Showing results by narrator "Stephen Davies Bel" in All Categories

When I met Kiersten, time stood still. It was as if every cell in my body screamed her. I couldn't look away, I couldn't walk away, I couldn't even move. My other half, my soul mate, was staring right at me. I had to have her. I had to make her mine. But I felt selfish doing that - knowing that I may not have endless amounts of time to give her... and even now that every things' over with and I've been given that time back. Nothing is ever certain in this life. Which is why I'm about to do something crazy, impulsive, daring.

A Path of Ashes is the first book in an exciting new series about life in post-apocalyptic America, a nation devoid of leadership, electricity, and human rights. The world as we know it may have burned, but humanity found a way to survive and this is their story.

From the Queen of Scream comes a novel that will raise the hair on the back of your neck. Not every grandmotherly type bakes cookies. What's more frightening than finding out that the kindly old ladies living across the street from you are anything but? As a child, Tim Robertson is selling cookies with his best friend Damien when they knock on the door of the house across the street from him. Two old ladies open the door and Tim never sees his best friend again.

In the stories of Havana Noir, current and former residents of the city - some international sensations such as Leonardo Padura, others exciting new voices like Yohamna Despestre - uncover crimes of violence and loveless sex, of mental cruelty and greed, of self-preservation and collective hysteria.

In this gripping and wide-ranging essay, Nadelson deals with his grief after the premature death of a close friend, coupled with the joy accompanying the birth of his first child. Everything he now does - from caring for his daughter to wandering the streets of his run-down neighborhood in Oregon - starts to feel like a betrayal. Nadelson looks over his life, thinking about his run-in with a Soho cab driver, a college Halloween party spent with his dead friend, and his favorite Chekhov story, "Grief".

A revelatory history of the operatic masterpiece that both made and destroyed Rouben Mamoulian, its director and unsung hero. "Bring my goat!" Porgy exclaims in the final scene of Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Bess, whom he loves, has left for New York City, and he’s determined to find her. When his request is met with astonishment - New York is a great distance from South Carolina’s Catfish Row - Porgy remains undaunted.

In 1997, Daniel Trush, a bright, active, outgoing twelve-year-old, collapsed on the basketball court and fell into a deep coma. Rushed to the hospital, he was found to have five previously undetected aneurysms in his brain. One had burst, causing a massive cerebral hemorrhage. While Daniel remained comatose, the uncontrolled pressure inside his skull caused him to suffer multiple strokes.

"Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood - Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the book's contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivan's Inwood and Charles Ardai's Upper East Side, to Justin Scott's Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamin's Greenwich Village."

The Devil gives Norman Reeves an ill-fated mission he has no choice but to accept: Find the center of Eden and reverse the Fall of Man. Thrust into a place called Creation, Norman's task is plagued by unimaginable people and events. He must unravel impossible clues to free the Three Trees and keep himself out of Hell at the same time. On this surreal and humorous journey, Norman discovers many things better left unknown: the shocking secret lives of people close to him and the other unthinkable reason he was brought here.

High school wrestler Jake Persson is living on vitamins and diet Mountain Dew as he fights to make weight at the height of championship season. In the small mining town in northern Minnesota's Iron Range where Jake lives, this is the most exciting thing that has happened in years. During his last meet, Jake confronts his future and the unnerving sense that his own body and desires are starting to betray him. Chelsey Johnson writes a gripping story about hunger, control, and wrestling down desire.

Joan Boice, a retired school teacher afflicted with dementia, hoped to hang on to her dignity and safety when she checked into Emerald Hills, a facility run by America’s largest assisted living company. What she and her family got was an introduction to what many think is the country’s next great health crisis.

The year is 1989 in Los Angeles, and Miles Jameson is about to graduate from high school. The last big party of high school is approaching, along with the end of a turbulent decade, and Miles has only a vague desire to “work with his hands” (his girlfriend points out that this is a bit trite). Marked with the disaffection and apathy that filled a particular era, and that has always marked adolescence, author John Duncan Talbird gives us a rollicking and bacchanalian look at the challenge of making something of yourself, even when it seems there is little to work with.

Written by multiple Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee Jay Lake, "A Very Old Man with No Wings at All" was first published in the August 2007 issue of Aeon. Over his long career, Jay Lake has published 10 novels and more than 300 stories. He was honored with the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

In Understanding the Metaverse: A Business and Ethical Guide, expert product and customer experience strategist Nick Rosa delivers a timely exploration of what is bound to be one of the most important technologies of our time. The author explains the technology that underpins the metaverse as it exists today and that will form the basis for its rapid evolution in the future.

A collection of short horror stories and dark tales by USA Today best-selling author and master storyteller Dan Alatorre brings you another collection of dark stories. Includes: "The Rendering", "Countenance", and "Epilogue". Enjoy these eerie, dark short stories from master storyteller and USA Today best-selling author Dan Alatorre, and be sure to leave the lights on! Fans of Stephen King, Willow Rose, and Dean Koontz will love Dan Alatorre's new Dark Passages series!

Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas? Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in. Envisioning human history as the development of a societal superorganism he names Agora, Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, and predict—and eventually master—the future.

In the middle of the American Second Civil War, born with a face that is half black and half white, Jetta belongs nowhere. In New Orleans, where she lives with her grandmother after her parents' death, she is believed to be a demon come to curse them all. Everywhere in the town, the blacks - or people of any color - are being persecuted and, one day, Jetta is moved by the white military and shipped outside of the city walls to live in a closed ghetto along with the rest of New Orleans' many blacks. But Jetta is not black.

Wolfgang Schmitt, ex-underwear model, self-proclaimed wisecrack, and cynical copywriter turned undercover agent, is biding his time, unsure how to spend the millions he scored after his recent undercover mission for the FBI. Complicating matters is the fact that he might be called in for a new mission; if it's off the books and calls for a touch of seduction, Wolf is the man for the job.

Five centuries of chaos have passed unchecked since the great collapse. All that remains are the aging ruins, the magical wonders, the monsters...and other things entirely. For Zander, this is normal. He's a Summoner, a scavenger for his village. An elf. Though they call themselves post-humans. The demihuman races are all that survive in the world. A world overrun by the Draugr, but everything is about to change.

Billionaires in World Politics shows how the privatization of politics assumes a new dimension when billionaires wield power in world politics, which requires a rethinking of individual agency in international relations. Structural changes have generated new opportunities for individuals to become extremely rich and to engage in politics across borders. The political agency of billionaires is being conceptualized in terms of capacities, goals, and power, which is contingent upon the specific political field a billionaire is trying to enter.