Showing results by narrator "Joel Simler" in All Categories

Romance can be a little complicated when you get sucked into a wormhole. Just ask high school English teacher June Flint. One little solar flare happens and suddenly you find yourself 85 years in the future. Eighty-five years from your dream job. Your ailing mother whose only companion in this world is you. Your favorite stuffed-crust pizza from DeLucia’s on Sunday nights. But when June’s cell phone inexplicably picks up a signal, she’s able to call back to the present—more specifically, four weeks before she accidentally time traveled.

The fifteen stories and three screenplays that make up Volumes Two and Three of the Emmy® Award–winning Netflix Original series Love, Death + Robots. Featuring bestselling authors and screenwriters from all over the globe, curated by filmmakers Tim Miller and David Fincher, and Supervising Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson.

I never figured that I’d be someone who fell for a damsel in distress. I see my share of hurting and wounded people in my job at the island health clinic. Wanting to help and heal is why I went into medicine. So why is Teresa different? No idea. All I know, is that she’s come into my clinic twice now with injuries that can’t possibly have been accidental, no matter what she said at the time. I want to protect her. I’ll do whatever it takes. Even if what she needs most is a marriage of convenience.

The Hathaway sisters might have grown up apart, but when they agree to move to Jasper Creek, Oregon, to revitalize their grandfather’s farm, it seems a straightforward decision. Until they meet their neighborhood cowboys… Sweet-natured Teddy has never met a man worth taking a risk on, until now. Tomboy Joey has more affinity with farm equipment than men, until a brooding cowboy changes her mind. Prickly baker Georgie can’t resist the temptation of the most forbidden cowboy of all, and sparks fly between ceramicist Elliot and the grumpy single-dad rancher next door.

This compulsive novel wrestles with vital questions of our time: sentience, purpose, life, death, and how to make a really good commercial. Told entirely through questionably obtained company emails, chat transcripts, TED Talks, training sessions, and more, this all-too-probable future pits emotionally intelligent AI against emotionally stunted humans.

When I convinced my friends to join me in a scheme to play the stock market, it paid off beyond our expectations. Honestly, most days I don’t even remember that I’m a billionaire. But it was big news for my family. In fact, my cousin made me guardian of her son in the event something happened to her. At face value, it sounds kind of nice. But I never really knew my cousin.

Amrapali Anna Singh is an historian and analyst capable of discerning the most cryptic and trivial details from audio recordings. One day, a mysterious man appears at her office in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, having traveled a great distance to bring her three Type IV audio cassettes that bear the stamp of a library in Buenos Aires that may or may not exist. On the cassettes is the deposition of an adventure journalist and his obsessive pursuit of an amorphous, legendary, and puzzling "City of Dreams."

At the end of summer, sixteen years ago, we promised we’d keep in touch. And I did. She didn’t. I spent a year reaching out to her in every way imaginable, desperately clinging to the future we’d planned while we walked hand-in-hand on the beach. When July rolled around again, I waited eagerly, for her family’s return. They never came. She never came. I blamed her. I blamed myself. I blamed my big, involved family who are basically royalty on this island our ancestors found. After a while, I forgave her and moved on. Of course I did. Carrying a torch for sixteen years would be ridiculous.

I never questioned my decision to marry Faith the day she turned eighteen. She needed to get out of her situation at home and, at nineteen, I already knew everything about everything, so in my mind it made perfect sense. We’d been pals for years. I loved her. She had no idea. But she was desperate for somebody to rescue her, and a marriage of convenience with me was a better—safer—choice than anything else she could find.

Hugo didn’t ask for this gift that his father, brilliant biologist Abednego Danner, bestowed upon him; a “gift” that promises a life of greatness. From being a baby that can launch himself from a second-story window unscathed, a boy that can leap canyons and hurl boulders, a football star that can beat an opposing team single-handed, a man capable of crushing an entire enemy platoon with his bare hands; surely such a person could steer the entire world to their whims. But, does the world hold any post for a man of such strength?

In 1999, the bestselling video game Tony Hawk’sPro Skater was released, and a new generation was exposed to skateboarding culture right in their very own homes. Kids and adults alike could now spend hours playing as actual skateboarders, learning the vernacular, listening to the music skateboarders loved, and having fun onscreen before trying to skate IRL in the driveway.

You ever meet someone and have that immediate click? That was Kayla and me. First day of our first teaching jobs and we both just knew we were going to be best friends forever.

Love might be a choice, but some choices are off limits. They say opposites attract—and I’m not going to disagree. In fact, I’d be doing my best to see if the attraction was mutual if not for one little thing. She’s my best friend’s little sister.

The Best of Bizarro Fiction: Vol. 2 features 11 carefully crafted surreal tales of the absurd, the hilarious, and the outright horrific. Edited by Matthew A. Clarke.

Jenna and I have been friends since college. Not besties or anything. Just the kind of friend you hit up when you want to go to a party but don’t want the pressure of a date. She’s fun. Independent. And she gets me. Which is probably why we dated for a while—more for fun than anything.

People’s Power provides a persuasive critique of a market-led transition to renewable energy. It surveys the early development of the electric grid in the United States, telling the story of battles for public control over power during the Great Depression. This history frames accounts of contemporary campaigns, in both the United States and Europe, that eschew market fundamentalism and sclerotic state power in favor of energy that is green, democratically managed, and equitably shared.

Sunny—short for Sunshine—is the best there is. And she’s got at least ten years on me, so it’s not like there can be anything romantic. Older women have never been my vibe. So I’ll spend the time with her, alone on the boat, and soak up all the things she has to teach me. And do everything in my power to ignore just how good she looks while she does it.

In a world filled with powerful witches and wizards, Professor Marcus Orren is about as magical as your average brick, leading to a life of rampant cynicism, coupled with mild-to-moderate alcohol abuse. His latest theory, an academic rebuttal of a God named Tomas, stands so air-tight that the Universe itself is forced to agree, promptly erasing the actual Tomas straight from existence. Unfortunately for Marcus, there are hundreds of Gods roaming the heavens above, and nearly all are the type to hold a grudge.

Sweet-natured Teddy has never met a man worth taking a risk on, until now. The sisters’ feelings are anything but simple, but with the love and support of each other, they discover that a cowboy might be the sweetest thing of all about coming home.

For many Americans who grew up in a small town, childhood and adolescence revolved around the skatepark. As time passes, however, these people drift away from skateboarding and the spaces where they learned to do it. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay, Small Town Skateparks is the story of an adventure to discover the role skateparks play in such lives and the role they played in the author’s own.