Showing results by narrator "James Patrick Cronin" in All Categories

For generations, the urban legend of Granny Hatchet has plagued the quiet residential area of Suvikylä in northern Finland. As the story goes, this immortal killer murders her victims with a hatchet then buries the hearts in a potato field and eats them after they've rotted black. But not everyone is convinced it is just a story.

Andrea Benito’s Sorry For Murdering You is a delirious collection of schizophrenic essays on love, life, time, creative destruction, political theory, Martin Heidegger, getting a job in the modern workplace, concerts, digital technology, Darwinism social justice, and so on. The 18 essays included here often edge on narcissistic psychobabble but still, every sentence seems to be pregnant with shocking new insights into what it means to be a human being.

The philosopher Jacques Barzun thought that "whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball". And whoever wants to know baseball had better learn about umpires. As Larry Gerlach points out in The Men in Blue, these arbiters transform competitive chaos into organized sport. They make it possible to "play ball", but nobody loves them.Considering the abuse meted out by fans and players, why would any sane person want to be an umpire? Many reasons emerge in conversations with a dozen former major-league arbiters.

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…

Rick is an unassuming limo driver and former petty thief, quietly struggling to come to terms with the sins of his past and his hopes for the future. While the anti-hero longs to one day find love and peace, he cannot easily forget his crimes and leave the past behind. A noir tale of love, murder, and reconciliation, Of Ghosts and the Living sheds light on the nature of human compassion and many ways it can manifest in our lives.

Everything you know about Occupy Wall Street is wrong. In this lively mix of memoir and analysis, writer-activist Travis Mushett takes you inside Occupy and demystifies a movement that was difficult for even its supporters to get a handle on. Pushing past the bromides, Mushett locates the source of this confusion.

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.

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.

In the baking heat of a Mexican resort town, life is spare but satisfying for David Rhodes, American exile and tennis bum, who is content with his low-key existence. But when a young female American drifter is found raped and murdered at the bottom of the seaside cliffs, Rhodes, an illegal alien, is an easy target and an immediate suspect - particularly to the town's sadistic police chief. David's comfortable life explodes in a sudden hell of accusation, imprisonment, and flight that can only end in one final, nightmarish confrontation.

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.

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.

Garth Kristinsson’s parents were free - traders, the aristocracy of con artists, able to fleece the dishonest with their own greed. But his father’s last scam went horribly wrong, and at the last, both his parents were dead. Garth wanted answers no authority could give him, so he searched for decades for any clue, any lead on his father’s partners-in-crime. One of them still lived - he would find her on the mysterious planet Nuala.

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.

Constantinople, A.D. 1203: a great army camps outside the City of Cities, and threatens it with conquest. Within the City, a Greek witch and a renegade monk who is also a white enchanter do their utmost to hold back the tides of war. But even their great powers may not be able to save Byzantium’s empire from the Western Crusade.

Alfred of St. Ruan's Abbey is a monk and a scholar, a religious man whose vocation is beyond question. But Alfred is also, without a doubt, one of the fair folk, for though he is more than seventy years old by the Abbey's records, he seems to be only a youth. But Alfred is drawn from the haven of his monastery into his dangerous currents of politics when an ambassador from the kingdom of Rhiyana to Richard Coeur de Leon is wounded and Alfred himself is sent to complete the mission.

Chronicling five years of a troubled romance, This Is Between Us offers an intimate view of one couple’s struggle - from the illicit beginnings of sexual obsession to the fragile architecture of a pieced-together family. Full of sweet moments, emotional time bombs, unexpected humor, and blunt sexuality, the daily life of this man and woman, both recently divorced, with children and baggage in tow, emerges in all of its complexity. In this utterly engrossing debut novel, Kevin Sampsell delivers a confessional tale of love between two resilient people who have staked their hearts on each other.

A new full-length collection of high fantasy by Dave Smeds. A lover spun from moonlight. A wife banished for carrying the child of a demon. A queen, beheaded ten years ago, whose sage counsel may still save the realm. Here are tales of swords, of magic, of romance. And of the struggle to be splendid of heart whether the opponent be within or without.

The defense of Castle Elfwood, hidden in an enchanted forest in Albion, from barbarians and the unearthly Orcs depends on four young people - a lord, a magician, a druidess, and an orphan - in the first book of the series.

Jaeme, new lord of Castle Elfwood, Decutonius, an unpredictable mage, the druidess Laela, and the venerable knight Cedric must confront the evil that threatens to crush Elfwood in only three days.