Showing results by narrator "Patrick Cronin" in All Categories

Seattle, 2078. The future hasn't been kind to the spirit of humanity; commercial obsession and technological fetishism rules the day, religion and belief has died screaming in the fires of war, and what remains is moral decrepitude. Life in the future is hard on the soul. As an agent of the Industrial Security Bureau, Thomas Walken knows that better than anyone. His job is to keep the worst kind of black-market technology out of the hands of citizens, technology born out of the shadowy nation nicknamed Wonderland.

On the planet Nuala, the scam that beguiling free-trader Silver has come to join has just been blown to the skies, along with the throne lines of three sovereign nations. The last male heir of one throne line, Sheel Atare, is unprepared to rule, but he's quick to seize allies wherever he can - like the beautiful and dangerous Silver.

Meet Dug, a scrawny but cheerful caveman who loves his valley and just wants the best for his tribe of misfits. Accompanied by his faithful pig sidekick Hognob, Dug is a dreamer - why settle for hunting rabbits when you can hunt a mammoth?! Then there’s Dug’s tribe, led by the cautious Chief Bobnar. Bobnar wants the best for the tribe, too, but he sees things a little differently from Dug. Then Dug meets the evil Lord Nooth. He’s the leader of the Bronze Age City invading the valley.

On June 23, 1997 - barely three weeks after her 18th birthday - Kristen Modafferi, a tall, vivacious brunette, ended her workday and vanished into thin air. An investigation into her disappearance has yet to produce a trace.

A beautiful, dangerous world of subtle radiation, its people still human...by most standards. A place where genetics may determine your present, but skill and luck will determine your future. A planet where there is enough love...and hate...for everyone.

When Harlow is imprisoned by the Queen’s guards, Slater is forced to flee for his life and team up with Jax — the one man he detests more than any other. Together with courageous Zadonians from all four races, they devise a daring rescue mission to save Harlow from impending death.

Alex has called it quits and stormed off, leaving Harlow alone and vulnerable in the danger zone with little chance of survival and a broken heart. Luckily, Jax finds her and brings her back to the caves. However, little does she know she’s returning with multiple souvenirs. Standing out for all the wrong reasons has become Harlow’s specialty, and as the effects of her vertic switz tattoo set in and new issues are brought to light, she and her friends will find themselves in the line of fire with Rae and Electra.

It's 2084. Four years have passed since Bobbi January learned about the existence of the Yathi race and its plans for humanity. Since then she's become more than a career data thief or an anticorporate provacateur - she's the leader of a force of humans and reformed Yathi hosts dedicated to fighting the aliens wherever they can be found. Hers is a war fought in the dark, and like all wars, it has been costly. Friends have died, others have soured, and the rebellion that started out so strongly has broken into two embittered camps.

In Modern Families, Joshua Gamson brings us extraordinary family creation tales - his own included - that illuminate this changing world of contemporary kinship. Combining personal memoir and ethnographic storytelling, Modern Families tells a variety of unconventional family-creation tales - adoption and assisted reproduction, gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families - set against the social, legal, and economic contexts in which they were made.

A twisting thriller that taps into a deep well of erotic obsession, sexual betrayal, madness, and murder, Darkness Bound goes to fearless extremes to become an authentic and shocking suspense novel. In darkness…. Two strangers meet. A woman without inhibitions…a man without limits…for a private game between two consenting adults. In darkness…. They indulge in every secret fantasy, cross every boundary of sexual deviation. But one of them has a secret yet to be shared, a desire yet to be explored…

Teddy Moon, ace major league relief pitcher, manic-depressive, and occasional amnesiac - is convinced that he's being framed for the bizarre murders of several transsexuals who are turning up in the garbage chutes of his team's various hotels. Hounded by the police, the Legion of Fear, and the elite cadres of the Politically Correct, Teddy takes off cross-country on a manic binge to find someone who doesn't think he did it.

To salvage his broken-down ranch, near-bankrupt Ben Pearce devises a hunting scheme, the consequences of which he cannot begin to imagine. The prey: three rare, fierce cats - a leopard and two mountain lions caught in the wild. The predators: an arrogant Texas millionaire, his beautiful but disturbed wife, and their near-psychopathic teenage son. Each of them will hunt one of the animals with only Ben as guide: first the wife, then the son, and finally the Texan.

In the wasteland of commercial culture that is future America, police are operated not by government but by private companies. In Seattle, that role is filled by Civil Protection, and Daniel Gray is a detective in Homicide Solutions. What used to be considered an important - even glamorous - department for public police is very different for the corporate species, and Gray finds himself stuck in a dead end job. That is, until the Spine Thief arrives. When a serial killer begins harvesting the spinal tissue of corporate employees all over the city, Detective Gray finds himself plunged into the first truly major case of his career.

His whole life Carter’s fought to hold it together: To help Mom run their store. To be there for his special-needs sister, Sara, and be the perfect boyfriend Mel wants. To dominate on the basketball court - the only place he ever feels free. And to carry Mom up the stairs when she’s too smashed to make it on her own. It isn't like she has a problem. Mom loves them. If she doesn't drink every day, she's not really an alcoholic, right? Wrong. Then Kira Dawson, a girl with a bipolar wardrobe and rotating hairstyles comes to town. Somehow, she sees the truths he hides from the world.

When Benedict left home, it was maybe the first time he'd stood up to his family. It was also meant to be the last. "No contact," he said. "I'm disinvesting." In all honesty, they weren't sorry to see him go. Ben had never had their talent, never had the family spark. When you run a city - especially the way the Macallans ran theirs - the last thing you need is a reluctant passenger.

Joe "Rock" Musial was the real deal. He was a hero. As one fellow soldier put it, "Rock was an absolute legend.... I can remember guys in other units, when Rock walked around the perimeter, they'd stare and ask, 'Is what they say about him true?'"

"I knew in my mind it was a bad situation," Spc. Michael Wolfe later explained of that night in Karbala, one of the holiest Islamic cities in Iraq, in December 2004. The events that followed would change his and two other soldiers' lives forever.

A woman's cry for help prompted US Navy medic Chris Walsh to take on a risky new mission.

In hospitals and ad hoc chapels, on patrol and at makeshift altars, military chaplains help American soldiers find peace amid the chaos and danger of the front lines.

Sergeant First Class Carlos Santos-Silva died the way he served: right beside his men. Brian Mockenhaupt visits the soldiers who knew him best and last.