Showing results by narrator "Paul Adams" in All Categories

Presidents, premieres, prime ministers, entire governments disappeared instantly, like a fragile house of cards in a hurricane. Some hid deep underground or holed up in fortified strongholds, but most were swallowed up by the dead, never to be heard from again.

From Nebula Award winner Gregory Benford comes this ambitious hard SF anthology that collects five original novellas. Each one takes the very long view - all are set at least ten thousand years in the future. The authors take a rigorously scientific view of such grand panoramas, confronting the largest issues of cosmology, astronomy, evolution, and biology.

The Kelly Group International (KGI): A super-elite, top secret, family-run business. Qualifications: High intelligence, rock-hard body, military background. Mission: Hostage/kidnap victim recovery. Intelligence gathering. Handling jobs the U.S. government can't.... Eden is said to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. Her face has graced countless magazines and her body has sold millions of dollars of clothing. But her fame and beauty has earned her more than she ever imagined. Evil is stalking her, determined to extinguish the ethereal beauty forever.

Over the years, Donovan Kelly has fought relentlessly for justice, women and children always holding a special place in his heart. Working side by side with his brothers, Donovan has witnessed firsthand the toll it’s taken - physically, mentally, and emotionally - on his loved ones, and the innocent lives caught in the crossfire. What he never expects is for his next mission to happen right on his home turf - or for it to take a very personal turn.

Cade Grayson - husband, father, patriot - discovered two undead enemy soldiers on American soil, and soon the official call to duty came directly from the President herself in a transmission beamed by military satellite to Cade's refuge in rural Utah: It was time to take up arms in defense of his country once again. Valerie Clay’s hard-to-fathom video footage, showing thousands of enemy soldiers establishing beachheads all along the West Coast, made it impossible to resist. He was a former US Army Delta Operator and he had to come to the aid of his dying country.

Presidents, premiers, entire governments disappeared instantly, like a fragile house of cards in a hurricane. Some hid deep underground or holed up in fortified strongholds, but most were swallowed up by the dead, never to be heard from again. For Cade Grayson, doting father and patriotic Delta Force operator, the past week has been the worst dealt to him by life during his short 35-year stint on planet Earth.

Oubreak - Week 1: Presidents, prime ministers, entire governments disappeared instantly, like a fragile house of cards in a hurricane. Some hid deep underground or holed up in fortified strongholds, but most were swallowed up by the dead, never to be heard from again. Having lost both parents just weeks apart - one to Omega, the other to a brutal beating inflicted by Chinese PLA soldiers - 12-year-old Raven Grayson finds herself in the nation’s new capital, battling loneliness and depression, all while trying to find her place among her fellow transplanted Eden survivors.

Presidents, premieres, prime ministers, entire governments disappeared instantly, like a fragile house of cards in a hurricane. Some hid deep underground or holed up in fortified strongholds, but most were swallowed up by the dead, never to be heard from again. Created in a biosafety level-four lab in Wuhan, China, a bioweapon meant to sicken and quickly kill an enemy population - leaving intact infrastructure, resources, and vast swaths of fertile farmland - instead causes the infected to die and return as mindless, flesh-eating zombies.

Like a fragile house of cards in a hurricane, Presidents, Premiers, entire governments and their ruling bodies disappeared instantly. Some had ensconced themselves in deep underground bunkers or remained holed up in fortified strongholds, but history would tell that most had been swallowed up by the dead - never to be heard from again. On that last normal Saturday in July, while an unknown virus indiscriminately wreaks destruction and death to all four points of the compass.

Cade Grayson, father, husband, and former Delta Force operator collected his fair share of ghosts as the Omega virus ravaged the United States, turning the majority of her population into mindless automatons hungering for human flesh. Wearing incredulous stares, the faces of those ghosts - dozens of men, women, and children he was unable to save during his many forays into the Z-infested wasteland - visit him nightly during the early morning hours when defenses are dulled and REM sleep has him in its firm grip.

With the zombie apocalypse in full swing, Army veteran Lee Riker, his younger sister Tara, and their new friend, Steven “Steve-O” Piontek survive a grueling 2,000-mile trek from the shores of Florida to the deserts of New Mexico. After outfoxing the National Guard and staying ahead of a rolling shutdown that began in New York and swept across the country at a dizzying pace, Riker’s band finally make it to their ultimate destination only to come face to face with true evil. Days have passed and Lee Riker has a date with the court.

Local weather reporter Suzanne Maretto craves nothing more than to transcend life at her suburban cable television news station and follow in the footsteps of her idol: Barbara Walters. When she concludes that her unglamorous husband is getting in the way of her dream of stardom, the solution seems obvious: Get rid of him. She seduces a 15-year-old admirer, Jimmy, and persuades him to do her dirty work. Mission accomplished, Suzanne takes to the airwaves in her new role as grieving widow, in search of a TV deal. If that means selling Jimmy down the river, she’s ready.

After nearly 20 years of direct involvement in the seemingly nonstop combat operations in the Middle East—first as a sniper in the 75th Ranger Regiment 2nd Battalion, then as the youngest member of the Army’s storied Delta Force—Cade Grayson is back home in Portland, Oregon, trying his best to reintegrate into civilian life.

In 17th-century Sicily, a clever valet named Mascarille tries to help his boss, Lélie, win the girl of his dreams – only to find that Lélie is a monumental dunce who ruins every one of his intricate schemes. Undaunted, Mascarille invents progressively wilder plots, only to see his best-laid plans go very awry in Molière’s The Bungler, translated by Richard Wilbur.

Lightspeed was founded on the core idea that all science fiction is real science fiction and that science fiction is vast. It is inclusive. Science fiction is about people, and queer people, no matter how they identify, are a big part of that. They always have been. They're just sometimes harder to see. So, in the interests of visibility, Queers Destroy Science Fiction! shows just how wide the spectrum of sexuality and gender identity can really be.

Jackson and Quigley were this close to joining the FBI (Frosty Bureau of Investigation), until Jackson’s mom found out and they ended up scrubbing seagull poop instead. At least they have Uncle Bryn’s birthday party to look forward to. But when they get to the Ice Cream parlor, the FBI agents are acting strange. Instead of talking, Uncle Bryn and his friends just finish their glowing green ice cream, then jump into a waiting ice cream truck and disappear. It's obvious that something has gone very, very wrong, and now Uncle Bryn is suspected of being a master thief!

Each contributor presents a brand new story set in a distinct neighborhood. Brooklyn Noir mixes masters of the mystery genre with the best of New York’s literary fiction community - and, of course, leaves room for new blood. These brilliant and chilling stories see crime striking in communities of Russians, Jamaicans, Hasidic Jews, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Irish and many other ethnicities - in the most diverse urban location on the planet.

In Drawn, a mysterious little boy has begun appearing in the paintings of an artist who can't remember ever actually seeing him. A partially blind, disfigured agoraphobic who suffers crippling panic attacks if he even tries to leave his apartment is forced out by an unseen entity. A lonely widower begins to suffer terrifying nightmares that his long-missing, presumed-dead son is still alive and in mortal danger. A young runaway realizes that a man he thought was his traveling companion is actually his captor...and a predator.

Unjustly imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille, Dr. Alexandre Manette is reunited with his daughter, Lucie, and safely transported from France to England. It would seem that they could take up the threads of their lives in peace. As fate would have it though, the pair are summoned to the Old Bailey to testify against a young Frenchman - Charles Darnay - falsely accused of treason. Strangely enough, Darnay bears an uncanny resemblance to another man in the courtroom, the dissolute lawyer's clerk Sydney Carton. It is a coincidence that saves Darnay from certain doom more than once.

A novella companion to New York Times best-selling author Maya Banks' Shades of Gray. Softly at Sunrise takes place in a gap of time that occurs in Shades of Gray. Rachel Kelly has traveled a long, hard road in her journey back to her husband, Ethan, and the Kelly family. Now, as she and Ethan are poised to move into their new home, safe behind the walls of the Kelly compound, Rachel wonders if she’ll finally be free of the ghosts that have haunted her for so long and if she’ll step into the sun after a past steeped in darkness.