Showing results by narrator "Bronson Pinchot" in All Categories

The year is 1973, and Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, accidental cultural critic, washed-up war journalist, husband, and philanderer finds himself alone on the floor of his study in an existential crisis. His wife has taken their kids and left him to live with her mother in New Jersey, and his best work feels as though it is years behind him. In the depths of despair, he receives an unexpected and unwelcome phone call from his old rival, offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write the definitive account of the end of America's longest war.

A train ride home from a school field trip turns sinister when two kids spot a body on the tracks. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

The second volume in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading is chock-full of mystery, intrigue, and nefarious activity. Featuring some of the best writers around, and compiled by certified guy Jon Scieszka, Guys Read: Thriller is a pulse-pounding collection of brand-new short stories, each one guaranteed to keep you riveted until the final page.

Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda.

Conn Whitman’s long-distance swims keep him centered and sane—until a terrifying underwater encounter in a woodland lake plunges him into the middle of a murder investigation. Once a superstar investigative reporter, disgraced by misconduct, Conn returned to his Vermont hometown to put his life back together. Now, after ten years on the job, he knows his community like nobody else. So, when he kicks a submerged object while swimming—something with the density and resilience of human flesh—he immediately wonders if it’s connected to an unsolved murder in a nearby town.

Lily King’s literary mastery, her spare and stunning prose, and her gift for creating lasting and treasured characters is on full display in this curated selection of short fiction. Five Tuesdays in Winter showcases an exhilarating new form for this extraordinarily gifted author writing at the height of her career.

The unbelievable true story of Harrison Post - the enigmatic lover of one of the richest men in 1920s Hollywood - and the battle for a family fortune.

In Making Supper Safe, Ben Hewitt exposes the vulnerabilities inherent to the US food industry, where the majority of our processing facilities are inspected only once every seven years. It turns out that in our increasingly complicated food system, pathogenic bacteria are everywhere. Food recalls have become so ubiquitous we hardly even notice them.

A collection of timeless Westerns from some of the most well-known authors of the genre, including Zane Grey and Max Brand: "The Little Gold Miners" by Joaquin Miller, "Bulger's Reputation" by Bret Harte, "The Leaf of Red Rose" by W.H.H. Murray, "The Secret of Macarger's Gulch" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Californian's Tale" by Mark Twain, "Twelve O'Clock" by Stephen Crane, "The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo" by Gerturde Atherton, "A Deal in Wheat" by Frank Norris, "The Caballero's Way" by O. Henry, and more.

Sam Lattimore meets Elizabeth Church in 1970s Halifax, in an art gallery. The sparks are immediate, leading quickly to a marriage that is dear, erotically charged, and brief. In Howard Norman's spellbinding and moving novel, the gleam of the marriage and the circumstances of Elizabeth's murder are revealed in heart-stopping increments. Sam's life afterward is complicated. Sam has begun "seeing" Elizabeth - not only seeing but holding conversations with her, almost every evening, and watching her line up books on a small beach.

These five classic mysteries offer chilling darkness, drama, and intrigue. Includes: "Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe; "Silver Blaze" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; "The Secret of the Growing Gold" by Bram Stoker; "The Honour of Israel Gow" by G. K. Chesterton; and "The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens.

In the early 1900s, as the oppression of Russia's imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings - Ilmari, Matti, and young Aino - are forced to flee to the United States. Not far from the majestic Columbia River, the siblings settle among other Finns in a logging community in southern Washington, where the first harvesting of the colossal forests begets rapid development, and radical labor movements begin to catch fire. The brothers face the excitement and danger of pioneering this frontier, while Aino devotes herself to organizing the industry's first unions.

Since the age of thirteen, Lanny Budd has been more than an eyewitness to history. From the Paris Peace Conference to the Battle of the Bulge, he has played key roles in the extraordinary events of his age. Now, forty years later, Presidential Agent 103 is coming out of retirement to serve his country—and the free world—once more. A counterfeiting conspiracy hatched by unrepentant neo-Nazis threatens to gravely damage America’s efforts to rebuild and stabilize a divided Germany.

As a spy for President Franklin Roosevelt, Lanny Budd was able to infiltrate the inner circle of the Nazi high command and glean essential information on behalf of the Allied cause. Now, as the terrible global conflict approaches its long-awaited conclusion, the newly commissioned Captain Budd of the US Army is on hand to witness the final collapse of the Third Reich in the aftermath of the Battle of the Bulge.

One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York—the same night her grandmother dies—or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared. But for our purposes Allie’s story begins at the end, when she is finally ready to tell her version of what happened with a white supremacist named Matthew Strong.

The end of residency isn’t the utopia you might have imagined. You know what to do with the medical stuff, but what about navigating private practice, unfamiliar hospitals, and—patients! In this collection of absurd moments, practical advice, and humorous tales from the medical trenches, Dr. John Chase shares stories from his forty years as an orthopedic surgeon and offers insight into how to be successful, have fun, and take care of patients without missing out on what really matters in life.

A short-story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Unearth your next great story with Assemble Artifacts.

In Admit This to No One, we meet a group of women connected to a central figure either personally or professionally, and for better or for worse - an all-powerful and elusive speaker of the House, whose political career has only stopped short of being presidential due to his myriad extra-marital affairs. The speaker’s daughters from his several failed marriages have a complicated relationship with him to say the least - alternating between longing for his affection or bristling with resentment, and occasionally relief at being left out of the spotlight.

The setting is Seattle's Lake City neighborhood during the 2001 holiday season. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and at the peak of Seattle's first wave of tech-boom gentrification - a wave that never quite made it to his neighborhood - Lane Bueche schemes how to win back his wife (and her trust fund). In his childhood bedroom in his mother's decrepit old house, the idealistic but self-serving striver Lane licks his wounds and hatches a plot.

Their ambitious TV-movie needs to be made fast and cheap, but a brutal murder grinds production to a halt. An approaching forest fire forces everyone to evacuate. In the confusion not everyone gets out. Eddie is the alcoholic director, Sheila the vulnerable camera assistant, Tom the self-centered actor, and Sondra the spurned sheriff's deputy. Death comes sudden and silent. The camouflaged killer's weapon of choice is a high-tech hunting bow. The mysterious assassin has an agenda.