Showing results by publisher "Scribd Audio" in Literature & Fiction

The Morthans were physically and mentally superior. Descended from humans, they were now, literally, “more-than" human … and considered the human race to be little better than animals. They would stop at nothing to conquer the remaining human-controlled worlds. Docked for repairs after a harrowing battle with a Morthan ship, Jonathan Korie and his crew discover they have a Morthan imp aboard—a Morthan weapon so quick they have no chance of catching it, so clever they have no hope of outsmarting it and so deadly they have no choice but to try.

Joseph Lee lost his wife, the love of his life. She was slain in their home, right under his nose. As if the grief weren’t enough, Lee was also blamed for her murder. At the end of the day, the detectives didn’t have any proof that Lee was the murderer, but that didn’t stop the community from shunning him or his friends and family from cutting him out of their lives. They didn’t need proof, they said. Left to stew in his own self-loathing, a miserable existence of solitude and narcotics, Lee is alone with his regrets and his remorse. But his life is about to change.

Herman isn’t like other teens his age. He isn’t like the academic elite, the geeky students who get all the grades and are adored by their teachers. He isn’t like the extroverts, the socially adept and popular kids who never want for anything and always have a shoulder to cry on. And he isn’t like the bullies, the ones who taunt and beat him on a daily basis. Herman isn’t like any of his peers, or indeed anyone he knows. The person Herman identifies with the most, the person he idolizes and yearns to be, is The Butcher, a brutal and prolific serial killer. 

A woman has vanished on the Camino de Santiago, the ancient five-hundred-mile pilgrimage that crosses northern Spain. Daniel, an Irish expat, walks the lonely trail carrying his wife, Petra’s, ashes, along with the damning secret of how she really died.

The stories in Elegy on Kinderklavier explore the profound loss and intricate effects of war on lives that have been suddenly misaligned. Arna Bontemps Hemenway’s stories feel pulled out of time and place, and the suffering of his characters seem at once otherworldly and stunningly familiar.

With a lucrative freelance career and a loving family, Deborah Earle has a life many women would envy. But her daughter, Amanda, is heading to college soon, and Deborah worries about having an empty nest. She thinks another child might be the answer. Her husband, Richard, however, may not be willing to start over so late in life.

 Lisa Pearl is an American teaching English in Japan, and the situation there - thanks mostly to her spontaneous, hard-partying ways - has become problematic. Now she’s in Seoul, South Korea, with her childhood best-friend, Mindy. The young women share a special bond: They are both Korean-born adoptees into white American families. Mindy is in Seoul to track down her birth mom, and wants Lisa to do the same. Trouble is Lisa isn’t convinced she needs to know about her past, much less meet her biological mother. 

The lead-up to Christmas sees the Connection private investigation team planning their festive season. Until a new case arrives. Catapulted into their biggest mystery yet, they are tasked with finding a killer who has been released on parole, and subsequently disappeared. Has he returned to finish the murder he tried to commit before his capture? As he targets his intended victim, his attention is also focused on the private investigators and their police colleagues with devastating effect. With families torn apart, Doris must seek assistance from a colleague from her past.

A house on a quiet street on the south side of Glasgow. Neat, terraced homes with manicured lawns and pruned trees. Not the sort of place that reeks of decay or where dead bluebottles pile up on a windowsill. When the police break in, there’s a surprise in store for them. They find Julie Campbell’s decaying body at her desk, her laptop open beside her. She’s a well-liked, respectable woman. On the laptop is a confession – to five murders.

Bit by bit, stone by stone, Jathen is building a foundation on which will stand his mastery of his rare ability. If he can survive a few lumps from his teacher, that is. As Jathen gains more confidence and skill, things seem to be going his way, except for a still-looming prophecy of doom. Seeing the future may be something a talent like Jathen was born to do, but even Jathen’s most powerful teacher can only help so much in understanding what to do with those visions. Suddenly, the all-too-familiar rumbling beneath his feet begins, and disaster strikes.

In Hysteria, we meet a young woman an hour into yet another alcohol-fueled, masochistic, sexual bender at her local bar. There is a new bartender working this time, one she hasn't seen before, but who can properly make a drink. He looks familiar, and as she is consumed by shame from her behavior the previous week - hooking up with her parents' colleague and her roommate's brother - she also becomes convinced that her Brooklyn bartender is actually Sigmund Freud. They embark on a relationship, and she is forced to confront her past. 

With the world’s oceans ravaged by climate change, Émeraude, a young marine biologist, works to preserve aquatic ecosystems by recreating them for zoos. When her work earns her a spot aboard a research vessel with an extended mission in the Arctic, it is the inescapable draw of the ocean that will save her when the world she leaves behind is irrevocably changed. Stories of Émeraude’s ancestors—a young sailor abandoned at birth, a conjuror who mixes potions, and a talented young singer born to a mother who cannot speak—weave their way through her intimate reflections.

Diabolically funny and subversively philosophical, Italian novelist Giacomo Sartori’s I Am God is the diary of the Almighty’s existential crisis that erupts when he falls in love with a human.

“As far as I know, you can only die once…” But when Aetna Simmons disappears from her lonely Bermuda cottage, she leaves behind not one but ten suicide notes. Ten different suicide notes. And no other trace to speak of, not even a corpse, as if she’d never existed. Drafts of a Suicide Note is the darkly enigmatic love letter of Kenji Okada-Caines, a petty criminal who once exposited on English literary classics and now, marooned on his native isle, nurtures an obsession with Aetna’s writing.

The boy does not speak. The boy has no name. The boy, raised half-wild in the forests of southern France, sets out alone into the wilderness and the greater world beyond. Having never encountered another person aside from his mother, the boy must learn what it is to be human, to exist among people, and to live beyond simple survival.

Victoria Parker knew her dad's behavior toward her was a little unusual, but she convinced herself everything was fine - until she found herself locked out of the house at 3:00 a.m., surrounded by flashing police lights. Now, dumped into a crowded, chaotic foster home, Victoria has to tiptoe around her domineering foster mother, get through senior year at a new school, and somehow salvage her college dreams...all while keeping her past hidden. But some secrets won't stay buried - especially when unwanted memories make Victoria freeze up at random moments....

On the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, Doctor Quintana pines for head nurse Menéndez while he and his colleagues embark on a grisly series of experiments to investigate the line between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object. How far are we willing to go, Larraquy asks, in pursuit of transcendence? 

The southwestern-most metropolis in the contiguous United States, resting a mere 40 feet above sea level, tends to garner positive national attention. San Diego is home to the world-famous San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park (with its history reaching back to the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition), temperate climes, and a sunny reputation. It is also the home of shooter Brenda Ann "I Don’t Like Mondays" Spencer, disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and San Diego County medical examiner-turned-killer Kristin Rossum.

While all Iraqis will readily agree that their life has always been noir, the majority of the stories in Baghdad Noir are set in the years following the American invasion of 2003, though one story is set in 1950 and three are set in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet it is this recent history of Iraq—over the last few decades—that serves to inform its present....

Welcome to Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2089. A city notorious for its extreme population density has found an unexpected way to not just survive a global climate apocalypse, but thrive: pump enough biological nanotech into the neighborhood and all of the bodies together form a self-sustaining, and even temperate, microclimate. Certain people no longer need food or water, while others can live without functioning organs. So the mercenary Djibrel has to carry a machete wherever he goes. What Djibrel doesn’t know is that his every move is being tracked by the infamous Cyber Mage.