Showing results by narrator "Kevin T. Collins" in All Categories

The power unleashed during the Ascendance, lingers. After defeating the Revenant, Monty realizes Simon’s blood has been poisoned—tainted. Simon is slowly transforming. His body is harnessing dark magic in ways thought unimaginable. Now, Monty is faced with the hardest choice. Let the poison run its course, transforming Simon into a dark immortal, increasing his power, but drawing the attention of those who would want him dead, or allow Simon to take the blood lessons, risking his friend’s life? Can Monty help Simon before he’s too far gone or will Simon become an unstoppable threat?

The 12-year solstice has come. And with it, a sinister carnival brings a new sense of terror and wonder to a small coastal town. An enormous shoe is washed up on the shore...a tiny man disguises himself as a mouse...a crow provides eyes for a blind innkeeper...and three curious adventures discover the gateway to the Land of Dreams - where you don't always get what you want, you get what you deserve....

Budd Schulberg is a master of the art of the short story, as he proved in his early collection Some Faces in the Crowd. The crowd is the American landscape: indelible characters drawn coast-to-coast from the teeming streets of New York to tables at Hollywood's legendary nightclub, Ciro's. In these sparkling stories, Schulberg brings us vivid, restless people haunted by abrupt failure in the wake of rapid success.

Critical Mass is a treasure trove of sparkling, spiky prose and a fascinating portrait of our lives and cultural times over the past decades. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, James Wolcott’s fearless essays and reviews offer a bracing taste of the real critical thing.

NYPD detective Paul Donner and his wife Elise were killed in a hold-up gone wrong. Fifty years later, Donner is back: revived courtesy of the Shift. Supposedly the unintended side-effect of a botched biological terrorist attack and carried by a ubiquitous retrovirus, the Shift jump-starts dead DNA and throws the life cycle into reverse, so reborns like Donner must cope with the fact that they are not only slowly youthing toward a new childhood, but have become New York's most hated minority.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Lincoln Rhyme novel The Burial Hour -- comes three powerful short stories. In "Fast," Kathryn Dance races against the clock to track down the members of a domestic terrorist cell--with the lives of 200 people hanging in the balance. In "Game," a...

A year ago, I thought my whole world had ended. My family was dead. The life that I knew had been changed forever. Now I know that was just the beginning. I faced down the devil who destroyed my family, and I f--king lost. I've become the thing I hate most in this world, and there is no turning back. Even a contract with a demon couldn't save me from the creature that now inhabits my body.

Since the founding of the United States, the Barbary pirates of North Africa threatened with impunity American lives, commerce, and honor on the high seas. But in 1815, Commodore Stephen Decatur led a charge to victory. The Second Barbary War, as it became known, helped define American foreign policy and consolidate its naval power. In Decatur's Wake: The Fateful Rivalry Behind the Lightning Defeat of Barbary Terror, Daniel Wattenberg shows us how.

Sometimes the good guys win and the bad guys end up dead. But that isn't how it always goes down. In the ZOO, you are either fast and lucky or you are dead. Heavy Metal has a few videos that are out gaining attention in parts of the world, and that doesn't bode well for them. Some people are noticing that Sal and his team have someone extra-special working with them, and they want a piece of her...or all of her. This time, it's back to basics for Heavy Metal with just Sal, Madigan, and Courtney. Are they enough to save their friend?

Lieutenant Gregor Popov is on trial for his efforts along with Heavy Metal to save the Russian scientists. Will they go after Sal, Madigan, and Courtney next? Will Popov get a light sentence or something worse? Savage has been tasked with an operation hidden from everyone. Unfortunately, the operation requires him to work with Molina. To make a deal, Courtney must request help. This time, nothing is taken for granted except the ZOO will do what it always does: kill people.

Forced to come to grips with his understanding of the past - and its implications for the present - Roberts deftly moves between "then" and "now," ignorance and understanding, in honest, confessional prose that places the reader front and center for a true story that, indeed, is far stranger than fiction. Obsessive in nature and elliptical in structure, Roberts' story ultimately inhabits the liminal space between truth and appearances, love and danger, the hunter and the hunted.

Meanwhile, on another side of the Universe. . .Meet Gem ser'Edreth, a wizard with electronics -- and a freelance thief. Deliberately solitary, unencumbered by family or friends, he immerses himself in his profession, rising to a pinnacle of skill so exalted that the planetary crime boss seeks him out with a commission to steal. Refusing the commission, of course, is his first mistake.

Heavy Metal has benefited from promo videos, but unfortunately, someone figured out that some of the driving during the Russian Base operation...was just too damned good. People are noticing that Sal and his team have someone extra-special working with them, and they want a piece of her...or all of her. What is the other team willing to attack Sal's people with to get what they want? And do they have capabilities Sal can't conceptualize?

Criminal defense attorney Harrison J. Walker, better known as Jaywalker, has just been suspended for using "creative" tactics and receiving "gratitude" in the courtroom stairwell from a client charged with prostitution. Convincing the judge that his other clients are counting on him, Jaywalker is allowed to complete 10 cases. But it's the last case that truly tests his abilities - and his acquittal record. Samara Moss - young, petite, and sexy as hell - stabbed her husband in the heart. Or so everyone believes. Having married the elderly billionaire when she was an 18-year-old former prostitute, Samara appears to be the clichéd gold digger.

Oil and Honey is McKibben's account of two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight - from the center of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small-scale local answers. With empathy and passion he makes the case for a renewed commitment on both levels, telling the story of raising one year’s honey crop and building a social movement that’s still cresting.

Hunter was forced to abandon life as he knew it when he first arrived on the ice world of the Pillar. But, unlike so many others, he didn't let the merciless conditions of his new home break him. Since his very first day in this joyless, freezing hellscape, he fought for survival. He can never let his guard down, because he knows that his strength and determination not only keep him alive, but also those who believe in him.

On a floating casino just off the New Jersey coast, two masked gunmen open fire. Their powerful Austrian machine guns shatter mirrors, crack fish tanks, and knock the grand chandelier from the ceiling. By the time the smoke clears, the men are long gone, but two clues remain: a rare weapon recovered from the swirling waters of the Atlantic and the fact that, in an inescapable barrage of bullets, nobody got shot.

It's been five years since the Mason family vacationed at the lakeside cottage in northeastern Vermont, close to where prize-winning novelist Samuel Mason grew up. The summers that Sam; his wife, Mena; and their twins, Franny and Finn, spent at Lake Gormlaith were noisy, chaotic, and nearly perfect. But since Franny's death, the Masons have been flailing, one step away from falling apart. Lake Gormlaith is Sam's last, best hope of rescuing his son from a destructive path and salvaging what's left of his family.

Parasites and parasitic relationships are fundamental to life on Earth and to human history. Our Bodies, Our Planet explores how vital they are. Unlike harmful pathogens, parasites may produce no ill effects and may even improve our well-being and the lives of the creatures that surround us. Marcus Hall shows how our fellow travelers have evolved to help keep us alive, or else they themselves will perish. Parasitism is a phenomenon of partnership, and the association of parasite and host has had far-ranging cultural, biological, and possibly geophysical consequences.

Pilot X is riddled with guilt. After facing the impossible decision to eliminate his own people or save the universe, he is the lone survivor of a time-traveling race. But Pilot X soon finds that he’s got more than his own guilt to contend with. His timeship Verity detects a signal that someone is working to recreate the dangerous technology that threatened the universe in the first place. Pilot X now sets off to save a universe he no longer recognizes, but feels frighteningly familiar.