Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Anthologies

In a tripping and absorbing style, award-winning Brazilian writer Claudia Lage asks listeners to gaze into the dark side of love and desire, and ultimately even to sympathize with her flawed hero and heroine. A Little Death is both an unconventional love story and a raw, visceral tale that explores the journey to adulthood in all its complexity and hilarity.

The detective is losing his mind. Suffering from a panic disorder that has him haunting emergency rooms in rising waves of crisis, the detective begins to lose his grip - on his relationship with his fiery young lover, on his ability to work, on his health.

His father bent on making him a true Spanish nobleman, romantic young Eduardo crosses the seas to join his bumbling, megalomaniacal uncle, Cortés. Once he arrives in the new world, Eduardo falls passionately in love with an Aztec princess yet still assumes his place as a reluctant conquistador.

The two scientists meet when a lab rat escapes from its cage after giving birth. When they find the rat, they also discover one tiny, raw-pink baby, mewling despairingly at a frequency inaudible to human ears. From there, love - or some disjointed, broken version of it - develops between the scientists.

When Beatriz, lonely and desperate for money, places an ad as a writing consultant in the local paper, her first client is Dolores Maria Rubia de Alicanto, an imposing old widow who has hired her to transcribe the story of her life. Beatriz is taken aback when the woman starts with the words "My husband betrayed me..." and proceeds to relay a gripping story of deception, crumbled desire, and vengeance.

Pat, a Vietnam vet finished with marriage and booze, gets his dose of society sitting alone and dry at the local bar. One afternoon, watching a pre-season Red Sox game, he ends up next to a group of loudmouth writers gathered around a man in a wheelchair. The writers get under Pat's skin, and he says something lousy to the big-shot who, it turns out, is also a big-shot writer.

In these two short thrillers, best-selling author L.J. Sellers explores how the dark side of human nature takes over in crucial, fearful moments and leads to irreversible, life-changing repercussions.

Nothing is what it used to be for our salesman narrator: not his family, not his commissions, not even the commuter jets that carry him from client to client. Having lost his top-of-the-heap status in his profession, he reflects on his new reality with a darkly comic perspective that resonates deeply with each of us who has desperately needed a new direction in life.

John, a widower and retired judge, has had a hard time letting go of the things that remind him of his beloved deceased wife, Millie: most of all their cherished robotic (but stunningly lifelike) spaniel, Sheila, who has been his stalwart companion for twenty-five years.

Thirty years hasn't changed Las Vegas - the desert just got dirtier. The biggest game in town centers on a massive, deadly roller coaster that winds its way through the Strip's most famous attractions. On the first Saturday of every month, twenty-four desperate passengers get strapped into the notorious ride and gamble with their lives in a twisted game of chance, to the thrill of webcast audiences worldwide. One of them will win, and one will die, but the other twenty-two will escape with nothing but their lives.

Every year, on the same night in November, a bouquet of flowers, a vintage bottle of wine, and a handwritten note appear next to a small wooden cross on the side of a lonely country highway. Year after year, it's the same offering at the same time. On his way home from work at the factory, Tom notices these roadside tributes and wonders who the mysterious mourner might be.

Eleven-year-old gumshoe Simon Sez may operate out of a tree house, but this pint-sized shamus is as tough as long division and meaner than an older sister. After Simon's heart is broken by the most beautiful dame on the playground, rich kid Bunky Matthews shows up at his HQ begging for help retrieving two hundred stolen snickerdoodles. Simon figures a new case might be just the ticket to get his mind off his troubles.

This year, Ali and Stephen are both just trying to make it through the holidays. Stephen is fresh out of a relationship and dreading the prospect of Christmas alone. Ali, on the other hand, can't celebrate with friends or family. The most important man in her life is dying - decorating cookies and hanging tinsel aren't even on her radar. When the two meet during a chance encounter, Stephen's instant attraction to Ali spurs him into action.

Psychiatrist Dr. Renee Conway has taken on a new patient: Kevin Reynolds, the local hero who ran into a burning building to save a young family from certain death. When the rescue goes horrifically wrong, a boy is dead and Kevin suffers excruciating burns. Plagued with nightmares and left with a horribly disfigured face, Kevin finds celebrity its own torture.

The catcher is a statistical savant, the first baseman speaks in Buddhist koans, and the twin star pitchers may or may not derive mystical powers from scars betraying their Siamese birth. In fact, everything about the Birmingham Barons baseball team is remarkable - except for their performance on the field. For decades, the Barons have been woefully mediocre and Pudge Morrison - former better-than-average left fielder now long past his prime - has become the symbol for the team's disappointment.

Unemployed Colin is living back at home in the small town where he grew up in the shadow of his older brother and a gang of neighborhood bullies. He's still struggling to overcome his best friend Danny's unexpected death five years before. The strange series of events that took place on Danny's last night haunt Colin, and as he puts the pieces together, he discovers it may not have been an accident after all.

Wes can't get enough of Eardrum Buzz's first CD, Misery Machine. So when he sees an ad in a music magazine calling for fans to join the "Swarm" and promote the band, Wes doesn't hesitate to sign on. At the next pre-show party, Wes meets the band in all their insectoid glory and, convinced by a beautiful goth girl's hot breath on his neck, eats one of their hors d'oeuvres - a strange fried insect. After that, the music crawls inside his skull and the buzzing won't stop.

When Terry and Wayne stumble upon a backwoods bar while camping in the Rockies, they just want a beer and a burger. And maybe a warm bed for the night, if they're lucky. Instead they find themselves in the middle of a strange group of disturbingly scarred locals, served by a one-armed bartender. Even the sexy waitress with the elaborate octopus tattoo has what looks to be...bite marks? They know they should leave.

June 16, 1692. Relic dealer Georg Ayndorfer is found slain in the Chapel of St. Quirinus of Tegernsee. Was it the holy rage of St. Quirinus himself, or was Ayndorfer murdered by jealous colleagues? Georg Asam, a famous artist commissioned to paint a fresco in the chapel, feels compelled to investigate.

In these funny, surprising, and touching stories, Gordon gets at the big stuff - art and religion, literature and madness, the supernatural, and the dark fringes of sexuality - in his own unique style, described by novelist Rivka Galchen as "Dashiell Hammett divided by Don DeLillo, to the power of Dostoyevsky - yet still pure David Gordon."