Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

Sixteen-year-old Claire wants her father back. His death left her only memories and an empty locket. After six difficult years in foster care, her vocabulary no longer includes "hope" and "trust". But everything changes dramatically when she encounters Justin, a Spirit Knight restlessly hunting dangerous ghosts that devour the living, who rides into her path on his magical horse and takes her under his wing. When an evil spirit threatens Claire's life, she'll need Justin's help to survive.

Silvariah Frandelle, a brilliant and beautiful business woman, falls from wealth and success into exile and poverty, indentured - barely one step above slavery - as an off-world laborer to escape prison. Her last calculated risk as a free woman, paid for with years of service, becomes the key to surviving hostile environments. Space, gravity, and Mars wastelands were expected. Intrusive AIs, obscure experiments, and shadowy foes were not.

Searching for the source of Zero, a highly addictive drug that threatens Rhadaz society, Chris finds a lethal dose of the untreatable drug in his own veins and turns to Ariadne, a reluctant sword-master, for help.

When the black elf king comes calling, / Hide your children and your gold, / When dead men hunger, outside, the bitter cold, / When trolls venture down from mountain peak, / Hold tightly your bones, for them they seek. / Beware they who thirst on island bleak, / The Regent to come and scourge your keep, / The Black Hand will stalk you, their ranks ever deep, / And Thetan will be there, of his wrath you will weep, / The Harbinger of Doom, your soul to reap.

From Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, here are the best stories of 2002, written by four of the most respected writers of our day: Robert Silverberg, James Patrick Kelly, Ian Watson, and Gregory Benford. Also try The Best of Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine and The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine 2002.

No matter what strange forms the future takes, says Ben Bova in his introduction, crime and criminals will always be with us - and with them, the need for law enforcement. Included in this collection of short stories are the full-length novel City of Darkness and "Brillo" - the famous collaboration between Bova and Harlan Ellison.

Portland has a witch problem. Claire expects Christmas vacation to deliver an earned respite from thinking, doing, and obeying. She gets to sleep in and play with dragons. Right? Of course not. Ghosts don't care about vacation. Drew wishes magic could finish high school for him. Who cares about calculus or dangling participles when he can crush mutant bugs with his mind? It can't do much more, though, until he gets off his butt and learns how to use it properly.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has submitted ten of its best of 2002. Although the collection is a veritable cornucopia of styles and subjects, each story is somehow notable for its compassion and humanity.

In the spring of 1338, young William of Leaves knows only of remedies, herbs, and his mother’s kindness. When he is forced to watch as she is dragged to a witch’s pyre by a mob led by the bishop of London, the mysterious immortal apothecary Albion Ravistelle promises the boy a chance at vengeance. In the summer of 1972, Helen Storm is a stoned groupie on the Sunset Strip with a very special condition: She is immortal. When her life intersects with a famous guitar player, she is introduced to her future as a deadly and remorseless assassin.

At first blush, Widdershins is a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend, and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. It can be interpreted as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious, possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject’s view.

These stories are set in the familiar quasi-medieval worlds to which modern listeners are accustomed, and also stories rooted in the authentic myth-constructs of high antiquity, along with several that depend for their power on the juxtaposition of fantastic situations and terribly contemporary aspects of modern life on Earth. Together these stories make up a collection which provides reassuring proof of fantasy's eternal power in this technological age.

As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages - of hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted, so-called “cozy” murders in Britain - the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, with his fierce devotion to science and logic, gave way to street smarts on the one hand and social insight on the other, but even though these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required intelligence and clear-sightedness as characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured here.

Guy de Maupassant was a master of the short-story genre, producing more than 300 during his lifetime. These concise stories contain twists and shocking turns, and range from the fantastic and supernatural, with characters descending into madness....

Storytellers have long imagined what exists beyond the edges of the map. The need to seek and discover the unknown is embedded in who we are, no matter the culture or era. To celebrate this sense of wonder, award-winning editor John Joseph Adams has gathered together some of the best SF&F writers working today, collecting adventure and mystery in this spectacular anthology. Explore the rich tradition begun centuries ago with this all-new compilation full of imagination and delights. What lies beyond the edge of the unknown? Only you, brave listener, can find out.

After the world's governments collapsed, the corporations took control. Houston's Pulsystems has sent an expedition to the lost Martian colony of Frontera to search for survivors, but Reese, aging hero of the US space program, knows better. The colonists are not only alive; they have discovered a secret so devastating that the new rulers of Earth will stop at nothing to own it.

In 1978, daredevil film director Kathryn Whitney comes to Iran to shoot a package of TV commercials at the ruins of Persepolis. She leaves Hollywood behind and arrives in a country exploding with revolution. While visiting the Bank of Tehran, Kathryn is drawn to a display case housing The Persian Glories - a private jewelry collection of priceless canary diamonds with a powerful legacy owned by Sir Anthony Evans. Kathryn has no idea how these legendary jewels will endanger her life.

Now the struggle between the Andro-Francine Order of the Named Lands and the Y’Zirite Empire has reached a terrible turning point. Believing that his son is dead, Rudolfo has pretended to join with the triumphant Y’zirite forces—but his plan is to destroy them all with a poison that is targeted only to the enemy.

Now that the Spirit Knights have accepted 16-year-old Claire into their order, she just has to convince all its Knights she belongs. Forced into a test to prove her worth, she discovers more than anyone wants her to. Meanwhile, Justin runs around playing janitor. He's made some big messes, but cleaning them up puts him on a new path, one he never imagined his future could hold. All on Thanksgiving.

Buffalo Bill Cody, Bat Masterson, and other legendary heroic figures of America's Old West get the royal treatment in White Hats, a collection of stories by esteemed Western authors. This anthology is expertly compiled by Robert J. Randisi, who has gathered extraordinary stories of those who wear the white hat from well-known authors like John Jakes, Richard S. Wheeler, James Reasoner, and others.

Death didn't solve anything for Claire. Now condemned to an eternity of roaming the Earth as a 16-year-old, she has to figure out this whole ghost thing from the other side. Lesson one: Memories are power. Lesson two: This sucks.