Victorian life.

For centuries, the West has produced stories about the future in which humans use advanced science and technology to transform the Earth. Michael Rawson uses a wide range of works that include Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the science fiction novels of Jules Verne, and even the speculations of think tanks like the RAND Corporation to reveal the environmental paradox at the heart of these narratives: the single-minded expectation of unlimited growth on a finite planet.

Better than a bag of treats, this Halloween romance variety pack brings home the heat. Grab some quick and satisfying tales on the winding path to happily-ever-after that deliver shivers of a different kind. Steamy romance shorts from best-selling romance authors Alyssa Turner, Sue Lyndon, Allyson Lindt, and Brigham Vaughn.

My two best friends have each found their perfect threesome. I don’t have an issue with the fact they both have two boyfriends. I would like a taste of the same for myself, though. When two guys hit on me in a bookstore, I’m tempted to ignore the fact that Fred and Barney are obviously fake names. I’ll be their Betty.

Dustin, I can be a prick. I know this, and I’ve been working on it since high school. No, really I have. Nothing could remind me of that little fact better than the girl I owed the biggest apology of my life. Only, Willa had disappeared until the day I managed to get her fired from her job 12 years later. I could make things right for her; get her a position on my team at Hunter Railways.

The world stands on the brink of the rocket age, and everyone is thrilled that humanity has attained this stunning achievement. But William Stanley isn’t convinced we should be here. Will he really stop the launch of this incredible rocket that he has helped to create?

When a failed attempt to end the rise to the Temple of Ran leads Sulrad to the truth, he discovers that the near extinct dragons might just be the weapon he needs to put an end to the scheming of the wizards of Amedon once and for all. But dragons are crafty and not to be trusted. If it were not for the magic of Sulrad's one true childhood friend, all would be lost. But even with the help of the dwarves and the dragons, the wizards of Amedon are nothing to be trifled with.

From a TechCrunch founder and award-winning strategist comes the most comprehensive guide to the newest fundraising options for today's entrepreneurs.

Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes meet and set up their lodgings at 221B Baker St. Over the course of several weeks, the good doctor finally persuades his mysterious roommate to reveal what exactly is his occupation. It seems that Sherlock Holmes is a self-proclaimed consulting detective. And as incredible as it sounds, the facts prove it to be true. A Study in Scarlet is the first Sherlock Holmes story/novella. Also included is the Edgar Allan Poe story: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".