Showing results by narrator "Lisa Flanagan" in All Categories

Early on, the United States imposed war taxes that both demanded sacrifices from all Americans and served as reminders of their participation. Since the Korean War, the United States has increasingly moved away from war taxes. Instead, borrowing has become a permanent feature of contemporary wars. The move serves leaders well because reducing the apparent burden of war has helped mute public opposition and any decision-making constraints. But by masking accountability, however, the move away from war taxes undermines the basis for democratic restraint in wartime.

Scorpia Kaiser has always stood in Corvus's shadow until the day her older brother abandons their family to participate in a profitless war. However, becoming the heir to her mother's smuggling operation is not an easy transition for the always rebellious, usually reckless, and occasionally drunk pilot of the Fortuna, an aging cargo ship and the only home Scorpia has ever known. But when a deal turns deadly and Corvus returns from the war, Scorpia's plans to take over the family business are interrupted, and the Kaiser siblings are forced to make a choice....

When the shadowwalkers were victorious in their battle against the Ant Queen, they hoped their work to save Caldera was done. But the rainforest has begun to rumble. Rumi, a scholarly tree frog who can control the wind, must bring his band of animal friends to face the greatest danger they’ve yet encountered - the giant volcano beneath the jungle itself. While the volcano roars, rumors of a mysterious evil blanket Caldera - the Elemental of Darkness has emerged and is building a legion of followers.

For nine-year-old Flora Smallwood, Rosetown, Indiana, is full of surprises, many of the best of which happen at the Wing and a Chair Used Book Shop, where she loves to read vintage children’s books after school in the faded purple chair by the window. But lately, those surprises haven't been so good. Her dear old dog, Laurence, recently passed away. Not long after, her parents decided to take a breather from their marriage, and now, Flora has to move back and forth between their two houses. Plus, she's just begun fourth grade, and it is so much different than third.

When a Harvard Architecture School superstar plunges off the balcony at a graduation party, the police see an accident, not foul play. But fellow-student Iris Reid knows that any jealous member of the ruling clique would have relished pushing him off. Twenty years later, a reunion is luring the same cast of characters back to Cambridge. The opening night dinner is being held in a Modernist house that Iris has designed. She hopes to untangle the events that led to her friend's death. But the murderer has other plans.

Fetching was once the only female rider in the Lot Lands. Now she is the leader of her own hoof, a band of loyal half-orcs sworn to her command. But in the year since she took power, the True Bastards have struggled to survive. Tested to the breaking point by the burdens of leadership, Fetching battles desperately to stave off famine, desertion and the scorn of the other half-orc chieftains, even as orcs and humans alike threaten the Lots' very existence. Then an old enemy finds a way to strike at her from beyond the grave - and suddenly only one faint hope for salvation remains.

In the wake of her father's death, Rose Newlin finds solace in her work as a book restorer. Then, one rainy Connecticut afternoon, a struggling painter appears at her door. William Lomazzo brings with him a 16th-century treatise on art, which Rose quickly identifies as a palimpsest: a document written over a hidden diary that had purposely been scraped away. Yet the restoration sparks an unforeseen challenge when William - a married man - and Rose experience an instant, unspoken attraction.

Here is a celebration of the bizarre and beautiful, and a marriage of unlikely worlds. From a reverence of the dead to the sacrifices the living make to unspeakable gods, from clockwork dreams to tales of merciless revenge, Kiernan blurs the artificial lines of genre, and shows us a world where there is no division between the light and dark.

The year is 1861, the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. For Kate Warn, the first female private detective in American history, the only assignment tougher than exposing a conspiracy to assassinate the new president is training her new mentee, Hattie MacLaughlin, in the art of detection. The two women’s mission to save the president takes them from the granges of rural Maryland to the heart of secessionist high society, and sets them on a collision course that could alter the course of history.

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.

Husband and wife Archie and Francine Hughes are heroes in their hometown of Philadelphia. Archie is a football star, while Francine is a Grammy-winning singer. So everyone is in a state of shock when news breaks about the seemingly perfect couple. One spouse is murdered. The other is Suspect Number One. Even before the case hits the courtroom, it's the hottest ticket in town. For the defence: Cooper Lamb, private investigator to the stars. For the prosecution: Veena Lion, an attorney so bright she's got to wear shades.

Ella is nearing 30, and not yet living the life she imagined. Her artistic ambitions as a student in Minnesota have given way to an unintended career in caregiving. One spring, Bryn - a retired carpenter - hires her to help him care for Jill, his wife of many years. As Ella is drawn ever deeper into the couple's household, she is profoundly moved by the tenderness Bryn shows toward Jill. Ella is startled by the yearning this awakens in her, one that complicates her feelings for her girlfriend, Alix, and causes her to look at relationships of all kinds in new ways.

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.

This collection of 22 short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow.

Kyler Centaurus isn't your typical runaway. All he wanted was a quick trip to the legendary Fasti Sun Festival. Who wouldn't want to see new stars being born? Um, try Kyler's entire family. When an accidental launch sequence ends with Kyler hurtling through space on the family cruiser, the thrill of freedom is cut short by two space pirates determined to steal his ship. Not happening! Luckily, Kyler bumps into Fig, a savvy young Wanderer who makes a living by blowing up asteroids. She could really use a ride to Earth and Kyler could really use a hand with the pirates.

Almost a year has passed since Anika and Gretel's horrifying night in an abandoned cannery in the Back Country and the subsequent beginning of their quest to the Old Country for answers to the mysteries of Orphism. But rumors are reaching the far shore that the evil Witch of the North, presumed dead since that night of terror, is alive and strong. And hunting again. But this time, no one is safe. Everyone Gretel loves is in danger, and she must summon a new level of power and conviction to end her family's nightmare forever.

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals and have politicians, doctors and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges listeners into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before, Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact.

From one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists comes Certain American States, whose insightful and lonely stories beg you to discover the emotional universes hiding at their cores. Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States, her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels, she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating.

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.

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.