Showing results by narrator "Kevin T. Collins" in All Categories

Harrison J. Walker - Jaywalker, to the world - is a frayed-at-the-edges defense attorney with a 90-percent acquittal rate, thanks to an obsessive streak a mile wide. But winning this case will take more than just dedication. Seventeen-year-old Jeremy Estrada killed another boy after a fight over a girl: shot him point-blank between the eyes. No one disputes those facts. This kid is jammed up big-time, but almost unable to help himself. He's got the face of an angel but can hardly string together three words to explain what happened that day...yet he's determined to go to trial.

The day has finally arrived: Mitchell Wate and Lillian English are getting married. Everyone has come together - Ethan and Lena, John and Liv, even Link is back in town - and there's enough pie to make Amma proud. But despite the joyous occasion, Ethan can't help but worry that something feels...off. When Siren-turned-Hybrid Caster Ridley blows into town unannounced, Ethan's suspicions are confirmed.

What do you do when everything you've ever known is ripped away from you, leaving nothing but ashes and charred memories behind? You get angry. So very angry. Malwynn and his twin sister, Umaryn, live in a small town in Northern Varrland. In idyllic New Picknell nearly nothing happens, and when their day-to-day routine is interrupted by a skirmish between an invading patrol of the dead from The Amaranth Empire and a defending force from Varrland, their world begins to come undone.

The Man Who Melted is a warning for the future. It is the Brave New World and 1984 for our time, for it gives us a glimpse into our own future - a future ruled by corporations that control deadly and powerful forms of mass manipulation. It is a prediction of what could happen... tomorrow. It examines how technology affects us and changes our morality, and it questions how we might remain human in an inhuman world. Will the future disenfranchise or empower the individual? Here you'll find new forms of sexuality, new perversions, new epiphanies, and an entirely new form of consciousness.

When Josh Hagarty is recruited by the charitable organization NewAfrica to manage a farming project in an underdeveloped African country, he signs on, figuring that he can put his newly acquired graduate degree in engineering to good use. But when Josh gets situated in Africa, he finds that NewAfrica may not be the philanthropic charity it purports to be. With the help of a beautiful Scandinavian aid worker and a journalist, Josh must fight to uncover the truth.

Did career criminal Alonzo Barnett, in and out of prison since age 15, commit the latest drug deal he's accused of? Yup, he's guilty as charged. But is he guilty as sin? That's the question criminal defense attorney Harrison J. Walker, the maverick known as Jaywalker, has to answer as he takes the court-appointed case. As Jaywalker is well aware, one wrong move, even for the right reason, can derail your life - and land an otherwise redeemed ex-con back in the slammer for years.

Brand-new stories by: G. M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcalá, Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta. Early Seattle was a hardscrabble seaport filled with merchant sailors, longshoremen, lumberjacks, rowdy saloons, and a rough-and-tumble police force not immune to corruption and graft.

Without warning, something has gone terribly awry. In the remote and unnoticed places of the world, small pockets of death begin occurring. As the initially isolated extinctions spread, the world's eyes focus on this unimaginable horror and chaos. Out of the ecological imbalance, something new and extraordinary is evolving and surviving to fill the voids left by these extinctions. Evolution is operating in ways no one could have expected, and environmental damage may be the catalyst.

Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army--and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever.

NYPD detective Paul Donner and his wife Elise were killed in a hold-up gone wrong. Fifty years later, Donner is back: revived courtesy of the Shift. Supposedly the unintended side-effect of a botched biological terrorist attack and carried by a ubiquitous retrovirus, the Shift jump-starts dead DNA and throws the life cycle into reverse, so reborns like Donner must cope with the fact that they are not only slowly youthing toward a new childhood, but have become New York's most hated minority.

James Patrick Kelly, the author of Planet of Whispers and the co-author, with John Kessel, of Freedom Beach has been nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards for his short fiction. This is a fable about a dissatisfied architect who travels "up-time" and changes shape to design a temple for a goddess.

Brand-new stories by: Daniel Woodrell, Matthew Eck, Catherine Browder, Nancy Pickard, John Lutz, J. Malcolm Garcia, Kevin Prufer, Linda Rodriguez, Nadia Pflaum, Phong Nguyen, Andres Rodriguez, and others. Kansas City: where East and West collide, where naked ambition meets broken dreams, where blues and the night go together like rye whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. Yes, Kansas City is a surprising place of grit, gore, and betrayal, at least in the imaginations of our diverse lineup of contributors.

Fortress is America's guarantor of freedom, an orbiting arsenal of laser weapons and nuclear missiles. It was considered impregnable - until now. Former CIA officer Tom Kelley is sent to learn the secrets surrounding a dead alien found in Turkey and discovers a maze of lies and treachery that could transform America's shield into an engine of global terror.

"As much as I love boxing, I hate it." So begins screenwriter, novelist, and journalist Budd Schulberg's collection of essays on the sweet science of bruising, a sport that fueled his literary ambitions and unsettled his conscience from a young age. He gives riveting accounts of classic bouts, such as Rocky Marciano - Archie Moore, Muhammad Ali - George Foreman, and Marvin Hagler - Thomas Hearns. Yet these essays also offer insight into the sport's sociological significance from a man who covered its highlights and corruption-marred lowlights for decades.

Jersey Leo is the quintessential outsider - an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell's Kitchen. Being neither black nor white, he has no group to call his own. His own mother abandoned him as a baby. And his father - a former boxing champ with his own secrets - disapproves of Jersey's work at a dive owned by one of New York's most notorious gangsters. So when he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine ("sugar pop moon") with his boss's money - a potentially fatal mistake - he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in.

When Ryder Montgomery shows up on her doorstep 10 years after breaking her heart, Casey can't decide which burns hotter - her desire to be with him or the pain he left her with....

Pacifism will always be a powerful moral force, even - perhaps especially - to the Dorsai. For those of this planet of warriors born and bred are not as other men; once a Dorsai’s heart is given he holds nothing back, and does not count the cost. Even if that cost be the very planet of his birth, and he becomes a Lost Dorsai.

It's Prohibition. It's Philadelphia. And Jersey Leo doesn't fit in. Jersey is an albino of mixed race. Known as "Snowball" on the street, he tends bar at a speakeasy the locals call the Ink Well. There, he's considered a hero for having saved the life of a young boy. But when his old grade school buddy, Aaron Garvey, calls from death row and asks for one last favor, all hell breaks loose. Jersey finds himself running from a band of crooked cop and hiding an escaped convict in the Ink Well....

Working for Zach Montgomery is challenging on many levels - coming from a wealthy and powerful family, he lives by his own rules and doesn't answer to anyone. But Gabriella Martine has no intention of backing down. She's used to handling stubborn men, and it doesn't hurt that Zach is smart, charismatic...and gorgeous.

By the workings of chance Bleys Ahrens was born the genetic equal of Hal Mayne, the hero of The Final Encyclopedia, but he was destined by nurture to a far different fate. Raised alone by his unhappy Exotic mother, Bleys was an outcast from every society until his half-brother Dahno claimed him. Disciplined by Friendlies, schooled by Exotics, Dahno was beginning to build an interplanetary network of half-breeds, who called themselves "Others". But Dahno thought only of gaining wealth and power for himself; Bleys saw an opportunity to challenge the Dorsai for control of the Human Worlds.