Showing results by narrator "Kevin T. Collins" in All Categories

The Palace Program is now in full effect. Sirus O'Sullivan, the Palace director, has been repurposed outside of the current reality, thus leaving a gaping opening for the next in line to see the Program through to the final phase. Meanwhile, Mary escapes the battlefield with the Eagles squad intel specialist Dale. After seeing the battle has not gone in their favor, they retreat into the depths of the Palace, leaving Mary to live with the fact she left many men and women to die by her orders.

Scott Snyder’s protagonists inhabit a playfully deranged fictional world in which a Wall Street trader can find himself armed with a speargun, guarding a Dumpster outside a pawnshop in Florida; or an employee at Niagara Falls (his job: watching for jumpers) will take off in a car after a blimp in which his girlfriend has escaped. But in Snyder’s wondrous imagination there’s a thin membrane between the whimsical and the disturbing....

This second edition of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know® discusses what is happening with marijuana policy, describing both the risks and the benefits of using marijuana, without taking sides in the legalization debate. The book details the potential gains and losses from legalization, explores the "middle ground" options between prohibition and commercialized production, and considers the likely impacts of legal marijuana on occasional users, daily users, patients, parents, and employers-and even on drug traffickers.

Brand-new stories by: G. M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcalá, Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta. Early Seattle was a hardscrabble seaport filled with merchant sailors, longshoremen, lumberjacks, rowdy saloons, and a rough-and-tumble police force not immune to corruption and graft.

Max is dying. No one wants to believe it, but he knows it's true. And as the end grows closer, he can only think of one thing: Who will protect Liz if he's not here? Liz can't stand watching Max suffer. She's determined to find some way - any way - to save him. But the only way to help Max is to risk her own life. Is she willing to die for the one she loves?

Michael: He's still having flashbacks of his escape from the underground compound. Only Cameron, the mysterious girl he met behind bars, seems to understand him-and realize that the sheriff may be gone but an even more dangerous enemy is out there.

Following the Weavers Enclave Grand Exchange, Feng Yu and his party had decided to venture to the mysterious and renowned Five Element Mirage Zone in hopes of quickly improving their strength to the next level. Of course, their fame from their endeavors had garnered the interest of a few powerful forces and rogue assassin groups, each moving with their own intentions. With their overwhelming power, you would think their quest to be a simple one, but little did they know, the secret of the special zone would lead to an unexpected change and the start of a disaster.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth global anxiety about linkages between the environment and society at a fundamental structural level. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life provides an accessible exposition of the latest foundational knowledge on how natural and social systems science can inform planetary crises. Humanity has either tried to conquer or capitulate to natural order, whereas we should be seeking to understand latent structures and patterns that permeate all systems and develop an "earthly order," that is socially functional and sustainable.

James Patrick Kelly, the author of Planet of Whispers and the co-author, with John Kessel, of Freedom Beach has been nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards for his short fiction. This is a fable about a dissatisfied architect who travels "up-time" and changes shape to design a temple for a goddess.

The most civilized and 'decent' among us find that we are complicit with the most brutal murderers. We enter into literally unspeakable alliances - of which we dare not speak except through the obliquities and indirections of fiction, poetry, and visual art of the sort gathered here in New Jersey Noir.

When Ryder Montgomery shows up on her doorstep 10 years after breaking her heart, Casey can't decide which burns hotter - her desire to be with him or the pain he left her with....

Furs are the creative subculture of people who identify with animals. You can find them at furry conventions, furfests, around the world-tens of thousands of people donning their most elaborate fursuit. In costume, at conventions, with friends or alone, furries unleash the animal within, letting their inner beasts roar and their inner cats purr, aware of the power—and joy—to be found in bringing forward one's animal side and encouraging others to do the same.

Chime, a young woman from Shambala, a magical oasis in the mountains of Tibet where the survivors of nuclear Armageddon live peacefully, ventures out into the surrounding devastation. A mysterious illness is spreading, and the young Chinese woman courageously ventures outside the valley to search for a cure.

The ancient war has finally come to an end, bringing a peaceful closure to the chaotic dispute of the Ancient Dragon Battlefield. Its prisoners, along with their mysterious foes, return to the realm of the forgotten.

Mac Callahan has left the fast lane of the FBI, but he's restless. When the North Star Gala unexpectedly finds its way to his home in Shadeland, Alabama, he’s asked to oversee security for the event filled with Washington insiders, politicians, and the elite. Finding his way back to Washington, DC, to lead the project, he meets his long-time assistant, Micah. But when Micah’s sister goes missing from a college field trip, Mac takes the opportunity to lead the hunt for the young girl. Expecting an open-and-shut case, what he discovers is far worse than he could’ve imagined.

Anthropologist Allison Pinckney is stunned when she inherits the key to a 17th-century pirate cipher that makes her the target of two brutal arms dealers. Now, to save those she loves, she must solve the cipher. With this perilous mission growing ever more dangerous, she reluctantly seeks help from ex-Green Beret Zack Tremaine, the one man she's been avoiding. Because if she gives into her long-buried feelings for him, it could cost them their lives.

Peace isn't the way we thought it would be. The planet hangs on the brink of collapse, with only pockets of resistance remaining. While governments fold and submit in the wake of a new enemy, civilians are rounded up and assimilated into new communities. With the little that remains, Jacob knows that they must make a stand and let the world know that we will not lie down quietly. Those who are willing to take up the fight. They see that now is a time for heroes...a last chance to stand up against the invaders.

In this brilliant mix of literary satire and crime caper, Frankie Abandonato, a small-time con man on the run, finds refuge by posing as V. S. Mohle - a famously reclusive writer - and teaching in a prestigious writing program somewhere in Texas. Streetwise and semiliterate, Frankie finds that being treated as a genius agrees with him. The program has been funded by Rex Schoeninger, the world’s richest novelist, who is dying. Buzzards are circling, angling for the remains of Rex’s fortune, and Frankie quickly realizes that he has been presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

With the weight of expectation riding on Nyx's shoulders, the stakes have never been higher. She's got to save herself, her brother, and everyone else who's counting on her survival knowledge... if only she knew how to get them all out. It's back to the drawing board, but there's no way she's giving up her dream of freedom after coming so far, whatever the cost.

Find a future. Lose a past. She's a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her. She's also on the run. Nashville is where she's come to claim her destiny. It's also where the darkness she's fled might find her. And destroy her.