Showing results by narrator "Vikas Adams" in All Categories

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug.

Beneath the glitter of Mardi Gras lies the sleaze of Bourbon Street; under the celestial sounds of JazzFest, the nightmare screams of a city once at war within its neighborhoods, but after Hurricane Katrina, seemingly at war with nature and the rest of the country as well. New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation.

An alien invasion comes to one man’s doorstep in the form of a story-creature, followed by death and rebirth in a transformed Earth, in this Tor.com Original science fiction tale from Jeff VanderMeer, the New York Times best-selling author of the Southern Reach trilogy.

An energizing case for hope about the climate comes from Rebecca Solnit, called “the voice of the resistance” by the New York Times, and climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, along with a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. T

RuPaul Andre Charles always knew he was meant to be a performer. Even as a young child, he loved to dress up and imitate the glamorous women he saw on television. When he turned 15, he began studying theater in a performing arts school in Atlanta and never looked back. Ru developed his drag-queen personality and launched his career in the 1980s. He now hosts and judges the widely popular and long-running show RuPaul's Drag Race, which has raised the profile of the art of drag and drag queens around the world.

26-year-old Akash Amin has everything he ever wanted, but as he tries to kickstart his songwriting career and commit to his boyfriend, he is haunted by the painful memories of the first boy he ever loved. When his mother tells him she is selling the family home, Akash returns to Illinois, hoping to finally move on. Renu Amin always seemed perfect: doting husband, beautiful house, healthy sons. But as the one-year anniversary of her husband's death approaches, Renu can't stop wondering if she chose the wrong life thirty-five years ago.

Rsiran is a disappointment to his family, gifted with the ability to Slide. It is a dark magic, one where he can transport himself wherever he wants, but using it will only turn him into the thief his father fears. Forbidden from Sliding, he's apprenticed under his father as a blacksmith where lorcith, a rare, precious metal with arcane properties, calls to him, seducing him into forming forbidden blades. When discovered, he's banished, sentenced indefinitely to the mines of Ilphaesn Mountain.

In the Trial of Water, you either sink or swim. The second layer of the dungeon is even more inhospitable than the first. Parth and his allies will need to fight increasingly dangerous enemies on disadvantageous terrain. Between lurking monsters, bloodthirsty competitors, and the hostile dungeon, this expedition is shaping up to be the deadliest one in centuries. Meanwhile, as more secrets float to the surface, the conspiracy implicating the royal family deepens. It all points to a sinister plot centuries in the making. At the heart of it all is the dungeon.

The seductive and relentless figure of Raymond Chandler's detective, Philip Marlowe, is vividly re-imagined in present-day Los Angeles. Here is a city of scheming Malibu actresses, ruthless gang members, virulent inequality and washed-out police. Acclaimed and award-winning novelist Joe Ide imagines a Marlowe very much of our time: he's a quiet, lonely and remarkably capable and confident private detective, though he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective, famous throughout the city, who's given in to drink after the death of Marlowe's mother.

A Queer History of the United States abounds with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history - the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the impact of new technologies on LGBT life in the 19th century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the devastating backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. Bronski documents how, over centuries, various incarnations of social purity movements have consistently attempted to regulate all sexuality, including fantasies, masturbation, and queer sex.

A riveting, suspenseful and exuberant novel from the best-selling, Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger about a young illegal immigrant who must decide whether to report crucial information about a murder - and risk deportation. Danny - Dhananjaya Rajaratnam - is an illegal immigrant in Sydney, denied refugee status after he has fled from his native Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself.

In book four of the Klawde series, our favorite warlord cat turns his malevolent gaze to the one target he never thought he'd consider: Earth. But conquering a world is a challenge, even for Klawde, and he'll need two things for his plan to succeed: an army of zombie squirrels, and, of course, money. Lots of money. And he has a plan to get it. Meanwhile, as his evil pet plots world domination, Raj is also trying to make some extra cash. He's dying for a cool virtual-reality headset and is determined to get his yard-cleaning business off the ground to pay for it.

Ravirn is not your average computer geek. A child of the Fates - literally - he’s a hacker extraordinaire who can zero in on the fatal flaw in any program. Now that 21st-century magic has gone digital that makes him a very talented sorcerer. But a world of problems is about to be downloaded on Ravirn - who’s just trying to pass his college midterms. Great Aunt Atropos, one of the three Fates, decides that humans having free will is really overrated and plans to rid herself of the annoyance....

In the debut novel Dreams and Shadows, screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill takes us beyond the veil, through the lives of Ewan and Colby, young men whose spirits have been enmeshed with the otherworld from a young age. This brilliantly crafted narrative - part Neil Gaiman, part Guillermo Del Torro, part William Burroughs - follows the boys from their star-crossed adolescences to their haunted adulthoods.

If you had any ties to Marbella, it was impossible for you not to have heard the stories about Prince Elias and his debauchery. Every summer he arrived with his security detail and friends in tow and rented out a row of cottages near the water. Cottages that belonged to my family. Each of those summers, my parents sent me away - summer camp and later, boarding school. Anything to keep me away from the royals and their partying. I hadn’t been home in years, but when I finally come back for the summer, I see that not much has changed.

On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history.

Seven years ago, Tanvi was spirited away to the subterranean realm of Nagalok, where she joined the ranks of the dream runners: human children freed of all memory and emotion, who collect mortal dreams for the entertainment of the serpentine, immortal naga court. But when one of Tanvi’s dream harvests goes awry, she begins to remember her life on earth. Panicked and confused, she turns to the one mortal in Nagalok who might be able to help: Venkat, the dreamsmith responsible for collecting the dream runners’ wares and shaping them into the kingdom’s most tantalizing commodity.

It doesn’t take long for ambitious freshman and aspiring engineer Jessie Ahuja to learn about two university legends. One is the haunted history of Davidson Tower, where more than fifty years ago, two ill-fated lovers disappeared in a devastating fire. The other is Ravi Kumar, a privileged billionaire nepo baby who’s aggravatingly charming and occupying more brain space than Jessie has room for. Things change when a campus prank locks them both in the old tower’s ghostly library.

It's a Super Saturday sleepover! That means best friends Eddie and Molly-Jean (who prefers to be called MJ) are going to play outside, create obstacle courses for MJ's newts, and watch their favorite movies - and then they'll travel to India to solve a mystery and help save a school - all before bedtime!

Born of daimon and angel, Diago Alvarez is a being unlike all others. The embodiment of dark and light, he has witnessed the good and the horror of this world and those beyond. In the supernatural war between angels and daimons that will determine humankind’s future, Diago has chosen Los Nefilim, the sons and daughters of angels who possess the power to harness music and light. As the forces of evil gather, Diago must locate the Key, the special chord that will unite the nefilim’s voices, giving them the power to avert the coming civil war between the Republicans and Nationalists.