Showing results by narrator "Kristin Kalbli" in All Categories

Multiple award-winners Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have gathered together 22 tales of unearthly temptations wickedly concocted by some of today's most potent literary conjurers - including Neil Gaiman, Jan Yolen, Michael Swanwick, and Joyce Carol Oates. Here are stories of incubi and succubi, of forbidden fruits harvested in erotic gardens, of pleasures that persist beyond death. So heed the sirens' song. Lie back, relax, and submit to the darkest delights you have ever experienced.

When Alyssa Denham, a single career woman, wins a fun getaway for two on Mackinac Island where her grandmother lives, she gives her carefree best friend a call. Together, they tour the old shops and hidden treasures of the quaint island while helping Alyssa’s grandmother piece together an heirloom quilt. Their quest gains them entrance into the homes of many longtime residents of the island, parts of the city that are otherwise off limits to tourists.

Lieutenant Commander Catherine Fredrickson is transferred to a navy base in Washington, where her new boss, Royce Nyland, has her spirits sinking fast. Distant, demanding and incredibly attractive, Royce keeps her at arm's length. But that doesn't stop him from arousing a passion in Catherine that is impossible to deny.

Growing up, Liz Westmoreland dreamed of taking over her grandparents inn located in the small mountain town of Antlers Creek only for it to be sold before she ever got the chance. While browsing the internet, she stumbles upon a listing for what looks to be the picturesque inn, and it’s set to go to auction. Liz places a bid, and by a miracle, wins the auction. But when she gets there she finds the property in significant disrepair. 

The Oriental Wife is the story of two assimilated Jewish children from Nuremberg who flee Hitler’s Germany and struggle to put down roots elsewhere. When they meet up again in New York, they fall in love both with each other and with America, believing they have found a permanent refuge. But just when it looks as though nothing can ever touch them again, their lives are shattered by a freakish accident and a betrayal that will reverberate into the life of their American daughter.

For a small-town girl with big-city dreams, there is no address more glamorous than New York's Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate, Dolly, comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. Vivian, a brash British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel's rules, rounds out the trio of friends.

With her trademark acerbic wit and compassion, Francine Prose offers a sharp-eyed consideration of how men and women differ in their pursuit - and avoidance - of power, sex, and competition. A satire of the pieties of New Age religion and knee-jerk feminism, Hunters and Gatherers nevertheless radiates sympathy for our efforts to reconcile spiritual longings with our earthbound, all-too-human nature.

Through the stories of prisoners and their families, including her own family's experiences, Maya Schenwar shows how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans and decimates poor communities of color is shredding the ties that, if nurtured, could foster real collective safety. As she vividly depicts here, incarceration takes away the very things that might enable people to build better lives.

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor getting over a breakup with the help of a patient, a newly married gay man who reconnects with his estranged mother, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert.

When three pregnant, homeless women die within a week of one another inside the emergency room of County Hospital in East Los Angeles, Dr. Kelly Morales begins to question why and how. When Dr. Morales attempts to question her colleague pathologist Dr. Jake Hamilton he becomes agitated and obviously anxious at her questions. Hours later, Dr. Hamilton is murdered.

This tale begins: "It was a time when the world, though filled with sound, was quiet." Technology has replaced the need to speak through texting, but when a virus spreads across the entire world that leaves everyone blind, doctors come together to fight the epidemic. But, as "The Voiceless" seeks to answer, what does the ability to speak mean without the desire to do so?

While we joke that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, our gender differences can't compare to those of other animals. For instance: the male garden spider spontaneously dies after mating with a female more than fifty times his size. Female cichlids must guard their eggs and larvae--even from the hungry appetites of their own partners. And male blanket octopuses employ a copulatory arm longer than their own bodies to mate with females that outweigh them by four orders of magnitude. Why do these gender gulfs exist?

Shelby Preston, a young single mother, is at a crossroads. She feels suffocated by her hardscrabble life in rural Georgia and dreams of becoming a professional chef. Lord knows her family could use a pot of something good. In Atlanta, Mallory Lakes is reeling from a bad breakup. The newspaper food columnist is also bracing for major changes at work that could put her job at risk. Determined to find the perfect recipe for how to reinvent herself, she gets involved in the growing farm-to-table movement.

In 1831, Lucretia Winslow Chapman was a wife and mother of five who had founded one of Philadelphia's first boarding schools for girls. But her comfortable life and marriage to prominent local scientist William Chapman changed forever the night Lino Espos y Mina appeared at their door, requesting lodging. It wasn't long before the Cuban con artist had entrenched himself in the Chapman home and begun an illicit affair with Lucretia.

Get on TV!, Jacquie Jordan brings her expert advice straight to you - the entrepreneurs, experts, authors, and future reality stars looking to land a television spot....Jacquie Jordan has been involved in booking, supervising or producing over 10,000 television guests, as well as coaching countless people on how to get on air.

Riley Cooper is offered the chance of a lifetime: to find the Crux Fidelis, the coronation cross of Charlemagne. Under Water Sea Adventures members believe they have found the remains of the Indigo, a heavily laden cargo ship commissioned by Charlemagne and presumed lost on its maiden voyage off the coast of southern Italy in the early 800s.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing Here is a collection of essays for every person out there who feels like they're never going to fall in love or they're never going to be happy or they're just not sure that they'll ever get their life together. It answers questions like, "When are you supposed to drop the 'what are we' bomb?" and "What's the difference between being happy and being happier than someone else?" And, perhaps most importantly, "Why do women's menstrual cycles sync up?"

The Best Sex Writing series has fundamentally changed the way people think - and what they say - about sexuality. Once again, Rachel Kramer Bussel has collected the year’s most challenging and provocative nonfiction articles on this endlessly evocative subject. The essays here comprise a detailed, direct survey of the contemporary American sexual landscape. Major commentators examine the many roles sex plays in our lives in these literate and lively essays.

Amy has spent her life in isolation. Locked away in the Centre, a secret government facility where children with extraordinary abilities are raised as highly skilled fighters, she longs for a normal life. A life where being around people doesn't overload her sensitive telepathic mind. A life where she can't see through the eyes of a murderer as he hunts down his next victim....

Based on the major themes found on the most active Facebook page in history, Jesus Daily is a 365-day interactive devotional that goes beyond even the fan page to create a deeper experience and cultural movement that celebrates your redemption in Christ. Jesus Daily presents a devotional thought, but also challenges you to respond to each daily reflection using a variety of social media tools.