Showing results by author "Robert Butler" in All Categories

Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, O. Henry Award and Edgar Awards, the 19 writers in this 2005 edition are not just considered some of the best Southern writers, but among the best American writers period. With works by such writers as Dennis Lehane, Moira Crone, Robert Olen Butler, Cary Holladay, Tom Franklin, and Rebecca Soppe, this collection provides an electrifying current of deep, dark subjects set in the brutal, but charming south.

Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hayes, who have decided to separate after 20 years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives to New Orleans and checks into the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some 20 years earlier.

Christopher Marlowe Cobb ("Kit"), the swashbuckling early 20th-century American newspaper war correspondent, travels to Mexico in April and May of 1914, during that country’s civil war and the American invasion of Vera Cruz. But covering the war in enemy territory and in sweltering heat isn't enough of a challenge for Cobb. Soon, he's falling in love with a young Mexican laundress, Luisa, who may not be as innocent as she seems, and he's witnessing the inexplicable attempted sniper assassination of a priest (miraculously, the bullet rebounds off the cross around his neck, leaving him unharmed).

How does a former dlamisan military scout, a sailor of the void, go from a soldier class, to a merchant class...to a pirate class? There's only one way. Encountering humans and finding out about pirate movies...video games... and liquor, lots...and lots... of liquor. Herein lies the record of the rise of Bonny Red, Captain of the Red Spark, Pirate Queen of the endless void, and where her legend began... Set in the universe of 'Adopted By Humans'

A simple mission for Agent U-235, one of the finest spies of the Dlamisan Empire, that's what it was supposed to be. Just plant a listening device in the atmosphere of a planet suspected of sending out secret communications to hostile powers, alerting them to shipping targets and military maneuvers. Just one atmosphere walk for a few hours and then it would be done. Till he crashed into a human undertaking the same mission, and the two of them crash landed on the planet down below. Now forced to work together to survive and to succeed, rival predators might find that they have a lot more in...

Having settled in to living together... and learning of the horrific truth, Raziel and Lialah are confronted with a new and unexpected challenge... but they are not without means. Their magic has grown, their disguises are flawless... nearly. And they are ready for the challenge of a human school, Albaer's living hell, and they're all in it together.

Losing everything is a chance to start again, having nothing is a chance to build something. An exile from his home, and an exile within her own tribe, Archos and Ayente stand at a great crossroads in both their lives. When your own betray you, there is no choice but to place your trust in the strangest of strangers and hope for the best.

What happens to people's lives during times of battle and strife? From the American Revolution to the ongoing war in Iraq, the subject of this collection is how people cope with the dramatic shifts that come with war. Before Independence, a slave fights for freedom by taking up arms for the British; in World War I, a mother goes to the front lines to see her son; and in our time, a teenager in Oregon waits for e-mail from his father in the Middle East.

When you're a space pirate sailing between stars and planets with nobody telling you where to go, you can always take a detour, especially when opportunity presents itself in the form of possible lost treasures from ancient civilizations, and a way to get through permastorms that have locked the galaxy's greatest powers out of...whatever lies beyond, for thousands of years. That's the situation that Captain Bonny Red of 'The Red Spark' finds herself in when she wins an ancient harmonic electron map off of a less than ethical gambler during a routine run of supplies and personnel to an ...

Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe, but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches - though that hasn't stopped young men and women to volunteer at the front. Christopher "Kit" Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the US government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them.

When the color of your skin is the only thing society sees, even being a doctor is not enough. In this compelling book, Dr. Robert Butler shares his experiences growing up Black in America. From his time as a young boy in the Bronx - up until present day - Dr. Butler has experienced racism in all aspects of his life. The incidents will shock you, but his resilience will inspire you!

In The Empire of Night, it is 1915, and President Woodrow Wilson is still assessing the war's threat to the United States. After proving himself during the Lusitania mission, Kit is now a full-blown spy, working undercover in a castle on the Kentish coast owned by a suspected British government mole named Sir Albert Stockman. And Kit is again thrown together with a female spy - his own mother, the beautiful and mercurial Isabel Cobb, who also happens to be a world-famous stage actress.

Contains: Boozehounds I: In which Captain Bonny Red encounters humanity for the first time and finds true kindred spirits from across the stars. Boozehounds II: In which a raid reveals a change in the behavior of the Zenti Expanse and the pirates of The Red Spark embark on a rescue. Boozehounds III: Captain Bonny Red and company find themselves trapped on a primitive world and become embroiled in a fight between a group of marauders, and a people who have just begun to settle down. Bonus Content: Previously unpublished shorts and the author's failed attempt at a story's first few chapters.

All Bonny Red wanted to do was land on a world, harvest some fruit to ferment it into alcohol, and be on her way. That... and just walk around and stretch her legs on a planet instead of her ship for a little while. She wasn't 'supposed' to get stuck on the planet. She wasn't supposed to land off course. She wasn't supposed to get caught up in an iron age massacre. She certainly wasn't supposed to take a side, let alone lend a hand. But faced with the desperation of a dying people, the fierce former scout turned pirate Captain cannot turn away. Which is a pity... for the wrong side that is,...

For Speranzi Jadara, the paladin archer and Commander of the Black Quiver mercenary company, it was supposed to be a simple job. Escort a merchant on his journey into a neighboring region, ensure his safety, and come home alive. But for the devotee of the gods of mankind and veteran of the war against the Demon God, Damaxa, nothing ever goes as planned. After encountering Skana, a bold brigand made hard bitten by her life as a peasant, and razor sharp by her life disguising herself as a man to hide her identity from her teachers among the raiders, Speranzi Jadara's whole world turns upside ...

One simple trip. Just take some xaxa fruit from point A to point B, sell it this cheap stuff at the nearest spaceport where they pay a premium for fresh food, then restock the bar of the Red Spark and move on. But for Captain Bonny Red and her crew, life can just never be that simple. Taking a shortcut to reach their destination, they encounter some zenti raiders, and some most unexpected people who will take the merry band of dlamisan space pirates on yet another misadventure that will end with their plans ruined...and an unexpected treasure along the way.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler tells a magical and humorous contemporary fable that captures the state of humanity at the cusp of a new millennium - as seen through the uniquely sensitive perspective of an empathetic extraterrestrial. An audible.com audio exclusive!

Fiction, poetry, and music come together to create something new: Verb. Original stories and poems you won't find anywhere else, by the best writers in the country, brought to you in an innovative format. Verb is the ancient oral tradition and the venerable literary magazine combined into a fresh new package: the audioquarterly.

Nephew of the Emperor, the Firstborn Son of Terror's Mother, the next in line for the throne of the Jabarian Empire, victorious general, unbeatable warrior.. Gottfried Jabara has all that one could want in life despite being barely a man's age... everything that is... except a choice about what to do with his life. Iris Vansi Valoisin is a slave. The daughter of a once noble house which committed treason against the Jabarian Empire. And yet deprived of all choice, she has her cunning and her iron will. Conspiracy, treason, and terror in the heart of the Empire clash against desire, family, ...

A must-listen collection of four bibliomysteries by bestselling and award-winning authors