Showing results by narrator "Aida Reluzco" in All Categories

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized.

A talented sculptor and her psychotherapist fall in love, transgressing numerous ethical boundaries. But as their relationship progresses, what began as the patient’s attempt to liberate herself from her past becomes the most abusive relationship of her life - and the most dangerous. 

In an alternate 2009, the United States has been a second-rate power for a quarter of a century, ever since Argentina’s victory in the Falkland’s War thanks to their development of “psychopigments.” Created as weapons, these colorful chemicals can produce almost any human emotion upon contact, and they have been embraced in the US as both pharmaceutical cure-alls and popular recreational drugs. Black market traders illegally sell everything from Blackberry Purple (which causes terror) to Sunshine Yellow (which delivers happiness).

Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends.

Eva Stewart runs a charming bed and breakfast in the Florida Keys with her talkative parrot. One of her favorite things to do is read murder mystery novels. She even has a murder mystery book club. When a dead body is found near the bed and breakfast, Eva has a real murder mystery on her hands. Can she help solve the mystery, even if it implicates one of her esteemed guests and ruffles the feathers of the local police department, or will her book smarts be the end of her?

The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by those who exist on the fringe of our society and want more than what life has dealt them: A haunted veteran turned career criminal is on the run. An injured fighter turned bouncer seeks vengeance for his lost love. An assassin on his last job finds himself questioning his life choices and breaks all the rules to understand his final victim.

The Nude is an evocative and intense exploration of art, cultural theft, and what it means to be a woman helming morally complicated negotiations in a male-directed world.

Eva and Jerome are on a romantic first date at a fancy French restaurant until a dead body is discovered in the alley. The date is obviously ruined, and the owner of the restaurant quickly gets blamed for the murder. Knowing there is more to the case, Eva recruits the Murder Mystery Book Club for one last mystery.

As an orphaned girl, Harmony survived a strange war waged by an enemy called the Quondam. They crushed every technological advancement in the world, eviscerated the landscape, and killed millions. It can still be stopped. As prophesied, Harmony has a destiny to fulfill. Thirty years later, she is in a tenuous alliance with a cult of zealots who worship time itself. A master code breaker, she’s enlisted to obliterate the power of the Quondam and prevent a war that has already ended.

A monster is holding me hostage inside a chateau. The world is plagued by creatures called the Dread. And he’s their king. I’ve tried to run. I’ve tried to hide. But there’s no escaping him. He wants to turn me into one of the creatures. Unless...I find a way to break the curse. A curse that has turned him into the monster that he is. He wasn’t supposed to destroy cities. He’s one of the Celestials meant to save humanity. As I uncover the truth and break his curse, I wonder if I’ve lost myself in the process. Can I still escape him?

Eva Stewart has taken up a new hobby: photography. What better place to take pictures than the Great White Heron Refuge? While capturing the local wildlife on film, she stumbles across a dead body. Of course, the murder-mystery book club jumps on the case. Can Eva and the book club find another killer, or have they finally gotten in over their heads?

A serial kidnapper is preying upon women. He abducts them and then locks them in one of the cages dangling from the ceiling in a soundproofed basement. There, he sits quietly and just watches them, returning night after night, hoping he'll be in the room at the moment his beautiful captives finally starve to death.

Eden Alvaro is a licensed Vulture, picking through the aftermath of violence in demon-plagued LA, and fencing her finds to help support her family. But when a crooked cop reports her for a salvage she didn’t take, all hell breaks loose. Stripped of her license, Eden finds herself with a price on her head. When the mercenaries hunting her raid her home, brutalize her family, and abduct one of her sisters, Eden turns to the enigmatic Bishop - a man with a reputation for violence who, for the right price, can find just about anything or anyone.

It’s been twelve years since the 2040 Quake rocked the Golden State, fracturing Los Angeles and the fortunes of millions. It’s been six years since tech billionaire Damon Yates founded his elite academy, giving Unfortunates from the wrong side of his hyperloop tracks a new future at Quest Campus, tucked away in the Santa Monica Mountains. But an endeavor that sought to bridge a divide only tore eighteen-year-old twin sisters apart.

The tax demons want their pound of flesh. Or 52,000 dollars. Unable to pay what she owes, Eden is forced to fight a never-ending stream of bounty hunters while she tries to clear her name and find the cop who set her up. But demons are not known for their patience, and the new mercenary hired to bring Eden in dead or alive has magical abilities of his own - magical abilities oddly similar to Eden’s. Desperate, she turns to a friend for help, but Detective Juke demands a favor in return - help to find the demon or mage responsible for a killing spree.

The Golden State is at war. The Conservators are winning. With an insidious nano reform, they’ve cleaned out cities and upended thousands of Unfortunate lives by controlling a single emotion: inescapable fear. Billionaire CEO Damon Yates, the only one with the potential clues to stop the threat, has disappeared. Twin sisters Jade and Crys—along with their dedicated crew of Exiles—have fled Los Angeles for a remote Texas hideout and are leading the formidable mission to find him.

The Burke siblings are damn good at what they do. And what they do? Well that isn’t any good at all. As wet work operators for the Order of Magic, the Burkes pay a high price to use their magic. For years, they threw themselves into the Order’s dirty work, cleaning up messes that the Nine liked to pretend didn’t exist. But all that has changed. Someone in Black Ops has decided that the Burke siblings are a liability. And when the Order’s most accomplished killer comes after them, it doesn’t take an elementalist to figure out they’ve been burned.

America Redux explores the themes that create our shared sense of American identity and interrogates the myths we've been telling ourselves for centuries. With iconic American catchphrases as chapter titles, these twenty-one stories illuminate the astonishing, unexpected, sometimes darker sides of history that reverberate in our society to this very day—from the role of celebrity in immigration policy to the influence of one small group of white women on education to the effects of "progress" on housing and the environment, to the inspiring force of collective action and mutual aid.

In the wake of a brutal war with a rival cartel, a certain drug lord flees Mexico and ends up halfway around the world, where he runs into a Japanese organ broker doing business in Jakarta. After their fateful meeting, the two of them travel to Japan in order to establish a new business in the organ trade. There, the former cartel leader takes a lonely young boy under his wing. These three lives gradually become inextricably entangled in a web of crime, violence, and human flesh.

Behind anonymous screens, an army of cool and beautiful girls manage the dating service Ghost Lover, a forwarding system for text messages that promises to spare you the anguish of trying to stay composed while communicating with your crush. At a star-studded political fundraiser in a Los Angeles mansion, a trio of women compete to win the heart of the slick guest of honor. In a tense hospital waiting room, an inseparable pair of hard-partying friends crash into life’s responsibilities, but the magic of their glory days comes alive again at the moment they least expect it.