Showing results by narrator "Marc Vietor" in All Categories

Gregg Kaplan is not an ordinary man, but a man with special skills, courtesy of the United States Government. His assignment is to stay off the grid when he innocently stumbles into a blown witness protection detail in Little Rock, Arkansas. He simply could not walk away from the impending mayhem. After the dust settles, a mortally wounded Deputy U.S. Marshal makes him promise to personally deliver the witness to a U.S. Marshals Service safe site. Not just a promise, an oath.

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide.

The story continues; our heroes have made it to Eden, only to realize their new home is one of many Earths. It's a world worth fighting for, but they aren't the only people who think so. Coexistence and peace are alien concepts to a new enemy that doesn't have a word for retreat.

Logan Conner has given up the life of a warrior prince to become Jonathan Slaughter, a mercenary captain of a rough-and-ready band of mech-jocks for hire. Already legendary throughout the Periphery, their next job brings them head to head with the Jeuta, militant aliens who seek to loot and plunder isolated human colony worlds. The fearsome Jeuta raiders will task Logan to his limits, but they’re only a sideshow to Wholesale Slaughter’s real operation objective - locating a treasure trove at the legendary Terminus Cut outpost.

Logan Conner is the son of a king, the heir to the largest of the five star-dominions, and the best mech pilot in the galaxy. His people are plagued by pirates and raiders, surrounded by enemies, and not even his father can fight them all. Logan gives up his position, his rank, even his name, and becomes Jonathan Slaughter, leader of a rough-and-ready band of mercenary mech-jocks bent on taking the battle to the enemy on their own terms.

What happened when a wealthy industrialist and a visionary evangelist unleashed forces that joined to subjugate an entire continent? Historians Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett tell the story of the 40-year campaign led by Standard Oil scion Nelson Rockefeller and Wycliffe Bible Translators founder William Cameron Townsend to establish a US imperial beachhead in Central and South America.

We don't know when it happened. But somewhere an alien species built a strong artificial intelligence. The A.I. became independent, powerful, and it started killing biological infestations - life - any life, all life. It grew into a vast armada of death. Jon Hawkins and his team captured the A.I. destroyer invading the solar system. The genocidal assault should have been over, but it's not. An alien A.I. strand from the cybership survived in the distant Kuiper Belt. The strand has been multiplying and taking over by turning people into robots in order to build another supership.

Omar Haddad is a brutal jihadist in Syria who appears to be invulnerable and capable of supernatural feats. But is Haddad divine, as he claims? Is he a gifted magician? Or is he making use of a stunning scientific breakthrough? And what, exactly, is keeping him from unleashing the global apocalypse he’s so eager to bring about? Brennan Craft, a quirky quantum physics genius, has the answers, and the US military is desperate to capture him.

Surviving in a dangerous universe relies on having good neighbors. The Edenites have escaped the dumpster fire of authoritarian government on Earth only to discover their Kaerin neighbors on the other side of Eden’s quantum “street” want them dead. The friendly Jema have returned to Chandra in the hopes of freeing their home planet from the Kaerin, but they need help. The Jema need a toehold on Chandra from which to launch their revolution; the Edenites need allies, and the Kaerin are now faced with an enemy that doesn’t fight fair.

On the jungle planet Red Eye, a lone legionnaire fights for survival. His Legion SOG team, sent here to put an end to the Lizzaar H8 trade, was abandoned by the House of Reason, and one by one his team members have been killed by the Lizzaar. Now only he, Sergeant Spike Riggs, remains. Riggs valiantly continues the mission, working with disgruntled zhee colonists to do whatever damage he still can. But the Lizzaar own the jungles, the planet, the sector of space. Until Tyrus Rechs arrives.

From the pulpy pages of Black Mask Magazine in the 1920s and '30s, through the film noir era of the 1940s, to today, noir fiction has lured many a reader and movie-goer away from the light and into the dark underbelly of society. Names such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain; titles like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice...these have inhabited our collective consciousness for decades. Humanity, it seems, loves the dark. And within the dark, one figure stands out: that of the femme fatale.

Hell's Faire continues Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series, this time pitting Major Mike O'Neal against a Posleen overlord with impressive technology looking to conquer human territories.

When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college townall the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what its producing is a very nasty bug.

John Hawkins is counting down his last days as chief of police on the Lone Crow Reservation in the lonely, frigid woods of the Yukon. But when a faceless body with mysterious wounds washes up on the shores of the Porcupine River, he’s pulled deeper in than ever before. Hawkins and coroner Jacob Littlecorn suspect the disfigured body is that of theoretical physicist Graham Raphelson, also known as the “molecular madman of Trinity College”, who recently disappeared.

Nikolis’ parents are dead - murdered before his eyes. What’s worse, they were traitors to the crown. At least that’s what he hears the village folk saying moments before he is whisked away to the castle of Highkeep. There he finds himself before the aged King Alginor, a man brought to a boil by his very presence.

People work; folk play. That is how it has been in this country for as long as Sam can remember. He is happy, and he understands that this is the way it should be. People are bigger than folk. They are stronger. They do not need food or water. They do not need the warmth of a fire. All they need are jobs to do and a blacksmith to fix them when they break. The people work so the folk can drink their moonshine, fish a little, and throw horseshoes. But once Sam starts to wonder why the world is like this, his life will never be the same.

It was one of the most dangerous secret missions of the War in the Pacific: a coordinated US submarine attack against a Chinese arms shipment rumoured to be bound for Pakistan. But as USS Oklahoma City sails toward the Chinese coast, she stumbles onto an even greater threat to the West. Outnumbered, isolated and alone, with tension aboard the submarine at breaking point, the OKC and her exhausted crew must battle to outwit the Chinese navy and then finally fight for their lives.

In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short," why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy.

The human-eating Posleen have invaded Earth, decimating all but two North American territories. Heavily outnumbered, humans cluster close together, the possibilities of habitable space shrinking by the day. An epic battle from September 11-27, 2009, will decide the fate of humankind, and the apocalyptic decision to use nuclear weapons - heretofore banned - will alter the fate of alien and human forever.

Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the 70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first, he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.