Showing results by narrator "James Cronin" in All Categories

Let's go back to the night I turned 13, the night Grandpa filleted my finger with his cane sword. I can't say what terrified me more, the cold anger in his eyes or the crazy things in his locked study. A talking trunk. Squirming coats. A bookshelf whose titles shifted before my eyes. And one chilling title in particular: Book of Souls. Ten years later I'm on my way to a Romanian monastery, in search of that lost book. But I'm not the only one. Three others have beaten me to the local village: two researchers and...

When New York City unveils a program to roast supernaturals, I wonder if I should be sweating. The bloodthirsty Arnaud thinks so, and he's insisting that our survival depends on a wizard-vampire alliance. Never mind his history of wanting me dead. Or undead. Meanwhile, the mayor wants me on his team - an offer that's only slightly less unnerving given our recent clash. So who's really behind the purge? City Hall? The werewolves? Or is it the brainchild of the fae, whose newest advisor to the mayor slipped from my bed and life four months ago?

His whole life Carter’s fought to hold it together: To help Mom run their store. To be there for his special-needs sister, Sara, and be the perfect boyfriend Mel wants. To dominate on the basketball court - the only place he ever feels free. And to carry Mom up the stairs when she’s too smashed to make it on her own. It isn't like she has a problem. Mom loves them. If she doesn't drink every day, she's not really an alcoholic, right? Wrong. Then Kira Dawson, a girl with a bipolar wardrobe and rotating hairstyles comes to town. Somehow, she sees the truths he hides from the world.

Bith the sorceress and her companions - Cal the outlaw, Hathor the troll, and Endril the elf - have armed themselves with powerful weapons and magic. They are ready to do battle with the Dark Lord's minions, be they orc or dragon. But are they ready to confront their own nightmares?

In the baking heat of a Mexican resort town, life is spare but satisfying for David Rhodes, American exile and tennis bum, who is content with his low-key existence. But when a young female American drifter is found raped and murdered at the bottom of the seaside cliffs, Rhodes, an illegal alien, is an easy target and an immediate suspect - particularly to the town's sadistic police chief. David's comfortable life explodes in a sudden hell of accusation, imprisonment, and flight that can only end in one final, nightmarish confrontation.

Forcing Susan Meyer to lie face-down on the floor, the intruders tied her hands behind her back with nylon rope. "Don't call the police," they warned as they led her 23-year-old daughter, Beth, away, "or you'll never see your daughter alive again." The men then pulled a pillowcase over Beth's head, forced her into the back of her mother's Oldsmobile, and drove off.

Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady and Capt. Bob Wright were on a routine combat air patrol mission in June 1995 when they were suddenly jarred by the buzz and amber flash of their cockpit missile-warning instruments. Two supersonic SA-6 SAMs, hidden by the overcast, were streaking toward them.

Believed to be little more than small-town smugglers at first, their trail would lead the FBI to the world's most dangerous terrorists.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

On June 23, 1997 - barely three weeks after her 18th birthday - Kristen Modafferi, a tall, vivacious brunette, ended her workday and vanished into thin air. An investigation into her disappearance has yet to produce a trace.

Sergeant First Class Carlos Santos-Silva died the way he served: right beside his men. Brian Mockenhaupt visits the soldiers who knew him best and last.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

They are four outcasts brought together by the god Vili, bonded by a sacred oath and sworn to each other's fealty. Bith the young sorceress. Cal warrior and outlaw for a crime he didn't commit. The troll Hathor who has foresworn his people's barbarous ways. The enigmatic elf Endril. Each had pledged to defeat the Dark Lord and his minions...or give their lives trying.

Richard Stirling is a successful lawyer who specializes in defending the rights of the underprivileged. He falls in love with the pianist Rebecca Pennant, and as their romance develops, a tragic event takes Rebecca out of his life. In the wake of this dramatic misfortune, Richard re-encounters an heirloom, an astonishing mirror.

In the third volume of Exordium, this swashbuckling space opera continues with Brandon and the Rifter crew of the Telvarna arriving at the Panarchic Navy's headquarters. The Rifters are imprisoned, and Brandon finds himself, as sole heir to the Phoenix Throne, fighting a battle of symbols, his only weapon his wits as he strives against the powerful and sophisticated aristocrats who hide lethal intent behind urbanity and style.

The philosopher Jacques Barzun thought that "whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball". And whoever wants to know baseball had better learn about umpires. As Larry Gerlach points out in The Men in Blue, these arbiters transform competitive chaos into organized sport. They make it possible to "play ball", but nobody loves them.Considering the abuse meted out by fans and players, why would any sane person want to be an umpire? Many reasons emerge in conversations with a dozen former major-league arbiters.

Garth Kristinsson’s parents were free - traders, the aristocracy of con artists, able to fleece the dishonest with their own greed. But his father’s last scam went horribly wrong, and at the last, both his parents were dead. Garth wanted answers no authority could give him, so he searched for decades for any clue, any lead on his father’s partners-in-crime. One of them still lived - he would find her on the mysterious planet Nuala.

Magentite. The rarest of gems, one capable of turning any mage into an unstoppable force of destruction. A gem found only in the empty lands surrounding the Tyber River. And now war has come. Endless war between Esteria and the native Tyberons, a savage and mysterious people who prowl the grass-covered land with spearpoints ready. Unable to end the conflict the Esterians rely on mercenaries to bolster their military, desperate men like Dain Gladstone, a disgraced Paladin.