Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Anthologies

Two strangers in bar end up in the back seat of a car. What makes us human…and what makes us a killer. “Car Seat” is a noir short story that appears in Douglas Light’s collection Blood Stories, also available on audible.com.

A prostitute takes shelter with a group of young anarchists. A sister goes missing, mailing a trail of encoded postcards from destinations across the globe. The daughters of a Montreal bagel-shop owner navigate the tricky terrain of being young, Sikh, and female, one growing larger while the other fades. A woman watches with lust and longing as the object of her affections, her pregnant roommate, is pursued by an unsavory suitor.

Mario and Luciano are twin brothers trying to scratch a dishonest living in the slums of Palermo. Mario is wild, dangerous, and a natural leader; Luciano is his brother's nervous shadow, reluctantly following him in all things. When the twins rob and kill a shopkeeper, Mario thinks they are going up in the world. He longs to be recognized by the Mafia hierarchy and will do anything to achieve his aim. The brothers move on to an ambitious bank heist and a bloody shootout in the streets of Palermo.

An army surgeon must amputate a soldier's leg in a crude field hospital during the Civil War. The doctor is so skilled that he accomplishes most of the operation in a mere 40 seconds - an assistant times the procedure - yet his mind is consumed with thoughts of the personal toll the war has taken on him.

Paris. 1968. A young woman has an affair. The one-night stand may be a failure, but the buttery croissant she eats on a snowy morning-after is not. Even after she marries and has children, time won't stop polishing that simple memory, until it glows in unexpected ways.

Eighteen-year-old Donna is set to marry Randy Carter, her high school sweetheart, who unlike her icy, distant father, is demonstrative and affectionate. Donna has big plans to attend college after her marriage, and the future looks promising. On the morning of the ceremony, however, as Donna pins a carnation to her father's lapel, their unprecedented closeness stirs something in her and she has second thoughts about the wedding. Her father insists on walking her down the aisle to deliver her to Randy,

George Plimpton was no ordinary writer slaving in a garret. He knew everyone, corresponded with everyone, and traveled the world collecting all manner of ephemera. When he died he left behind an enormous stash of literary miscellany - letters from Hunter Thompson, postcards from Raymond Carver, marked-up book drafts, slides from a Playboy shoot... What to do with it all?

This story, set in Texas, is about a mother, her troubled son, and the redemptive powers of love. When gentle-natured Margie Clammor meets motherhood, she's in for the fight of her life. Her charming, manipulative son Tommy has a genius for trouble, and Margie battles year after year to remain his advocate and convince the world to see the good in him. That is, until grown-up Tommy is accused of committing an act so horrific that Margie must either face the facts or surrender everything she holds dear.

Dragged to a speed dating event by her best friend, newly separated Tacie finds herself learning more about the reasons for her own failed relationship than she bargained for.

After running away from her drug kingpin boyfriend (and turning him in to the cops), pregnant Amber hides away in her friend Higgins' house. Higgins works at a convalescent facility and writes morbid short stories, but she feels safe - until both her body and Higgins start to change on her. On Halloween night, it becomes clear who is wearing a disguise and why.

For All the Obvious Reasons is Lynn Stegner's superb collection of nine remarkably distinct tales of passion, clear-eyed wisdom, and honesty honed to a cutting edge. These are stories the listener can't shake: A woman living a marital shadow life realizes that her long compensating heart has begun to ominously decompensate. An affluent New Yorker becomes a hoarder to escape a future he cannot bear to take up. A baby dies in a miasma of sibling resentments, and from that the secrets of culpability unravel.

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

Buffalo, New York, is still the second-largest metropolis in the state, but in recent years its designation as the Queen City has been elbowed aside by a name that's pure noir: The City of No Illusions. Presidents came from here; and in 1901 a president was killed here while visiting the Pan-American Exposition, by a man who checked into a hotel under a name that translates as Nobody.

In this extraordinary collection of holiday novellas, vampires turn to Angelina Ricci - vampire matchmaker extraordinaire - to help them find that special someone to curl up with under the mistletoe....

Ms. Freedman's high school English class writes essays in which mystical creatures resolve the greatest sociopolitical problems of our time. Students include Janice Gibbs, "a feral child with excessive eyeliner and an anti-authoritarian complex that would be interesting were it not so ill-informed", and Cody Splunk, an aspiring writer working on a time machine. Following a nervous breakdown, Ms. Freedman corresponds with Janice and Cody from an insane asylum.

It is four days before Christmas, and all is not quiet as the characters you grew to love in The Deadly Series books fight their inner demons and deception and pray for miracles in this action-packed thriller. Shawn Isaac is a bright five-year-old who has experienced more than his share of domestic violence and abuse. His disappearance on the day he testifies against his father terrifies a county that has already lost three young women to a vicious serial killer.

Violence, love, and a torrent of blood. A man wakes in a grimy hotel to find his marriage has ended but not in divorce. An orphan discovers he has a sister and a grisly family secret. And the loss of an infant son drives a man back to his brutal, bad ways. From the Manhattan's Lower East Side to the west coast of Africa, the seven noir stories in this riveting collection cut to the core of what makes us human - and what makes us killers.

"Providence was founded in 1636 by a rogue named Roger Williams. Williams escaped here when Massachusetts was ready to deport him back to England. In the almost 400 years since, we've become infamous for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, including serving as home base for the Patriarca crime family for decades. My very own Uncle Eddie - I can hear Mama Rose screaming at me: 'He wasn't a blood relative! He was related through marriage!' - was gunned down in the Silver Lake section of town in 1964."

The stories in Paper Heart investigate contemporary romance from a wide range of angles, each centering around the timeless topics of love and heartbreak. Stories like "Sunday Morning at Jonseys' Diner" explore both familial and romantic love while stories like "Summer Fling" and "The Idea of the Mask" examine desire in the face of an inevitable end.

A Sardinian wedding feast, the search for the perfect seaside pasta with wild fennel, meeting a risotto master: Laura Fraser journeys from the SpaghettiOs of her American childhood to savor the best of Italian cuisine and the culture that cooked it up. Using the same dreamy, delicious type of prose that made An Italian Affair a best-selling memoir, these essays will delight listeners who loved that book and all who love Italian food and culture.