Showing results by narrator "Vanessa Hart" in All Categories

When his sovereign - and best friend - was killed, Ehren, first of the King's Guard, had been sent far away on a wild goose chase by the First Level Ministry. When a First Level wizard orders him to find and neutralize the dead king's next of kin, Ehren is determined to find them - and guard them with his life!

When Camolen's Council of Wizards is cut down by twisted magic, the only witness is a palomino stallion named Ramble. Convinced the twisted magic threatens Camolen, Carey, Anfeald's Head Courier, plans to question Ramble using the now-forbidden spell that can change the horse into a human - the same spell that turned Dun Lady's Jess from horse to human and took her to another world: the American Midwest.

The real world. That's what Leda desperately seeks when she flees her life of privilege to travel to Kenya. She finds it at a boys' orphanage in the slums of Nairobi. What she doesn't expect is to fall for Ita, the charismatic and thoughtful man who gave up his dreams to offer children a haven in the midst of turmoil. Their love should be enough for each other - it embodies the soul-deep connection both have always craved. But it is threatened by Ita's troubled childhood friend, Chege, a gang leader with whom he shares a complex history.

Short novels are movie length novels that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2011, by current and emerging masters of this form. In "The Ice Owl", by Carolyn Ives Gilman, an adolescent, female, Waster, in the iron city of Glory to God finds an enigmatic tutor who provides her with much more than academic instruction while a fundamentalist revolt is underway.

Set on a distant planet, this is a gripping tale about a colony that believes in "appropriate technology adoption". When a heavily armed clan arrives at the colony, while it's being visited by off-world anthropologists, events spiral out of control, and the colony's beliefs are put to the test. The story is told from the viewpoint of a young woman - who soon learns just how high the price of wisdom can be.

Caterina DeLuca, burned by her run-around now ex-husband, Johnnie Ricco, took the skills she mastered during marriage and opened her own private-eye agency. Now she’s armed with a camera, ready to print the evidence to 8×10 glossies for use in divorce court. The men in her big, whacko family, all Chicago cops and one a crook, aren’t sure what to make of Cat’s career choice.

FBI agent Seth Hawkins was on a mission to catch a serial killer. Yet his only lead - a mysterious azure-eyed beauty found buried alive in the local sand dunes - had no memory of how she'd been abducted. Or anything else about her identity.

The only things Natalie Bouchard wants to change are the weekly specials in her Gram's diner. So when her high school sweetheart strolls back into Dearling, Texas, she allows herself to indulge in a little flirtation, but that's as far as it goes. Navy SEAL Sawyer Nolan has returned to sell his father's land and get the hell out, no matter how enticing he still finds Natalie. Until a storm rolls over the Texas hills, stranding them together at the farm...and the memories of their steamy past lead to a reunion filled with hot days and long nights.

One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's earliest short stories, "The Ice Palace" is about Sally Carrol Happer, a young Southern woman who is bored with her conventional life. She's engaged to Harry Bellamy, a young man from the North. Despite concern from her family and friends, Sally travels to Harry's hometown to meet his family. Hoping for an exciting adventure, she instead finds herself in a cold, unfamiliar place. There, in the dead of winter, she begins to question everything.

Karen Hollander is a celebrated attorney who recently removed herself from consideration for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her reasons have their roots in 1968 - an episode she’s managed to keep secret for more than 40 years. Now, with the imminent publication of her memoir, she’s about to let the world in on that shocking secret - as soon as she can track down the answers to a few crucial last questions. A resonant coming-of-age story and a thrilling political mystery, True Believers is Kurt Andersen’s most ambitious novel to date, introducing a brilliant, funny, and irresistible new heroine to contemporary fiction.

What does a woman do when she discovers her husband is an incurable cheater? If she’s Cat DeLuca, she launches the Pants on Fire Detective Agency. Now Cat does what two years of unholy matrimony taught her to do: she catches cheaters. When a client, Cleo Jones, shoots her cheating husband’s bum full of buckshot, he disappears, taking her money, dog, and sister with him. Private Investigator Cat DeLuca promises to retrieve the dog and money if her client stops shooting at Walter.

USA Today best-selling author Susan Krinard continues the saga of Touch of the Wolf and Once a Wolf in this dark, compelling new novel of a tortured man with werewolf blood - and the beautiful hypnotist who vows to heal his wounded soul.

This collection of unabridged, spectacular steampunk speculations includes several classics of the genre. These tales will sweep you away with their amazing automata, daring dirigibles, grinding gears, and scintillating steam as days gone by are infused with tech. In "Smoke City," by Christopher Barzak, a woman comes to terms with the loss of her family to the child labor mills of the city. A doctor tries to cope with a strange plague terrorizing the citizens of London in Jeffrey Ford's "Dr. Lash Remembers."

A superb collection of short science-fiction tales by this genre's contemporary, and emerging, masters. Alien communications are deciphered as Earth is destroyed in "Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter. A girl auto-asphyxiates to communicate with another world in Elizabeth Bear's "The Something Dreaming Game". And more....

Here is an unabridged audio collection of the "best of the best" science fiction short stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre, as narrated by top voice talents. In "Erosion",l by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying earth. In "As Women Fight", by Sara Genge, a hunter has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife's body in a society of body-switchers....

When an old friend buys a trench coat and opens his own detective agency, PI Cat DeLuca sees a train wreck coming. Everything Billy Bonham knows about being a private eye he learned from Humphrey Bogart. And that’s just enough to make him dangerous. The bungling detective is in way over his head on a case involving murder and a stolen pair of Marilyn Monroe’s dazzling diamond earrings. His outrageous client, Cristina McTigue, is pursued by men who want her dead. Five minutes after meeting the woman, Cat would cheerfully kill her too.

This collection of unabridged readings chronicles the lives of people striving to survive as aliens rule Earth. In James Van Pelt's "How Music Begins", a junior-high school band director struggles to keep the band members' spirits up after they've been shanghaied, by unknown and unseen aliens, and confined to a dormitory and practice auditorium.

When Cara Marshall is transported to Narenta, she is proclaimed champion of its people against the sorcerous daemagos. Amid the grateful welcomes, Cara protests that she has been "world-napped", and wants neither her title nor her mission. "They've got the wrong person and they're going to get me killed because they won't admit it." With no knowledge of weapons or magic, can she save the Narentans and find her way home?

Isole isn't used to dark and dangerous types-at least, not this way. Usually she freezes them cold, literally. That's her superpower: ice. But Mordi has a way of making her lose her cool. With his dark hair and sweet green eyes, it's tough to remember that his father's the superest villain in all the world. Or, was. The pair joined in countless evil plots before now, but Mordi and Hieronymous are turning over a new leaf. They joined the Protectors to defend the innocent - and to give themselves a chance at happiness.

Jason Murphy can talk to creatures of the sea. He can also change into a dolphin and, like all Protectors, has a bunch of other superpowers. None of them really help his situation: the love of his life doesn't trust him anymore. Lane thinks his promises of devotion are... well, fishy. When she needed him most, he was gone. She didn't know he was secretly fighting crime.