Showing results by narrator "Christian Rummel" in All Categories

At first, they look like suicides. Two bodies within a week - one found floating in New York's East River, another electrocuted in the bathtub. But forensics show that the victims were drugged, then killed. As the death toll grows, so does the brutality of the murders - and the killer dubbed the Flesh Collector continues to prey.

In the 878th millennium of human history, Imre Bergamasc awakens after 150,000 years to the realization that he has been the victim of an elaborate murder plot - one that has destroyed the intergalactic transport milieu known as the Continuum. But now that Imre has been reborn, he will stop at nothing to help bring forth the rebirth of the galaxy.

On the darkest night of 1945, a 20-year-old B-24 navigator assists in the liberation of a German concentration camp. His haunting trauma is prologue to destiny. Flash forward to present-day Manhattan. Warren Hunter, reigning master of the financial universe, is poised to close the world’s first trillion dollar deal. Coincidences are not what they seem as the past collides with the present in a way that will change lives forever.

The City Imperishable's secret master and heir to the long-vacant throne has vanished from a locked room, as politics have turned deadly in a bid to revive the city's long-vanished empire. The city's dwarfs, stunted from spending their childhoods in confining boxes, are restive. Bijaz the Dwarf, leader of the Sewn faction among the dwarfs, fights their persecution. Jason the Factor, friend and apprentice to the missing master, works to maintain stability in the absence of a guiding hand. Imago of Lockwood struggles to revive the office of Lord Mayor in a bid to turn the City Imperishable away from the path of destruction.

The Cocaine Chronicles contains tough tales by a cross-section of today's most thought-provoking writers. Featuring brand-new stories by: Susan Straight, Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Ken Bruen, Jerry Stahl, Nina Revoyr, Bill Moody, Emory Holmes II, James Brown, Gary Phillips, Jervey Tervalon, Kerry E. West, Donnell Alexander, Deborah Vankin, Robert Ward, Manuel Ramos, and Detrice Jones.

The aliens have seen many worlds, but they know that Earth in particular is a jewel. They lust for its soaring mountains, its shining seas, its gorgeous forests and majestic deserts. There is just one part of the planet that they don't want: us. Flynn Carroll knows that the aliens are a race of brilliance and extraordinary cruelty. And he knows that they have found a way to eliminate humanity: capture the mind of the president of the United States.

The landscape of contemporary Paris, replete with the best restaurants, the trendiest bars and clubs, is usually filled with the wealthy, the famous, and le rake or le rou, the charming, educated sophisticate with little or no conscience. Into this cushy world bursts Dr. Crandall Taylor - or rather the actor who plays him, the star of a dated American soap opera that is now one of the hottest prime-time shows in France. And this newfound fame, as enriching as it is unexpected, is not wasted on Crandall, eager to put his dark and often violent American past behind him and enjoy all the fruits and the women that Paris and fame have to offer him.

Dicky Flanagan has been the crown prince of Shadow Beach his entire life. The grandson of the man who built it from nothing into a homey surf town, the son of the volatile father who ruled over the pier and beach below with a tripwire temper and a charming grin, and the brother of an odd, but gifted, murdered child - an event that kept Dicky out of the water and buried deep in a drug-fueled haze.

She lies in a pool of her own blood. More blood decorates one wall in macabre finger paintings. The victim is a fortune teller from the Little Saigon community of Westminster, California; a seemingly random murder. Detective Seven Bushard wonders cynically if she saw it coming.

In a city full of police controversies, hippie artist punk houses, and overzealous liberals, Portland, Oregon, is a place where even its fiction blurs with its bizarre realities. Brand-new stories by: Gigi Little, Justin Hocking, Christopher Bolton, Jess Walter, Monica Drake, Jamie S. Rich (illustrated by Joelle Jones), Dan DeWeese, Zoe Trope, Luciana Lopez, Karen Karbo, Bill Cameron, Ariel Gore, Floyd Skloot, Megan Kruse, Kimberly Warner-Cohen, and Jonathan Selwood.

Christopher Miller is up against a group of domestic terrorists who are copying Al Qaeda's tactics: operating in cells, following a twisted fundamentalist doctrine, targeting "public amusements". A White Supremacist hate group has smuggled in a stinger missile and recruited an army marksman: a nightmare vision of a new and more talented Timothy McVeigh. Their initial plan is to bring down an airliner as it takes off from JFK airport.

The Drop Edge of Yonder begins in the mountains of Colorado and ends in the far reaches of the Northwest, a journey that includes the beginnings of a Mexican revolution, a voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields. Along the trail, Zebulon becomes involved in a series of tragic love triangles, witnesses the death of his mother and father, and confronts the age-old questions of life, love, and death.

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter.

Brand-new stories by: Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, James Sallis, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Talton, Megan Abbott, Charles Kelly, Robert Anglen, Patrick Millikin, Laura Tohe, Kurt Reichenbaugh, Gary Phillips, David Corbett, Don Winslow, Dogo Barry Graham, and Stella Pope Duarte.

Ralphie Styles had a way with women, lots of women. Country-singer-turned-bartender Phoebe Jacks ought to know, she'd been married to him before he'd moved on to her best friend. And then her other best friend. But you just couldn't stay mad at Ralphie. Or could you?

Step into Indian Country. Enter the dark welter of troubled history throughout the Americas, where the heritage of violence meets the ferocity of intent. Features brand-new stories by: Mistina Bates, Jean Rae Baxter, Lawrence Block, Joseph Bruchac, David Cole, Reed Farrel Coleman, O'Neil De Noux, A.A. Hedge Coke, Gerard Houarner, Liz Martnez, R. Narvaez, Kimberly Roppolo, Leonard Schonberg, and Melissa Yi.

Beck Casey, the college-professor-cum-spy protagonist of the best-selling Final Epidemic, returns, now to confront the very real nightmare that that haunts every national-security expert today: nuclear terrorism in the American homeland. Joining him in Fire of the Prophet is a cast of faces both new and familiar....

The best-selling author of Final Epidemic is back. Police officer John Davey, once set-up on bribery charges, has been given a chance to save his career-by investigating the baffling murder of two of Chicago's most prominent art collectors. But in the charred ruins of their North Shore mansion are clues to something more sinister than premeditated arson.

Six hundred thousand years after Imre Bergamasc's abdication, the Host rules the supposedly peaceful galaxy. But revolution is fomenting - and Imre's unexpected return may be all it takes to light the final fuse.

When you think of St. Petersburg noir, some of the greatest literary names immediately spring to mind - Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Modern day St. Petersburg lavishly offers the scenery and conditions for true noir stories, and the writers in St. Petersburg Noir succeed in concocting their own worlds within this city with stories ranging from mystical to outwardly grotesque.