Showing results by narrator "Lisa Flanagan" in All Categories

Game of Thrones is a fantasy that features a lot of made-up science - fabricated climatology (when is winter coming?), astronomy, metallurgy, chemistry, and biology. Most fans of George R. R. Martin's fantastical world accept it all as part of the magic. A trained scientist, watching the fake science in Game of Thrones, might think, "But how would it work?" In Fire, Ice, and Physics, Rebecca Thompson turns a scientist's eye on Game of Thrones, exploring the science of an ice wall, the genetics of the families, and the biology of beheading.

The lives of writers can often best be understood through the eyes of those who nurtured them and made their work possible. In The Sweetest Fruits, these three women tell the story of their time with Lafcadio Hearn, a globetrotting writer best known for his books about Meiji-era Japan. In their own unorthodox ways, these women are also intrepid travelers and explorers. Their accounts witness Hearn's remarkable life but also seek to witness their own existence and luminous will to live unbounded by gender, race, and the mores of their time.

With her face on wanted posters from New York to Missouri, Christal Van Alen dons a disguise, determined to clear her name by bringing the real killer to justice. But when outlaws ambush her wagon train, her fate falls into the hands of the most dangerous gunslinger in the West. Bringing a gang of deadly felons to justice was supposed to be Macauley Cain's last job. Then the Confederate soldier-turned-undercover US marshal could retire in peace. But first he is going to solve the mystery of the beautiful blonde in widow's weeds.

A Is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan’s first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull, along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan’s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind....

Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through this collection by Amy Bloom, the New York Times bestselling author of Away. Bloom's astonishing and astute new work of interconnected stories illuminates the mysteries of passion, family, and friendship. Propelled by Bloom's dazzling prose, unmistakable voice, and generous wit, Where the God of Love Hangs Out takes us to the margins and the centers of real people's lives, exploring the changes that love and loss create.

Louisiana, 1875: in the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest. Louisiana, 1987: Arriving in Augustine, Louisiana, first-year teacher Benedetta Silva finds herself teaching students whose poverty-stricken lives she can scarcely comprehend. The town is impossibly set in its ways, suspicious of new ideas and new people. But amid the gnarled live oaks and ancient plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey and a hidden book that could change everything.

There are few art forms as visceral and emotional as opera - and few that are as daunting for newcomers. A Mad Love offers a spirited and indispensable tour of opera's eclectic past and present, beginning with Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607, generally considered the first successful opera, through classics like Carmen and La Boheme, and spanning to Brokeback Mountain and The Death of Klinghoffer in recent years.

Although Scott Brisbane is human, he's developed an inner warrior - a berserker that wants to claim Irja Vainio as his own. Irja is an immortal Viking healer, but she hasn't used her true powers for centuries. The last time she did, someone close to her ended up dead. So instead she relies on medicine and science to protect her tribe while denying her feelings for Scott.

With an in-depth look at the two most empowering years in the life of Marilyn Monroe, The Girl details how The Seven Year Itch created an icon and sent the star on an adventure of self-discovery and transformation from a controlled wife and contract player into a businesswoman and unlikely feminist whose power is still felt today. When Marilyn Monroe stepped over a subway grating as The Girl in The Seven Year Itch and let a gust of wind catch the skirt of her pleated white dress, an icon was born.

It's been a year since the mysterious godsgem cured Cadrium's king and ushered in what promised to be a new golden age. The heroes who brought home the gem are renowned in story and song, but for two fellows on the quest, peace and prosperity don't come easily.

Tens of thousands of crows invading Auburn, Pennsylvania, is a problem for everyone in town except 17-year-old Leighton Barnes. For Leighton, it’s no stranger than her house, which inexplicably repairs itself every time her father loses his temper and breaks things. Leighton doesn’t have time for the crows - it’s her senior year, and acceptance to her dream college is finally within reach. But grabbing that lifeline means abandoning her sisters, a choice she’s not ready to face.

In a radical departure from her urban life, Ann Turner buys a piece of remote Vermont land and sets up a tent home in the forest. In an effort to escape an unending string of personal disasters in Boston, she hopes to find a kind of peace in this new life. She soon learns she was mistaken in thinking a kindly Mother Earth would grant her wisdom and serenity in her new home. The forest confronts her with unanticipated dangers, aching loneliness, harsh weather, and wildlife. Then necessity requires her to start work as a farmhand.

The fantastic has always been at the edges of Heather O’Neill’s work.In Daydreams of Angels, O’Neill’s first collection of short stories, she gives free rein to her imaginative gifts. In “Swan Lake for Beginners”, generations of Nureyev clones live out their lives in a grand Soviet experiment. In “The Holy Dove Parade”, a teenage cult follower writes a letter to explain the motivation behind her crime. And in another tale, a grandmother reveals where babies come from: the beach, where young mothers-to-be hunt for infants in the surf.

Abel and Janice meet at a school for the deaf. Sign language brings them together, enabling them to survive and, indeed, to forge a love too powerful to be broken by the world into which they were born. Spanning forty years, from the late 1920s to the early 1960s, In This Sign follows the lives of Abel, Janice, and their hearing daughter, Margaret, as they contend uneasily with the “Outside”—a world designed, often purposely, to be inhospitable to those like them.

Five-year-old Ava Boone vanished without a trace six months ago. No witnesses, no sightings or arrests. But Grace Wright just moved in next door to the only suspect the case had: quiet, middle-aged Leland Ernest. Recently divorced, Grace uprooted her two small children to start again and hopes the move will reset her crippling insomnia. With whispered neighborhood gossip and increasingly sleepless nights, Grace develops a fierce obsession with Leland and the safety of her children. Could she really be living next door to a child-kidnapper? A murderer?

Paris, 1989: Alone in her luminous apartment on Île Saint-Louis, Sylvie discovers a mysterious letter among her late lover Julien's possessions, launching her into a decades-old search for a child who vanished in the turbulence of the Second World War. She is unaware that she is watched over by Julien's ghost, his love for her powerful enough to draw him back to this world, though doomed now to remain a silent observer. Sylvie's quest leads her deep into the secrets of Julien's past, shedding new light on the dark days of Nazi-occupied Paris

Reap the health benefits of Ayurveda and optimize your seasonal routines with powerful, personalized self-care rituals to achieve sustainable weight loss, increased focus, and improved mental health. According to the ancient texts of Ayurveda, “All diseases begin at the junctions of the seasons.” When we push against the essence of each season - going to bed late in the winter, eating sweet, heavy foods in the spring, or neglecting our skincare in the summer - we fall out of sync with nature and optimal health.

Even as her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, FBI Agent Elsa Myers can't ignore a call for help. A teenage girl has disappeared from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads obscures the fact that she did not go willingly. With each passing hour, as the hunt for Ruby deepens into a search for a man who may have been killing for years, Elsa's carefully compartmentalized world collapses around her. She finds missing people, but she knows too well how it feels to be lost.

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 14th collection of short fiction, comprising 28 uncollected and impossible-to-find stories. Here are 28 tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.

A discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history. From these strands of fact, Geraldine Brooks weaves a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history. A gripping reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America, Horse is the latest masterpiece from a writer with a prodigious talent for bringing the past to life.