Showing results by narrator "Chris Ciulla" in All Categories

The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football. As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who reorganized the athletic program and...

A short-story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Unearth your next great story with Assemble Artifacts.

When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it’s what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt—kill or be killed. Here are fifteen all-new stories of such “close encounters,” written by many of today’s most extraordinary authors. Set during the events of all four Alien films, sending the Marines to alien worlds, to derelict space settlements, and into the nests of the universe’s most dangerous monsters, these adventures are guaranteed to send the blood racing—one way or another.

After taking down the Yennai Corporation, Barnabas has earned a little break. On the way back to High Tortuga, however, he stops to answer a distress call. How long could it take, after all? Barnabas is about to find out. In what should have been an open-and-shut murder case, questions begin to pile up fast: who, exactly, was this Jotun Naval captain? Why was there a black ops ship lurking nearby, ready to shoot down anyone who tried to approach?

The Chameleon, an Artificial Intelligence expert, can create a deepfake of almost anyone—living or dead. Even more frightening is the Chameleon’s ability to seek out disturbed souls and laser-focus their rage. A talent she employs to compel her subjects to commit violence on her behalf. Kylee Kane, a security consultant for Welch HOA Management, finds the Chameleon’s first victim, Andy Fyke, crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Kylee suspects the fall’s no accident and is tied to Andy’s campaign to prohibit rentals in his Hilton Head Island community.

After robbing some banks, Torn Slater knows he should lay low. But when a beautiful widow asks for his help, he can't say no. Her reckless son has gone looking for trouble in Mexico - and found it in a woman called La Señorita. This power-mad femme fatale combines the torture methods of the Spanish Inquisition with the heart-ripping rituals of the Aztecs to get whatever she wants. And she wants the widow's son. Slater would be lying if he said taking down La Señorita would be easy. But dead men don't lie....

“Relentlessly thrilling . . . an orgy of the unpredictable.” —New York Times Book Review “Like Thomas Pynchon taking on late capitalism. . . . surrealistic, granular in its details, and concerned with social entropy and desperate attempts at communion.” —Wall Street Journal From a...

The fourth installment in the Rocco Schiavone mystery series from the international bestselling author, Antonio Manzini picks up three days after his last novel, Out of Season, left off, as Rocco seeks revenge for a friend—and closure for himself. Rocco is still reeling from the death of his...

A critical resource for anyone with a cancer diagnosis. Written by a radiation oncologist and cancer researcher, Taking Charge of Cancer offers an insider's guide to understanding and receiving the best treatment options, choosing the right medical team, and approaching this difficult time with knowledge and hope.

If your heart is aching for proof that God is present in the darkest circumstances . . . that hope can emerge when all seems lost . . . and that love is still the greatest power on earth, Jeff Woodke's true story of survival and healing is for you. In October 2016, a year away from retiring as a...

The Starbreakers were heroes, until a tragedy broke them apart. Only now, years later, have they begun to make peace with each other. The rest of the world is a different story. There has been a breakout in the prison known as Oblivion, and now the worst of the worst have been turned loose on an unsuspecting world. Desperate to contain the crisis, the right hand of the king has called the disgraced Starbreakers back into service. After all, they were the ones who put most of these villains away in the first place.

When Mary Jane Bennett is found dead in her bed — alone, strangled by her own scarf, and with every door in the house locked — the medical examiner rules her death accidental, the result of a sex game gone horribly awry. State police decline to investigate further, but former NYPD Detective and current Queensbridge Police Chief Caleb Crane doesn't buy for a minute that his good friend died this way, so he undertakes his own investigation.

The price of his son's life...is just a few enhanced memories. Eddie Dowler's 12-year-old son is dying. There are treatments available, but none he can afford. His son is going to die simply because he isn't rich. And then his doctor offers a ray of hope. There's a way to pay for his son's procedure. An unorthodox way. And so Eddie calls Nostalgia Inc, an advertising agency unlike any he's ever known. He soon learns that the price of his son's impossibly expensive operation...is merely a handful of tweaked memories.

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI, are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman - and he's playing games with them. For a once peaceful community trapped in the depths of paranoia and suspicion, it feels like a nightmare that will never end.

A perfect storm materializes when Patrick Bouchard, an underwater welder working in the shipyards of San Pedro, California, loses his only child, Gabriel, to cancer. Driven by grief and rage, he sets out on a quest to make those he feels responsible pay, specifically, Standard Pharmaceutical, the megacorporation owning the HMO that denied radical treatment to his stage-four terminal son. That wasn't right, and someone had to be held accountable.

Shunned by his community...locked up for trying to help an innocent girl...ambushed by rivals and left for dead in the Detroit River, Joe Bernstein has a few scores to settle, and a bold plan to seize control of the Motor City in its booming 1920s heyday. With his faithful "agent", Abie; his brilliant but fragile brother, Max; and an out-of-control enforcer named Grabowski (not to mention a couple of carnivorous creatures known as "the babies"), Bernstein gives rise to the infamous Purple Gang....

Twenty-four tales of madmen, monsters, and misery. A tantalizing blend of horror, suspense, and crime stories; each unique but all dark, disturbing, and violent. In the audiobook lurk: A tarot card reader who makes house calls; a disabled man in a miserable marriage who is regaining the use of his arms; an ex-con who can’t resist carrying out one last home invasion, and much more!

In a small suburb of Connecticut, and totally unaware of each other, four lives are about to collide. But will their lives entangle before experienced cop, Nate Bennett, and rookie cop, Maggie Zucha, complete their investigation of tracking down footage that, if released, will shake America to its very core? Their detective skills are put to the toughest test, but they'll need to be quick because they're not the only ones searching for this story… and whoever finds it first will hold all the power.

When Matt tried to kill Barry with his car, the two brothers went their separate ways. Barry moved to Atlanta and Matt stayed in the family home in Aiken Mill, Virginia. One day Barry is notified that Matt disappeared. Since he lost his job and his girl, he returns home and is shocked by the damage someone did to his house. Even more perplexing is the word Lebo painted in Matt's room in cow's blood.

Magically quiet yet deeply satisfying, Macken in Love follows two middle-aged lovers who must navigate personal histories in search of the one thing that has evaded them both. Lonesome but loveable, 50-year-old Kevin Macken devotes his days to the Irish bakery he inherited from his parents. Once Juilliard-bound, Jill Novak has never recovered from the tragedy that derailed her promising career more than two decades ago. For two people who have all but given up on love, finding each other feels too good to be true.