Showing results by narrator "Bernard Clark" in All Categories

On July 14, 1895, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 59 years old and deeply in debt, boarded a night train to Cleveland, launching a performance tour designed to alleviate his financial woes, and, more importantly, resuscitate his alter ego, Mark Twain. The journey took him to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa, and led to the resurrection of Twain as a celebrity. Equal parts travelogue, social history, and biography, Around the World with Mark Twain paints a decidedly different portrait of Clemens: a more tragic, darker figure who faced financial ruin and personal loss throughout his life.

A first person epic poem of Odysseus' life and journey. This poem has all the twists and turns that one might expect from the teller of the tale...which is in this case Odysseus himself. The poem starts with Odysseus chiding his unnamed summoner, thus narrating his life, starting with his childhood and ending with his ultimate triumph at the death of the suitors. However, Odysseus has an agenda of his own and attempts to turn the tables on his foe.

In Searches & Seizures, Elkin tells the story of the criminal, the lovelorn, and the grieving, each searching desperately for fulfillment - while on the verge of receiving much more than they bargained for. Infused with Elkin's signature wit and richly drawn characters, "The Bailbondsman," "The Making of Ashenden," and "The Condominium" are the creations of a literary virtuoso at the pinnacle of his craft.

Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over 30 Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case. Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a metis mountain guide with too many secrets.

Explore an Earth being devoured by entropy, in the ultimate runaway environmental crisis. Dive the depths of the sea to prevent the mother of all oil spills. Rocket into space as a tourist. Mine the asteroids with your enhanced border collie, in the can-do spirit of classic science fiction. These stories appeared in publications as varied as Science Fiction Age, F&SF, and the Boston Sunday Herald.

The original story of Aladdin is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It concerns an impoverished young man named Aladdin. He is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb, who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin's late father and convinces Aladdin and his mother of his goodness by making arrangements to set up the lad as a wealthy merchant. His real motive is to persuade young Aladdin to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave.

Abdi Taalib thought he was moving to Australia for a music scholarship. But after meeting the beautiful and brazen Tegan Oglietti, his world was turned upside down. Tegan's no ordinary girl - she died in 2027, only to be frozen and brought back to life in Abdi's time, 100 years later. Now, all they want is for things to return to normal (or as normal as they can be), but the government has other ideas. Especially since the two just spilled the secrets behind Australia's cryonics project to the world.

Do not go gentle into that good night, wrote Dylan Thomas, and Canadas notorious Ladies Killing Circle has taken his advice to heart. In Going Out with a Bang, the dangerous dames have brought together an explosive mix of authors from across the country. Whether its the boom of drums, the cacophony of a train wreck, or the thud of a body crashing down the stairs, no one goes out without a fight. Twenty authors, along with poet Joy Hewitt Mann, will chill you, entertain you or plain blow you away in this eclectic fictional brew.

Welcome to Unity, Texas. Population: Bizarre. The only thing protecting the residents of Unity from a stream of nightmares is Laredo Beaumont, the town's hard-drinking, ass-kicking sheriff, and Cicero, his knife-wielding chimpanzee deputy. It's a thankless job that leaves Laredo drained and nearly broken. The only solace he can find is in the arms of his beloved Sally Mae, a ghostly soiled dove from a phantom bordello where only the most daring of men would think to step foot.

In the year 2135, dangerous alien life forms freed in the destruction of Saturn's moon, Enceladus, are making their way toward Earth. A task force spearheaded by Lt. Cmdr. Shaila Jain is scrambling to beat them there while simultaneously trying to save crewmember Stephane Durand, who was infected during the mission to Saturn and is now controlled by a form of life intent on reopening a transdimensional rift and destroying the human race.

A blithe and redemptive seriocomic love story filled with country music, the ghosts of Halloween, and an ironic brand of down-home religion. Newly divorced and feeling the pain of separation from his family, Hud Smith channels his regret into writing country-western songs, contemplating life on the lam with his 8-year-old daughter, and searching cryptic postcards for news of his teenage son who has run off with The Daughters of God, an alternative Gospel-punk band of growing fame. Then he finds himself inching toward reconciliation with his ex, tossing his whole talent for misery into question as they head off in a borrowed school bus, hoping so very tentatively to bring the entire family together again.

Led by Yulan, their charismatic captain, the Free have spent years selling their martial and magical skills to the highest bidder - winning countless victories that have shaken the foundations of the world. Now they finally plan to lay down their swords. Yet when Yulan is offered a final contract, he cannot refuse - for the mission offers him the chance to erase the memories of the Free's darkest hour, which have haunted him for years.

To listen to most pundits and political writers, evolution, stem cells, and climate change are the only scientific issues worth mentioning and the only people who are anti-science are conservatives. Now for the first time, science writers Dr. Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell have drawn open the curtain on the left’s fear of science. As Science Left Behind reveals, vague inclinations about the wholesomeness of all things natural, the unhealthiness of the unnatural, and many other seductive fallacies have led to an epidemic of misinformation.

In 1890 actor John Wilkes Booth - long presumed dead - emerged from 25 years of anonymity in his wilderness refuge to expose those truly responsible for the Lincoln assassination and its ensuing cover-up, to unite with the children he had never known and recover what he might of his sense of purpose and dignity.

Fishing for piranhas in the Amazon, getting stoned at Fijian kava ceremonies, and witnessing the ancient ritual of land diving on Pentecost Island is the stuff of National Geographic cover stories - and Nevin Martell’s childhood vacations. His family’s globetrotting took them from the South Pacific to South America and many points nowhere in between.

Travel to rainy Seattle and the see the world from the viewpoint of a private investigator who just happens to be a ghost, then go down to the creole fairy courts of Louisiana, learn the secrets of 9s and how the raven warriors take care of their own. Here are 13 tales of fantasy and wonder, sweet and savory, to fill you up just right.

Tempted by Fire is the first in the enthralling new Dragons of Bloodfire series by New York Times best-selling author Erin Kellison. Dragon shifter Thane Ealdian has waited 600 years to avenge the loss of his family, and finally a clue has surfaced that implicates an old adversary. Thane will stop at nothing to seek his revenge, but to prevent violence between the clans, the Bloodkin Triad has forced a mediator on him. Some upstart named Emerson Clark.

Descendants of a savage, ancient tribe leave a grisly trail of human sacrifice across a land already no stranger to violence and bloodshed. Caught in the raging crossfire of a huge battle for territorial supremacy, the Warriors of the Night vow death to their white and Mexican enemies alike. Into this harsh frontier torn by the sting of lance and arrow and the flame of musket fire rides United States soldier Ben McQueen.

Shrouded - perpetually shrouded - by a blanket of clouds, the planet of Nidor made its slow way through space. A year on Nidor was equal to 3,000 Earth-years. To the Nidorians change was unthinkable. Until the Earthmen arrived. And then a change cataclysmic, and the first for many a millennium, hit Nidor. A change that was to split the planet against itself.

In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves - for the first time ever - to imagine a future of ease and splendor.