Showing results by narrator "William Dufris" in All Categories

Fleeing the respectable society that wants to "sivilize" him, Huck Finn shoves off with Jim on a rhapsodic raft journey down the Mississippi River. The two bind themselves to one another, becoming intimate friends and agreeing "there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft".

What would you do if your best friend was:

Imaginary?

An oversize blue chimp in surfer shorts? (Potentially embarrassing, but hey, no one else can see him...right?)

Proposing a plan to help you improve your life?

Did we say imaginary?

Driving you crazy?!?!

Now you have an idea of what Willie Ryan's life is like when he meets Dodger. It's the beginning of a lot of trouble - and a friendship you'll never forget!

Here, to treasure, a new story collection from award-winning horror master Al Sarrantonio. In Halloween and Other Seasons there's a neighborhood rivalry that grows to monstrous proportions, a hedgerow with an appetite, the ultimate Charles Fort story, and the end of the world from the beginning. Halloween and Other Seasons contains 18 gems of weirdness, including Al Sarrantonio's very first published story.

The military SF sequel to his extraordinary Old Man's War, John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades is the second in The Old Man's War series. Who can you trust, if you can't trust yourself? Three hostile alien races have united against humanity, determined to halt our expansion into space. The...

In his debut novel, Tim Slover offers the real story behind Santa Claus, separating fact from legend and revealing the truth behind many long-held secrets: Why did Santa start making toys for children? Does he really climb down the chimney? How did he and Mrs. Claus meet? And most important, how is he able to deliver gifts to children all over the world in one night? This is a book that will be enjoyed year after year, sure to charm listeners of all ages and anyone who wants to celebrate the season.

It was only a simple, routine assignment for private investigator Sam Blackman and his partner, Nakayla Robertson: follow a history professor, who is suing a spinal surgeon for malpractice, and catch her in physical activities that undercut her claim.

In "McQueen of the Tumbling K", a man, left for dead, seeks revenge. A prospector finds gold - and hostile Apaches - in "Big Medicine". And in "Dutchman's Flat", a posse tracking a killer runs into far more trouble than they bargained for.

The aliens have made contact! But because they consider Earth a small, backwater planet, they send only one ambassador. The ambassador brings along his son, Pleskit, and (for political reasons) insists the boy should attend a regular school. Science-fiction loving Tim Tompkins is desperate to befriend the alien...and Pleskit is going to need a friend, because someone is trying to sabotage the mission.

It is remembered in the Netherlands as "the sweetest of springs," the one that saw the country's liberation from German occupation. But for the soldiers of First Canadian army, who fought their way across the Rhine River and then through Holland and northwest Germany, that spring of 1945 was bittersweet. While the Dutch were being liberated from the grinding boot heel of the Nazis, their freedom was being paid for in Canadian lives lost.

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness. The sadness and often depression, the lack of will to continue may swamp us all. Unquenchable, undeniable. But loss can, after mourning, give the opportunity to reappraise the lost and how we can each move forward. In the literary world an accessible balance can be given.

At 35, Mike Cohen lives the American dream. With billions in the bank and his own venture capital firm, he's succeeded beyond his Russian immigrant mother's wildest hopes. The only problem? A car accident that leaves Mike's mother with memory problems. Brainocytes, a new technology developed by one of Mike's portfolio companies, may be the answer to his mother's injury - and offer applications that push the limits of the human mind. Only Mike isn't the only one who sees its potential.

What lies beneath the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze? Major Keir Roget's mission is to make planetfall in secret, find out, and report back to his superiors in the Federation, the Chinese-dominated government that rules Earth and the colonized planets. For all his effectiveness as a security agent, Roget is troubled by memories of an earlier mission.

Chaos has erupted throughout the known galaxy, threatening countless colonies and orbital habitats - as the Associative struggles vainly to keep the peace. Extreme measures are called for in these times of dire crisis, and the Star Marines are awakened from their voluntary 850-year cybe-hibe sleep. But General Trevor Garroway and his warriors are about to discover that the old rules of engagement have drastically changed.

When private detective Sam Blackman agrees to help his partner and lover, Nakayla Robertson, conduct a fundraiser for orphaned twins, he does so to ease his conscience. The boys' parents were killed in a courtroom shootout where Sam was the key witness against the twins' father. The charity event, a nighttime ghost tour of the legendary haunted sites of Asheville, North Carolina, seems harmless enough.

The colony world of Stittara is no ordinary planet. For the interstellar Unity of the Ceylesian Arm, Stittara is the primary source of anagathics: drugs that have more than doubled the human life span. But the ecological balance that makes anagathics possible on Stittara is fragile, and the Unity government has a vital interest in making sure the flow of longevity drugs remains uninterrupted, even if it means uprooting the human settlements.

The riveting edge of your seat sequel to One Day On Mars once again takes us on a blindingly fast pace through events from a futuristic Washington D.C. to the Tau Ceti star system. Just days before the presidential election a CIA operative uncovers a plot to overthrow America that reaches deep into the government. To top it off, the forces planning to revolt have somehow developed a technology that allows them to transport across the gulf between the star systems almost instantaneously.

The best-selling author of The End of Oil turns his attention to food and finds that the system we've entrusted with meeting one of our most basic needs is dramatically failing us. With his trademark comprehensive global approach, Paul Roberts investigates the startling truth about the modern food system.

A century and a half after the Martian Separatist Wars, Alexander Moore returns to the stars with the Sienna Madira, a US Navy supercarrier spacecraft outfitted with advanced FTL and endlessly strange, extremely effective quantum-based weapons and remote sensing technology. And, of course, he's brought marines, and lots of them. These are troops superbly trained for space battle and equipped with advanced powered armor and artificial intelligence backup.

In one furious week of fighting in December 1943, the First Canadian Infantry Division took Ortona, Italy, from elite German paratroopers ordered to hold the medieval port at all costs. When the battle was over, the Canadians emerged victorious despite heavy losses.

Doc Holiday Matt Braun He came from the American South, a gentleman by breeding, a dentist by training, a gambler by vocation. But as Dr. John H. Holliday, a man fleeing his tragic past, drifted across the West, living among some of the roughest men on the frontier, word spread quickly he never...