Showing results by narrator "Lisa Flanagan" in All Categories

Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state’s new elite schools. Her daughters are exactly like her: beautiful, ambitious and perfect. A good thing, since the recent mandate that’s swept the country is all about perfection. Now everyone must undergo routine tests for their quotient, Q, and any children who don’t measure up are placed into new government schools. Instead, teachers can focus on the gifted.

When ChatGPT was released, the world changed overnight. Even as we all played with the new toy, a very real danger was quickly coming to light: that untested automations would undermine our way of life insidiously, sucking value out of our economy, replacing high-level creative jobs and enabling a new, terrifying era of disinformation.

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamour of any racetrack.

There’s a wedding on the horizon, and Georgia Carpenter couldn’t be happier. But that doesn’t mean she’s lost sight of everything that still needs to be done to get the Sea Glass Inn ready for opening. Not only is she preparing for that, but the magazine photoshoot is right around the corner, too. As is the town council election. Most people think Travis Taylor, the inn’s handsome handyman, is a shoo-in, but with Lavinia Major as his opponent, anything could happen. And probably will.

With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows listeners a different side of school life. It all starts when an elderly substitute teacher at Baldwin High School is found dead in the faculty lounge. After a bit of a stir, life quickly returns to normal. But when, a week later, the spontaneous scattering of his ashes on the school grounds catches the attention of some busybody parents, it sets in motion a year that can only be described as wild, bizarre, tragic, mundane, beautiful, and humorous all at once.

Georgia Carpenter is hard at work on rehabbing her inherited inn with the goal of reopening as soon as possible. A goal that seems very attainable with the help of handsome handyman Travis Taylor and her family. But she wasn’t counting on her estranged sister, Lilly, showing up. Georgia and Lilly have never really seen eye-to-eye about anything, and Georgia worries that Lilly will cause trouble when she realizes their great aunt didn’t include Lilly in her will.

Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 4 opens a new chapter in the lives of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of the Toy Story gang.

There is an ancient evil in the Back Country, dormant for centuries but now hungry and lurking. When it sets its sights on an unsuspecting mother one routine morning, a quiet farming family is suddenly thrust into a world of unspeakable terror, and a young Gretel must learn to be a hero. Collection includes Gretel, Marlene's Revenge, Hansel, and Anika Rising.

Disney-Pixar Incredibles 2 brings back everyone's favorite family of Supers in an exciting, hilarious, and heartfelt super sequel. Mr. & Mrs. Incredible, Violet, Dash, and even baby Jack-Jack encounter a brand-new nemesis who puts their powers - and their family - to the ultimate test!

Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers… Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is very, very wrong.

Former Jersey City detective and single mother of two, Mickey Gibson, now works for global investigation company, ProEye, to track down assets of the wealthy who have tried to avoid their creditors. One day she gets a call from a colleague, Arlene Robinson, asking her to visit the home of a notorious arms dealer who has cheated some of ProEye’s clients in the past. Mickey arrives at the mansion to discover the body of a man hidden in a secret room.

Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so it’s not a total coincidence that she took the job cleaning house for movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding graystone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his career making films that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.

Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan presents a stunning retrospective of the first 10 years of the author’s work. It is a compilation of more than 200,000 words of short fiction, including many of her most acclaimed stories as well as some of the author’s personal favorites; several previously uncollected, hard-to-find pieces; her sci-fi novella, The Dry Salvages; and a rare collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite.

With the full realization of her inheritance before her, Georgia Carpenter is overwhelmed by the generosity of her late great aunt. What lays ahead of Georgia, however, is more work than she’s ever done in her life. Then another family member arrives unexpectedly, and things change in a way she never imagined possible. But what’s another curveball in the crazy game of life? She thinks she can handle everything being thrown at her, along with the help of Travis Taylor, the handsome handyman she inherited from aunt.

In the colossal void of Shatterspace, besieged by bloodthirsty marauders and brimming with monstrous aberrations, the only constant is power: The deft will escape the slow. The clever will outwit the naïve. The strong will take from the weak. Axia wishes she could be grateful to have spent her life—or what little she remembers of it—on an asteroid so far from anything of interest that even the greediest spacers see fit to pass it by.

Fetching was once the only female rider in the Lot Lands. Now she is the leader of her own hoof, a band of loyal half-orcs sworn to her command. But in the year since she took power, the True Bastards have struggled to survive. Tested to the breaking point by the burdens of leadership, Fetching battles desperately to stave off famine, desertion and the scorn of the other half-orc chieftains, even as orcs and humans alike threaten the Lots' very existence. Then an old enemy finds a way to strike at her from beyond the grave - and suddenly only one faint hope for salvation remains.

1966: In London, Jackie Collins’s racy The World is Full of Married Men hits bookshops and launches her career. In New York, Jacqueline Susann’s debut novel Valley of the Dolls is published, and she’s desperate for it to be a bestseller. But neither author is prepared for the price they will pay for begin women who dare to write about sex.

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home. What happened to Nina? Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.

Throughout history, and in numerous forward-thinking communities around the world today, great minds and pioneering spirits have sought and often succeeded at alternative ways of living. Some of these experiments burned brightly and briefly; others are living proof of what is possible. One of those startlingly rare books that upends our assumptions and raises our sights, Everyday Utopia gathers inspiring examples into a radically hopeful vision of how to build more contented and connected societies, as well as a practical guide to what we all can do to live the good life every day.