Showing results by narrator "Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

In this original collection from Skyboat Media and Blackstone Publishing, Elizabeth Gaskell showcases the height of gothic fiction's ability to delight in the otherworldly and to dig deep into what truly haunts us. Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, "Lois the Witch" reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America.

As the world continues to change around them, new friendships are forged, answers are found, and lives are lost as the survivors journey deeper into treacherous areas. New dangers rise each day, and the survivors find themselves faced with only one conclusion … Sometimes the end of everything they knew is only the beginning of something more.

Flora de Barral, the daughter of a bankrupt businessman and swindler, must find her own way in the world when her father is convicted of financial speculation. Unfortunately, this is no easy thing for a single and vulnerable young woman in turn-of-the-century London.

After a simple dinner with a god went very, very wrong, fae mage Chalmys was cursed to remain locked in his tiny realm. Until, that is, he could find someone to tell his story. All of his story. Easy enough, on the surface. However, revealing the truth of his origins will put his mother’s soul at risk, and he’s trapped in his realm alone. To share his story at all, Chalmys is forced to connect with bards through dreams, and after centuries of tangled tales gone wrong, he has nearly given up hope. Until the night he connects with her.

It starts with a few near-accidents: A car almost swipes Mike Hammer when he’s crossing the street. A junkie robs the notoriously hardboiled detective at knifepoint. A fight on a subway platform comes close to pushing him in front of a train. While any one of these could be a coincidence, together they make a conspiracy—one that Hammer will have to end in order to survive. And when it comes to finishing something—or someone—nobody does it better than Hammer.

In an isolated olive grove on the idyllic Aegean island of Tinos, revered by religious pilgrims around the world as the Lourdes of Greece, two bodies charred beyond recognition are discovered, chained together amid bits and pieces of an incinerated Greek flag. An enraged press screams for justice for the unknown victims, until the dead are identified as gypsies, after which the story simply fades away. When the government orders the investigation closed, Inspector Andreas Kaldis, feared head of Greece’s special crimes division, has other plans.

In the summer of 1921, a disenchanted journalist escapes the rat race for a drive in the country. But Mr. Barnstaple’s trip exceeds his expectations when he and other motorists are swept 3,000 years into the future. The inadvertent time travelers arrive in a world that corresponds exactly to Barnstaple’s ideals: a utopian state, free of crime, poverty, war, disease, and bigotry. Unfettered by the constraints of government and organized religion, the citizens lead rich, meaningful lives, passed in pursuit of their creative fancies.

In “Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward!”, it has been a fortnight since the baroness Repstein disappeared from Paris, taking with her a fortune in jewels stolen from her husband. French detectives have chased her all over Europe, following the trail of gemstones like so many precious breadcrumbs, but she has eluded their efforts. When Arsène Lupin finds her, she will not escape so easily. Also featuring “The Wedding-Ring”, “The Sign of the Shadow”, “The Infernal Trap”, “The Red Silk Scarf”, “Shadowed by Death”, “Lupin’s Marriage”, and more.

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."

In music, counterpoint is the art of writing melodies that play in conjunction with one another, according to a strict set of rules, in order to emphasize the melody by contrast. In debate, point/counterpoint is a means of persuasion in which the speaker begins by conceding to their opponent’s argument before refuting it wholeheartedly. Aldous Huxley follows these traditions in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. The polarity between passion and reason in the intellectual life of the 1920s is demonstrated both in form and in theme in Huxley’s ambitious satire.

Mike Hammer is on the case, this time hunting the murderer of his old friend and bootlegger-turned-legit-businessman Packy Paragon. Already torn up by the disappearance of Velda, his beloved secretary, Mike Hammer carves a brutal path for vengeance. Drinking heavily, his relationships fraying, his behavior self-destructive, Hammer has to track down Paragon’s black book, with the names of every corrupt official in town. With deception everywhere, and a whole host of reasons to want the ledger, Hammer has to pull himself together and solve the case before all hell breaks loose.

Life on Earth is good. Disease is checked, hunger ended, and war and suffering abolished, with liberty and justice and a high standard of living for all. But Paul Formain, a strangely gifted young engineer, doesn't believe a word of it. So he comes to Walter Blunt's Chantry Guild, whose motto is "Destruct!" and whose stated goal is the end of civilization. There are Alternate Laws at work in the world, says the Chantry Guild; Walter Blunt has pledged his life to them, and to the principle of destruction as a positive force.

Quarry is a pro in the murder business. When the mysterious man he works for becomes a target himself, Quarry is sent south to remove a traitor in the ranks. But in this wide-open city - with sin everywhere and betrayal around every corner - Quarry must make the most dangerous choice of his deadly career: who to kill?

It is the turn of the century in an England that never was. Bright new aqua-plants are generating electricity for the streetlights; news can be easily had on the radio-viz; and in Gundisalvus' Land, the war is over and the soldiers are beginning to trickle home. Amongst these is Lt. Benjamin Braddock, survivor of the massacre that ended the war, and begrudgingly ready to return to a world that, well, doesn't seem to need him any more than it did in peacetime.

From the heart of Memphis, the city where legends are born, emerged the greatest of them all—adored by millions, devoted to his music, and unwavering in his love for his mother. This icon, both mysterious and unmistakable, rose to reign as the unstoppable King of Rock ‘n’ Roll—Elvis Presley.

April 1940. By terms of the Soviet Nazi Nonaggression pact, the two dictatorships divided the helpless nation of Poland. Now, the Russians are rounding up enemies of the state in their occupation zone, but one essential target slips away. Dr. Sebastian Kapsky had spent years working with Walter Riedel and Werner von Braun in the early days of rocket science, but as a man with a conscience he refused to continue when he saw the perversion of their work by the Nazis. That makes him the most knowledgeable person about German superweapons outside of Germany.

The Darkest Year focuses on Americans’ state of mind not only through what they said, but in the day-to-day details of their behavior. William K. Klingaman blends these psychological effects with the changes the war wrought in American society and culture, including shifts in family roles, race relations, economic pursuits, popular entertainment, education, and the arts.

Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.

The long-awaited, definitive biography of The King of Soul, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Redding's iconic performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Otis Redding remains an immortal presence in the canon of American music on the strength of such classic hits as...

Hammer is at a high society party when a wealthy and well-respected man, Colby, is hit by a car and badly injured. When all he expected was a night on the town, Mike is hired to find out who was driving the car. His search leads him on a trail of murders, the victims often exhibiting the same kind of strangulation as the cause of death. How are they connected to an accident involving Corby, and why is the man himself acting so strangely?