Showing results by narrator "T. Ryder Smith" in All Categories

From the clouds of Venus to the origins of the time gates, this collection of novellas and short fiction visits many favourite worlds of the Quantum Evolution universe, as well as some new to the series. With two 20,000-plus-word novellas and four long short stories, this collection is a stunning showcase of talent.

Captain Pausert had foiled the deadliest of space pirates and eliminated the threat of the Worm World, yet his troubles kept piling up. Sent on a secret mission to stop the nanite plague, a self-aware disease that could devastate whole worlds, he quickly found that someone had convinced the Imperial Fleet that he was actually a wanted criminal, which led to a battle leaving his ship in urgent need of repairs. And while Goth and the Leewit, two of the notorious witches of Karres, could do amazing things, ship repair was not in their line.

Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff's deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown.

Hidden far from sight, deep in the thick underbrush of the North Florida woods are the ghostly graves of more than 30 unidentified bodies, some of which are thought to be children who were beaten to death at the old Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna. It is suspected that many more bodies will be found in the fields and swamplands surrounding the institution.

Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. Through conversations between Lapine and Sondheim, as well as most of the production team, and with a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together is a deeply personal remembrance of their collaboration and friendship and the highs and lows of that journey, one that resulted in the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning classic.

When dragons rise from the earth, firefighters are humanity's last line of defense, in this wild near-future fantasy. Firefighter Cole Brannigan is on the verge of retirement after 30 years on the job, and a decade fighting dragons. But during his final fire call, he discovers he's immune to dragon smoke. It's such a rare power that he's immediately conscripted into the elite dragon-fighting force known as the Smoke Eaters. Retirement cancelled, Brannigan is re-assigned as a lowly rookie.

Set in Mexico City during the early 50s, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges; a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the Ugly American at his ugliest. Burroughs' only realist love story, Queer is a haunting tale of possession and exorcism.

A hardened young veteran from the First World War, Ludwig now works for a monument company, selling stone markers to the survivors of deceased loved ones. Though ambivalent about his job, he suspects there's more to life than earning a living off other people's misfortunes. A self-professed poet, Ludwig soon senses a growing change in his fatherland, a brutality brought upon it by inflation.

The definitive life of Abraham Lincoln, With Malice Toward None is historian Stephen B. Oates's acclaimed and enthralling portrait of America's greatest leader. In this award-winning biography, Lincoln steps forward out of the shadow of myth as a recognizable, fully drawn American whose remarkable life continues to inspire and inform us today.

Shortly after her 16th birthday, Sunshine Griffith and her mother, Kat, move from sunny Austin, Texas, to the rain-drenched town of Ridgemont, Washington. Though Sunshine is adopted, she and her mother have always been close, sharing a special bond filled with laughter and inside jokes. But from the moment they arrive, Sunshine feels her world darken with an eeriness she cannot place. And even if Kat doesn't recognize it, Sunshine knows that something about their new house is just...creepy.

Hollywood, 1945. Ben Collier has just arrived from war-torn Europe to find his brother has died in mysterious circumstances. Why would a man with a beautiful wife, a successful movie career, and a heroic past choose to kill himself?

Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped. This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death.

Only a very few rock bands that have had the longevity, success, and drama of The Doobie Brothers. Born out of late 1960s NoCal, they stood alongside their contemporaries The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, and many others as an iconic American rock band. The train was rolling along, hits were flowing like wine, and arenas were packed with fans who wanted to see them live...then Tom Johnston, the band’s front man and lead guitarist, almost died.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

"America's best novelist" ( The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South – the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart and soul beat -- the steamy, seamy Gulf Coast -- in complex and fascinating tales that crackle with violence and menace, meshing his flair for gripping storytelling with his urbane writing style.

State Road 177 runs along the Suwannee River, between Fargo, Georgia, and the Okefenokee Swamp. Drive that route from east to west, and you'll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven. But you'd better hope not. Titus and Melanie Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car....

In 1937, there are recesses in Appalachia no outsiders have ever explored. Two government-sponsored documentarians from Cincinnati, Ohio - a writer and photographer - are dispatched to penetrate this wilderness and record what they find for President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. For photographer Clay Havens, the assignment is his last chance to reboot his flagging career. So when he and his journalist partner are warned away from the remote Spooklight Holler outside of town, they set off eagerly in search of a headline story.

Best known for his glorious comic novels, Charles Portis was also a prolific essayist, travel writer, and newspaper reporter. Now, for the first time, these writings—journalism, short fiction, memoir, travel stories, and even a play—have been brought together in Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany. The collection encompasses the breadth of Portis’s fifty-year writing career, covering topics as varied as road tripping in Baja, Elvis’s visits to his aging mother, and his own boyhood in Arkansas.

If he’d known he was getting stuck with a pair of psi-wielding super-beings, even straitlaced do-gooder Captain Pausert might have thought twice about rescuing his two young “witch” charges from slavery on a dark planet. But what’s done is done - and with galactic peace once again threatened in the mysterious and pirate-ridden Chaladoor region, only a dangerous mission backward in time can save the present and - maybe - get stalwart-but-obtuse Pausert to see one of these young “witches” as more than just a friend.

Days ago, Belisarius pulled off the most audacious con job in history. He's rich, he's back with the love of his life, and best of all, he has the Time Gates, arguably the most valuable things in existence. Nothing could spoil this...except the utter destruction of his people and the world they lived on. To save them, he has to make a new deal with the boss he just double-crossed, to travel back in time and work his quantum magic once again, tracking down the source of the wormholes.