Showing results by narrator "David Bendena" in All Categories

Jake Paynter is a doomed man. Haunted by an abusive childhood and his participation in atrocities of the Civil War, he seeks the isolation of the Plains Cavalry as a White officer for an all-Black buffalo soldier troop. Now, he is in irons and certain to be hanged for killing his captain after refusing an inhumane order. Despite his best efforts to maintain isolation, he starts to make friends on his journey to trial. The people of the wagon train begin looking to him for leadership, and he reluctantly falls into the role.

Firmly rooted in the modern American West, this story collection follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A 74-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird-flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered sage grouse.

Everyone makes mistakes, and brilliant scientist Harry Coover is no different. But Harry keeps making the same extra-sticky mistake, and he begins to wonder whether it's such a mistake after all....

Walter had spent all summer counting down the days until the first day of school. He couldn’t wait to make new shark friends and finally swim into his classroom for the first time. But the first class picture of the year changes everything. Walter realizes there is one big difference between him and his shark classmates. After his discovery, Walter spends his day trying anything he can think of to blend in with the other sharks, only to learn that the things that make us feel like we don’t fit in are the very things that make us stand out.

Santa has it so easy: a workforce of elves to make the presents, a team of reindeer to deliver them, even a hi-tech factory! The Easter Bunny has to make and wrap all the chocolate eggs and deliver them all by himself. Now Bunny has had enough. But will his plan for a Christmas disaster turn into a Christmas delight?

Jane has just received some terrible news. A phone full of missed calls and sympathetic text messages seems to indicate that her husband, Jim, a chaplain at the hospital where she works as a surgeon, is dead. Only, not quite—rather, his head has been removed from his body and cryogenically frozen. Jim awakes to find himself in an altogether unique situation, to say the least: his body gone but his consciousness alive, his only companion a mysterious disembodied voice.

Hot subjects in business, politics (and much more) untangled with easy-to-understand prose and smart graphics, from the world's leading financial media company. This volume of Bloomberg QuickTake has a special section titled "Disruption's Fallout" that focuses on the unintended consequences of innovations in technology. Other sections include Economy & Finance; World Affairs; Energy & Environment; and Health & Society.

Thaddeus Kaufman, the son of booksellers, and Grace Cornell, raised in a basement apartment she longs to escape, meet at a neighborhood art fair in Chicago. Soon after, they head to New York, aloft on the wings of young love. Jennings Stratton, the son of a caretaker, and Muriel Sanchez, the daughter of a cop, meet in a house he is refurbishing in New Mexico, and they, too, head for the big city. In a vast Hudson River estate, the lives of the two couples ultimately intertwine.

Dramatic, lyrical, and beautiful, O Captain, My Captain tells the story of one of America’s greatest poets and how he was inspired by one of America’s greatest presidents.

Over the course of one ghostly week in September 1982, the bodies of four taxi drivers were found in Buenos Aires, each murder carried out with the same cold precision. The assailant was a 19-year-old boy, odd and taciturn, who gave the impression of being completely sane. But the crimes themselves were not: four murders, as exact as they were senseless. More than 30 years later, Argentine author Carlos Busqued began visiting Ricardo Melogno, the serial killer, in prison.

Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias where artificial minds help unlock and enhance human creativity.

Now that Cat has discovered his sword’s secret and received the task to collect the Seven Keys, he’s not in a hurry to complete the new quest. Why would he care about the future of the world when he has much more exciting things to do, like claiming his place in the clan, participating in the redistributing of trade influence, and just plain making money? Cat starts building his own trading empire—and ends up getting involved in an all-out economic war. Having gotten the taste of real money, he travels to the Bazaar, the world’s biggest marketplace at the crossroads of trade routes.

Twenty-five-year-old Linda Donovan has spent her life working for her father, Anthony, at Donovan and Daughter Exterminators in New York City. On the anniversary of her mother’s death, her father makes his annual visit to his late wife’s grave while Linda heads to a Park Avenue apartment building to work solo. When she arrives, she finds the body of an elderly resident, partially eaten by rats. The gruesome death not only speaks poorly of the Donovans’ exterminating services, it also points to foul play.

Meet Cat. He thinks everything has its price. You can pay in gold, or you pay in steel. And for the right price, even the entire Sphere of Worlds can be bought. Ever the merchant, he pays in souls, freeing the Goddess of Darkness in the astral fortress of Pandorum and becoming the archnemesis of the most powerful alliance in all of Sphere. Even as an enormous bounty is placed on his head with hunters trailing his every move, he never wavers. His patron, the God of Shadows, sends Cat to the twilight world of the Hole to find the third of the seven Keys.

Hi, I’m Dee, and I’m captain of the friend zone. I didn’t ask for this dubious honor, but don’t worry, I like it this way. I’m happy not dating and just being “one of the guys” on my volleyball team. At least I was until my scary new boss informs me that my job—I’m a developer at a dating app (ironic, right?) that I coded from scratch, an app that is essentially my baby—is in jeopardy. So I lie—tell him that I’m living proof the app works, because I’m engaged to a man I met on it. And who do I name as my lucky (fake) fiancé? My best friend, Noah Jackson.

After some traumatic teenaged years in rural Connecticut, Cale and Ambrose Casey had nothing left to say to each other. Cale ran off to Hawaii to sell luxury real estate. Ambrose stayed behind and built up his construction company. Neither thought they’d be in touch again and were glad for it—until they learned of a real-estate developer’s plan to drain and expand Gibbs Pond.

Just as Jeremiah Goodbye is set to meet his fate in the electric chair, he is given a second chance at life. With the flip of a coin, he decides to return to his home town of Nowhere, Oklahoma, to settle the score with his twin brother Josiah. But upon his escape, he enters a world he doesn’t recognize—one that has been overtaken by the Dust Bowl. And the gift he once relied on to guide him is as unrecognizable as the path back to Nowhere.

Do I want to move in with my ex-fiancé? No. But will it probably end up being a good thing? Also no. Because the truth is, I'm still in love with Jude Anthony. It doesn't matter that it's been years since we've spoken or that he was the one who walked out on me. It's hard to stay mad when I understand why he did what he did. But I need a place to stay, at least until I can find something new. So I'll keep my walls up, keep my distance, and everything will be fine. I'm sure Jude doesn't have feelings for me anymore, so there's nothing to worry about. My heart is perfectly safe.

I didn’t ask to have a hopeless (and unrequited) crush on my best friend’s grumpy older brother. For years, I’ve had feelings for Luke Brooks, but it’s time to move on—I’m on a mission to find my perfect match and secure my very own happily-ever-after. But then one tiny mishap with a dating app lands me a new job: planning singles events for the whole town. It seems simple enough…until the town council forces Luke to play cupid with me.

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.