Showing results by narrator "James Cronin" in All Categories

In the time of the Crusades, in a world at war, a prince of immortal lineage and a spirit of fire who was once an assassin prepare to celebrate a royal wedding. But he is Christian and she is Muslim, and there are those who hate them not only for their disparate faiths but for their power and magic.

Pierce Ambrose. That was the name of the man I'd been sent to kill. The man I'd failed to kill. I have one day left to make good on my contract before the thugs holding my sister and her son start sending me pieces of them. Pierce Ambrose. A man with a secret I didn't uncover until it was too late to turn back, too late to give up on trying to kill him. Now, if I want to see my sister and nephew again, I have to try one last time. My name is Mac Brennan, and this time I'm playing for keeps.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. This anthology includes brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.

The Road to San Donato is an adventurous and nostalgic bicycling memoir of an American father and son tracing their Italian heritage. Riding rental bikes and carrying a bare minimum of supplies, Rob Cocuzzo and his 64-year-old father, Stephen, embark on a 425-mile ride from Florence to San Donato Val di Comino, an ancient village in the mountains outside of Rome from which the Cocuzzo family emigrated a hundred years earlier.

David Shields’s The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power is an immersion into the perils, limits, and possibilities of human intimacy. All at once a love letter to his wife, a nervy reckoning with his own fallibility, a meditation on the impact of porn on American culture, and an attempt to understand marriage (one marriage, the idea of marriage, all marriages), The Trouble with Men is exquisitely balanced between the personal and the anthropological, nakedness and restraint.

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.

Jinn is an angel trapped in mortal flesh, sent down from the heavens to fight, die, and be reincarnated endlessly in the war against evil. But over the years, revenge supplanted justice, and now he lives only to wreck vengeance - whatever the cost - on the dark angel of Asmodeus who killed his lover. A series of brutal occult murders, left like breadcrumbs for him to follow, lead Jinn straight to the dark angel - an invitation to a final battle for the soul of Waterdeep. But will he still be able to choose the path of justice when he is so close to his enemy, after lifetimes of failure?

In the cold spring of 1936, Arthor Crandle, down-on-his luck and desperate for work, accepts a position in Providence, Rhode Island, as a live-in assistant for an unnamed shut-in. He arrives at the gloomy colonial-style house to discover that his strange employer is an author of disturbing, bizarre fiction. Health issues have confined him to his bedroom, where he is never to be disturbed. But the writer, who Crandle knows only as "Ech-Pi", refuses to meet him, communicating only by letters left on a table outside his room.

Seattle, 2078. The future hasn't been kind to the spirit of humanity; commercial obsession and technological fetishism rules the day, religion and belief has died screaming in the fires of war, and what remains is moral decrepitude. Life in the future is hard on the soul. As an agent of the Industrial Security Bureau, Thomas Walken knows that better than anyone. His job is to keep the worst kind of black-market technology out of the hands of citizens, technology born out of the shadowy nation nicknamed Wonderland.

After thwarting an evil plot to destroy Royal Moffit, Sorch became the prisoner of a demon-worshiping cult. They imprisoned him in an attempt to steal his nightmares. One daring jailbreak later, Sorch is unleashed upon the world again. This time, however, he's not so sure he wants to go back to a life of magic and adventure. But with the help of a new friend, Sorch rediscovers his purpose in life. He embarks on a quest to save his friends, who were trapped on another plane of existence.

Matheus believes that getting Quin back will help him deal with the pressures of a vampiric war, but his hopes crumble after his soulmate fails to remember him. The tattered remnant of their mystical connection appears to drive Quin's erratic suicidal behavior, threatening their bond and their very existence. While Matheus pines for his former love, a hurt and betrayed Alastair must watch the man he loves chase another. Feeling inadequate as a leader, Matheus searches for a way to make Quin remember him, no matter the cost.

New allies. New enemies. New life. Admiral Thomas Baldwin has more to live for after the recent news. All eyes are on him as the biggest war in Concord Space history begins in earnest. Captain Treena Starling is sent to stop High Elder Wylen's allies from wreaking havoc on their already weakened partners. Ven Ittix is torn between his people and the Concord, and is offered something he could never have imagined. Lark Keen makes a decision that will affect the outcome of the Concord forever. Legacy is the end of an era. But to many, it's just the beginning....

The thrilling re-telling of Arthurian legend from master of science fiction and fantasy David Drake continues! A young Champion must rescue a friend and battle an enemy at the heart of a chaotic world. The universe has shattered into chaos and monsters. Jon, the Leader, is dedicating his life to reuniting the scattered hamlets into a Commonwealth where all humans can live protected against the darkness and the things that live in that darkness.

As the slow machine of war starts to turn, allies and enemies alike move their pieces in a bid for victory. Territories are claimed and lost. Skirmishes in deep space determine ownership of the jump lanes that crisscross the galaxy. As Barton battles his way through selection for the Special Operations Group, his old friends from Odin Nine-Five are outside the wire, protecting a politician.

The mission Jonah White Eagle and his Fierce Eagle Company had taken was nearly impossible. Land on the middle of a 7.5-mile-high plateau, walk six miles to the edge of the cliff, and scale down the 39,000-foot-high cliffs to the foothills of the canyon below. Nothing to it, right? But then there was the swamp they had to cross, full of large indigenous life forms that thought Humans made good snacks. And the rivers, full of other killers, they would have to negotiate.

Aros of Azteca and Neoloth-Pteor are the deadliest of enemies: swordsman and sorcerer, locked in mortal combat, who have tried to kill each other more times than either can count. But when the princess Neoloth loves is kidnapped, there is only one plan that offers any hope of rescue...and that requires passing off the barbarian Aros as a lost princeling and infiltrating the deadliest cabal of necromancers the world has ever seen. They cannot trust each other. They will betray or kill each other the first chance they get. But they're all each other has.

Four Grimstone teens are dead, the life seemingly vacuumed from their withered bodies. The lone clue, a magic residue in their blood. Convinced it’s the work of a supernatural drug, Sheriff Jackson entrusts the case to us while she’s away. I just need to keep my junior partner in line.

Alfred of St. Ruan's has lived his life in the seclusion of the monastery. But a badly wounded knight on a mission from the Elvenking, a beautiful and mysterious stranger who walks as both woman and beast, and a warrior king call him out of the cloister's walls into the wars and storms of the world. For he is neither mortal nor human, though he has long tried to live as both; and he can deny neither his nature nor his powerful magic.

Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady and Capt. Bob Wright were on a routine combat air patrol mission in June 1995 when they were suddenly jarred by the buzz and amber flash of their cockpit missile-warning instruments. Two supersonic SA-6 SAMs, hidden by the overcast, were streaking toward them.

Meet Dug, a scrawny but cheerful caveman who loves his valley and just wants the best for his tribe of misfits. Accompanied by his faithful pig sidekick Hognob, Dug is a dreamer - why settle for hunting rabbits when you can hunt a mammoth?! Then there’s Dug’s tribe, led by the cautious Chief Bobnar. Bobnar wants the best for the tribe, too, but he sees things a little differently from Dug. Then Dug meets the evil Lord Nooth. He’s the leader of the Bronze Age City invading the valley.