Showing results by author "Robert Butler" in All Categories

Carcosa is a fictional land that first appeared in Bierce’s 1886 story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (included in this collection), and later is appeared Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow. It has since been used by many other fantasy and horror writers and poets. This collection explores Carcosa and other fictional cities found in nineteenth-century poetry and short stories. The works of these classic and innovative writers are given new life, and a new generation of listeners will have the chance to voyage to Carcosa … and beyond.

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.

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.

A wonderful selection of classic Christmas poetry from G. K. Chesterton, Henry Vaughan, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Lord Tennyson, and many more.

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).

Robert Quinlan is a 70-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam War protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert's own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy.

Varus the Elder Lich wanted nothing more than to spend eternity writing novels. He cared nothing for the fame or money, and never cared much about the total lack of company in his country cottage. He had his characters and that was plenty. Was, plenty. Until a chance interruption to his work brings some unexpected company into his unlife. It would take all his patience, all his wisdom, and more than a little of his sense of humor, to learn that sometimes being interrupted... Isn't so bad.

A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early 20th century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus.

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

Albaer has nothing good in his life, and a whole lot of bad. An outcast in his home town, regarded as 'the seed of evil' because of his father's selfishness and greed, nobody seems to care what is done to him. Indifferent teachers, bullies who think of him only as an easy target for his passive unwillingness to fight back in his desperate attempt to prove his fundamental goodness, the one thing that lets him endure is a video game. The only thing, that is, until an angel and a demon appear in his room, confused, lost, and afraid... their attempt to summon his video game character into their...

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.

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.

The first World War is underway; Germany has allied with the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish caliphs have declared jihad on the British Empire. Meanwhile, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson hesitates to enter the fray. Aboard the passenger liner Lusitania, war correspondent and American spy Kit Cobb has been assigned to shadow a German intellectual and possible covert agent who is believed to have information vital to the war effort. During the voyage Cobb is smitten with famed actress Selene Bourgani, who inexplicably seems to be working for the Germans.

This is the ideal collection for all lovers of first-rate erotic literature. Edited by Susie Bright, whom the Utne Reader calls "one of the leading thinkers and visionaries of our time", this fourth annual edition of a best-selling series brings together the most outstanding erotic writing of the year, including peculiarly dark and dangerous takes, as well as cutting-edge forays into the world of cybersex.

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.

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 ...

The rising tide of the House of Aiwenor has swept away some, while others on board with it have seen themselves rise to new heights. But the even floods must ebb and fight against the dams built to bar the way forward. Ahead of Nua, the Red City, fallen Komestra, prepares to rise again, its armies reformed, its power renewed, her promise... all but fulfilled. Her promise though, was not her ambition. To rule one city is good, to rule them all? Better. And so the wars begin, with sides being taken and armies on the march, new strategies are needed, and old allies from home must be introduced...

"Wanting to be called good is the excuse people give for their cowardice in pursuing their ambitions. It's only evil that ever really changes things, and that makes evil the only good in the world." Such is the conviction of elven assassin, Nua Calen Aiwenor, priestess of the Unliving God, and now, warlord. Setting out from her homeland determined to achieve her dreams in the distant land of Mict'aratz, the former slave is out to either gain the throne of an empire for herself, or a grave. And in that chaotic land of conflicting wills, there are plenty of people who would help her to either.

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.

The struggle for power has created challenges that even for all her preparations, Nua could not have planned for. There are always unknowns, always enemies, and sometimes? Sometimes even the strongest of people need to turn to for help. To that end, she welcomes Gottfried Jadara, the firstborn son of the Mother of Terror with a delivery of enchanted equipment meant to give her members of the faith an edge over all others. There are however, levels upon levels, layers upon layers to her motives, as Gottfried represents not only her greatest hope, but also her greatest fear. If her budding ...