Showing results by narrator "Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

The Dread Empire of the Shaa is no more, following the death of the last oppressor. But freedom remains elusive for the myriad sentient races enslaved for 10 centuries, as an even greater terror arises. The Naxids - a powerful insectoid species themselves subjugated until the recent Shaa demise - plan to fill the vacuum with their own bloody domination and have already won a shattering victory with superior force and unimaginable cruelty. But two heroes survived the carnage at Magaria: Lord Gareth Martinez and the fiery, mysterious gun pilot Lady Caroline Sula.

This two-story compiliation, read by Stefan Rudnicki, offers two stories from David Drake's popular Hammer's Slammers series. In At Any Price, Col. Alois Hammer's indomitable Slammers are called in to support human colonists against a native uprising in this novel-length adventure. But even though the natives' off-world weapons are no match for the Slammers, their ability to teleport gives them a frightening advantage! In Rolling Hot, the battle-crazed troop of recruits and vets, led by Captain Ranson, must cover 300 miles of hostile enemy territory.

The setting is London, 1895, and the Devil is on the loose, in the guise of the handsome and charming Prince Lucio Rimânez. He is searching for someone morally strong enough to resist temptation, but there seems little chance he will succeed. Britain is all but totally corrupt. The aristocracy is financially and spiritually bankrupt, church leaders no longer believe in God, Victorian idealism has been banished from literature and life, and sexual morality is being undermined by the pernicious doctrines of the “New Woman”.

In all the time the Tufa have existed, only two have ever been exiled: Bo-Kate Wisby and her lover, Jefferson Powell. They were cast out, stripped of their ability to make music, and cursed to never be able to find their way back to Needsville. Their crime? A love that crossed the boundary of the two Tufa tribes, resulting in the deaths of several people. Somehow, Bo-Kate has found her way back and she intends to take over both tribes. The only one who can stop Bo-Kate is Jefferson.

The war is over, yet Dr. Doll, a loner and "moderate pessimist", lives in constant fear. By night, he is still haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped - he, and the rest of Germany. More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs, especially in his position as mayor of a small town in northeast Germany that has been occupied by the Red Army. Dr. Doll flees this place for Berlin, where he finds escape in a morphine addiction: each dose is a "small death."

Claradon never led his House's forces into battle before. But now he must. His father, the mighty lord of Dor Eotrus, went missing, along with his men, heroes all, while investigating a mysterious fog and otherworldly howling. It's up to Claradon to find him, to bring him home, or avenge his death if he has fallen.

Nickie Haflinger had lived several lifetimes...but technically never existed. He was originally a fugitive from Tarnover, the incredibly powerful government think tank that educated him. First he had broken his identity code - then he made his escape. Now he needed to find a way to restore sanity and freedom to the computerized masses and save a world nearing the brink of disaster. He didn’t care how he accomplished this - but the government did. That’s when his Tarnover teachers took him back into their labs, where Nickie Haflinger was set up to receive a whole new education.

In Ben Bova’s novel Jupiter, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter’s planet-wide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant’s team faced certain death as their ship malfunctioned and slowly sank to the planet’s depths. However, one of Jupiter’s native creatures—a city-sized leviathan—saved the doomed ship.

A 21st century U.S. aerospace company has developed the first permanent human settlement on the Moon, made possible by major scientific breakthroughs, particularly in the practical use of nanotechnology. But conflict within the company's founding family and growing protests against the technology from radical environmentalists and religious fundamentalists on Earth put Moonbase in danger of closure

In a post-apocalyptic America, Deaver Teague makes a living salvaging things left behind from before the war. When he hears some truck drivers talking about a hidden cache of gold in a Mormon temple in flooded Salt Lake City, he enlists some friends to look for it.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.

Adam Laret - big, young, and headstrong - ran from Ehrenberg to the banks of the Rio Colorado. He was blindly fleeing his scheming, gambling brother and the woman Guerd stole from him. But Adam’s escape wasn’t complete until Guerd, in the company of a sheriff, hunted him down. Then Adam committed the ultimate crime. With the mark of Cain upon him - he traveled into the desert to atone for his sins.

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.

Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a respected, dedicated surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. He has learned to live with the violence that plagues his city and works tirelessly to help the victims brought to the emergency room. But one night, a deadly bombing in a local restaurant takes a horrifyingly personal turn, when his wife's body is found among the dead, bearing injuries that match those typically found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers.

In Patrimony, fans will learn more about their favorite redhead - with emerald eyes, uncanny powers, and a poisonous minidrag - than they ever dreamed possible. "I know who your father is . . . Gestalt." A shocked Flinx hears these dying words from one of the renegade eugenicists whose experiments with humans 20-odd years ago shocked the galaxy . . . and spawned Flinx.

Accompanied by his faithful minidrag Pip and a most troublesome alien called Abalamahalamatandra - Ab for short - Flinx set out for Alaspin, the ruggedly primitive homeworld of his flying snake.There he hoped to find the giant man with the gold earring who somehow held the key to Flinx's mysterious past and to the strange powers he possessed. Chasing down his heritage was trouble enough, but Flinx didn't know what real trouble was until he realized that a deadly assassin squad was three steps behind him.

Best-selling writer Orson Scott Card founded the online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show in 2006. It has been a big success, drawing submissions from well-known science fiction and fantasy writers, as well as fostering some amazing new talents. This collection contains some of the best of those stories.

Time and again, the daring pair have braved countless dangers to emerge victorious. But now Flinx attempts something that may be impossible for the heretofore undefeated hero. His mission: to take a vacation. Never have the cares of the universe lain so heavily on Flinx's shoulders, nor the forces arrayed against him seemed so invincible.

At last, New York Times best-selling author Alan Dean Foster returns to his acclaimed Humanx universe, where a young human orphan called Flinx seeks to unlock the dangerous secrets of his past - and the uncertain prospects of his future with the aid of the formidable minidrag known as Pip. This is the most mind-bending Pip and Flinx adventure yet - a roller-coaster ride into the unknown, filled with wonder and humor, and a host of deadly adversaries.

That's the question that has haunted 14-year-old Ezekiel Blast all his life. But he's not a thief, he just has a talent for finding things. Not a superpower - a micropower. Because what good is finding lost bicycles and hair scrunchies, especially when you return them to their owners and everyone thinks you must have stolen them in the first place? If only there were some way to use Ezekiel's micropower for good, to turn a curse into a blessing. His friend Beth thinks there must be, and so does a police detective investigating the disappearance of a little girl.

The first tremors of the earth were felt at 7:22 EST. time. Every single person felt the rumbling and experienced the tremors that would forever alter the course of history. Most did not survive. These are the accounts of some of those who did. Following three sets of people, The Upheaval is filled with heartbreak and hope. The day starts out like any other but soon goes to calamity. From earthquake to fire to tsunami, they must face disaster from every angle - the world they once knew has shattered in a just a few hours.