Showing results by narrator "Ray Chase" in All Categories

As Willi tries to make a new life for himself in Hamburg, finding a job and even love, he still cannot escape his past. Gradually he becomes sucked into a world of drink, desperation, deceit, and, with one terrible act, he is ensnared in a noose of his own making.

Frederick the Demon (formerly A Warm Place to Call Home): Frederick is a demon. Born in Maryland in the early 1980s, he hasn't a clue where he came from or why but feels an irresistible desire to occupy a human body. Once inside, he finds the previous occupant's consciousness and memories forever erased, an inevitable side effect that gives Frederick pause when switching bodies but not so much as to truly halt his ongoing enjoyment of human lives.

As the human population continues to decline, most people travel south to maintain a semblance of the life they know. Entire cities are abandoned. But following a senseless act of violence, one man travels north, toward forgotten lands. Is it possible for a loving husband and father, surrounded by reminders of mankind's impending extinction, to reclaim what he lost?

Can humanity survive what it never saw coming? On October 15 at 2:15 a.m. Earth vanished. A scattered few woke alone in a world with no rules, other than survival at any cost. These survivors aren't truly alone... Someone or something is watching them. And waiting... Strangers unite. Sides are chosen.

Through the screen of his computer a man watches a squirrel running about in a forest. For the better half of his life he has been drifting from job to job, diligently designing work-automating systems, and being rendered redundant by those systems. As he observes the squirrel, we observe him; and as he imagines the squirrel's world, we imagine his. The Squirrel Awakes is a quiet meditation on 21st century life and a compelling look at the direction society is heading.

The winter of 1799 is falling fast on the small Ohio Territory settlement of Hugh's Lick. Food is scarce, and relations with the Delaware tribe are strained; but things are about to get much worse. In the midst of a storm, frontiersman Cole Seavey is attacked by a creature that is neither man nor beast but something burst forth from the bowels of hell and reeking of the grave. Badly injured, he is rescued by Pakim, a young Delaware brave, and is taken to safety at the home of John Chapman.

Sometimes the ghosts that haunt us most aren't the dead. It has been nearly a year since writer Thomas Witt lost his daughter in a horrible car accident which nearly killed him. He and his wife are attempting to have another child and put their lives back together.

Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a summer cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found. Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there's a lead: a single photograph taken by Susso Myrén. Myrén has devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo, who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that trolls are real, she follows the trail of missing children to Northern Sweden.

For a God whom philosophers have proclaimed dead, there’s only one thing to do: drum up a little publicity. “God grants you an interview. Go to 600 Madison Ave., room 3700, Monday, at 11 a.m.” When a struggling writer receives this typed note in the mail one morning, curiosity wins out and he finds himself keeping this mysterious appointment. Soon he’s in an ordinary conference room with an intercom on the floor, furiously scribbling shorthand notes as he interviews God.

Is the top still spinning? Was it all a dream? In the world of Christopher Nolan's four-time Academy Award-winning movie, people can share one another's dreams and alter their beliefs and thoughts. Inception is a metaphysical heist film that raises more questions than it answers: Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of "self" and "other"?

During and in the aftermath of the dark period of the Holocaust, writers across Europe and America sought to express their feelings and experiences through their writings. This book provides a comprehensive account of these writings through essays from expert scholars, covering a wide geographic, linguistic, thematic and generic range of materials.

A missile has no conscience. It is an inanimate steel object: cold, emotionless. But once ignited, it burns white hot inside, and cannot be shut off. Fired in combat, it has but one objective: the total destruction of its intended target. And it will only stop when its objective has been achieved, or it runs out of fuel. Not all missiles are made of steel. North American Federation Navy Commander Evan Gabriel thought it was over. Returning from a mission on the far-off world of Eden, he finds that Mars is in a state of political upheaval.

A group finds itself taking refuge at The Sanctuary, a religious compound with an enigmatic leader called The Prophet. A serial killer finds himself leading an unlikely group of survivors. A young man searches to prove himself to his group, and avoid being bullied ever again. A young child is called to perform another miracle at great personal cost. Every decision. Every action. Every dream. Every alliance. Every secret. Every betrayal.

When cows across the country go on strike and cause a nationwide cheese shortage, everyone initially welcomes Romano, Fontina, Mozzarella, and Monterey Jack. These cliche-cracking giant cheeseheads claim they will return cheese to supermarket shelves everywhere. But Funny Boy isn't fooled for a minute. He knows these moldy manipulators are malicious aliens. You can bet your bottom dollar that Funny Boy will burn the midnight oil to come up with an artillery of jokes to defeat these cheesy aliens.

In 1483, Father Felix Fabri sails from Germany to Mount Sinai on a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of Saint Katherine of Alexandria. But at each of the shrines he visits throughout Greece and Palestine, he finds that the remains of Katherine's body are being stolen piece by piece: Her hand, her ear, and then her tongue vanish from their holy resting places.

From 1951 to 1967 Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader President Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.

The Nebula award-winning short story by master SF writer Greg Bear. Humans are engaged in a long war against an advanced alien race, the Senexi, but the possibility for peace may exist thanks to a young girl who learns the enemy's larger role and humanity's opportunity to evolve.

Frederick is a demon. Born in Maryland in the early 1980's, he hasn't a clue where he came from or why, but feels an irresistible desire to occupy a human body. Once inside, he finds the previous occupants' consciousness and memories forever erased, an inevitable side effect that gives Frederick pause when switching bodies, but not so much as to truly halt his ongoing enjoyment of human lives. In various bodies, he travels the world for decades - aimless - sampling cultures and experiencing life from the points of view of males, females, young, old, rich, poor.

The future should have been perfect. Microscopic robots known as nans could repair any damage to your body, keep you young by resetting your cellular clocks, and allow you to download upgrades like intelligence, muscle strength, and eyesight. You were supposed to be able to have anything you wanted with a simple thought, to be able to fly without the aid of a machine, to be able to live forever. But when a small group of five terraformers working on Venus return to Earth, they discover that every other human in the solar system has been gruesomely murdered.

In 1874 Utah territory, young teamster Buck McCready becomes wagon boss for the Kavanaugh freight outfit after his mentor, Mason Campbell, is murdered. With the Kavanaugh outfit engaged in a wagon train race that will decide whether Kavanaugh or a competitor lands a lucrative freight-hauling contract, Buck vows to find Campbell's killer. But first he must win the race, a difficult task considering there's a saboteur among his crew and a hired gun out to take him down, plus the possibility that Campbell's killer is after Buck, too.