Showing results by narrator "Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

Like most children, Penrod gets caught up in his own elaborate lies with hilarious results. His friends and his dog accompany him on his many jaunts, from the stage as "the Child Sir Lancelot", to the playground, to school. They make names for themselves as "bad boys" who, fittingly, always have the most fun. This humorous, thoughtful story is a wonderful example of the real-life characterization and attention to detail for which Tarkington is celebrated.

In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes.

With night at hand and a rainstorm brewing, Milt Dale takes shelter at an old log cabin in the forest. It is here he overhears vengeful men scheming to kidnap Helen, the niece and heiress of a prominent rancher in poor health, and take over her uncle’s vast property themselves. Determined to thwart the men, Milt leaves his wild paradise and springs into action. After narrowly escaping, Milt leads Helen and her kid sister away from man-made danger and deep into the perceived safety of the forest...but the kidnappers are not far behind, and they are set on carrying out their evil plot.

April 1940. By terms of the Soviet Nazi Nonaggression pact, the two dictatorships divided the helpless nation of Poland. Now, the Russians are rounding up enemies of the state in their occupation zone, but one essential target slips away. Dr. Sebastian Kapsky had spent years working with Walter Riedel and Werner von Braun in the early days of rocket science, but as a man with a conscience he refused to continue when he saw the perversion of their work by the Nazis. That makes him the most knowledgeable person about German superweapons outside of Germany.

At the top of the world… at the bottom of the sea… a war has begun. Below the polar ice cap, an American nuclear submarine moves quietly in the frigid water, tailing a new Russian sub. But the usual, unspoken game of hide-and-seek between opposing captains ends when the Americans hear sounds of disaster and flooding, and the Russian sub sinks at a depth of a thousand feet. The American sub rushes to help, only to join its former quarry in the deep. The situation ignites tensions around the world.

Lanik Mueller is a "rad" - radical regenerative - a freak who can regenerate injured flesh...and trade extra body parts to the Offworld oppressors for iron. On a planet without hard metals, or the means of escape, iron offers the promise of freedom through the chance to build a spacecraft. But it is a promise which may never be fulfilled, as Lanik uncovers a treacherous conspiracy beyond his imagination.

From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw … in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy World War II Shanghai … out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe … down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are … only human.

Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire is a sweeping critical analysis of Western colonialism, its foundational beliefs in militarism, patriarchy, Christianity, and white supremacy; and its destructive impact on the nations of Southeast Asia and, ultimately, America. Valentine focuses on the “dark arts” of empire: the black bag of CIA covert operations, including bribery, right-wing coups, assassinations, disinformation, and intimate relationships with drug, sex, and artifact traffickers.

Long before Western writers had even conceived the idea of writing detective stories, the Chinese had developed a long tradition of literary works that chronicled the cases of important district magistrates. One of the most celebrated of these was Judge Dee, who lived in the seventh century.

North America, 2027. Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent in to the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.

Mikhail Sholokhov’s groundbreaking epic novel gives a sweeping depiction of Russian life and culture in the early 20th century. In the same vein as War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, And Quiet Flows the Don gives listeners a glimpse into many aspects of Russian culture, and the choices a country makes when faced with war and destruction.  

It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.

Time and again, the daring pair have braved countless dangers to emerge victorious. But now Flinx attempts something that may be impossible for the heretofore undefeated hero. His mission: to take a vacation. Never have the cares of the universe lain so heavily on Flinx's shoulders, nor the forces arrayed against him seemed so invincible.

In the cholera-ridden Naples of 1884, Fabio Romani is prematurely buried and awakes to find himself in a coffin. After managing to free himself, Fabio rushes home to reassure his wife and child. While he expected to find his family deep in mourning, he instead discovers that his wife has been unfaithful to him and is having an affair with his best friend. Utilizing a disguise and adopting a new identity, Fabio slowly works his way back into the trust, and home, of those who betrayed him, culminating in a frightful finale of revenge.

In a near future, the air pollution is so bad that everyone wears gas masks. The infant mortality rate is soaring, and birth defects, new diseases, and physical ailments of all kinds abound. The water is undrinkable - unless you're poor and have no choice. Large corporations fighting over profits from gas masks, drinking water, and clean food tower over an ineffectual, corrupt government.

The survivor of a plane crash wakes up in a hospital in Canada, his memory a blank. Then in walks Kitty, a gorgeous woman, who tells him that he is Paul Madden, a photographer and her fiancé. Not bad. Except that a man on the phone keeps calling him Matt Helm. Things don’t add up. This can only mean trouble....

Louis L'Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it". The two stories in this collection provide a good sample of the kinds of people he had in mind.

Keith Stoner lay frozen in an alien spacecraft for 15 long years. During that time he came to be something more than just an astronaut, or just a man. Stoner became partly alien himself, merged with an alien intelligence embodied in the nanotechnology that lived inside his body.

John O'Ryan is Orion - more than human, less than a god, cast away on the seas of Time to do battle among the Creators for the future of mankind. Now the eternal warrior finds himself separated from his great love, Anya, and marooned in Macedonia under the reign of Phillip - fighting alongside the young Alexander, and at the mercy of a Queen Olympias who is far more than she seems.

Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.