Showing results by author "Margo" in All Categories

There are a million ways to end up in the Alien Bride Lottery, but it takes only one. Every unmarried female human over the age of 21 gets entered once a year. You can also accept extra entries for legal infractions—instead of paying a parking fine, for example, you can request an extra entry. Lots of women do that. I mean, why not? The chances are astronomical that your name will get chosen to be one of the hundred or so women who get shipped off to space every year.

One Sunday in 2001 ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Peter Friedland received an unexpected call from Nelson Mandela’s personal physician. The former president was struggling to hear. Could Peter visit him at home? Friedland discovered that Mandela was using antiquated hearing aids and was struggling to maintain them. Soon he became a regular visitor to Mandela’s home in Houghton where he experienced the elderly statesman, in the frailty of old age, away from the crowds. He was full of stories and always bearing a lesson.

Darkness, both literal and psychological, holds its own unique fascination. Despite our fears, or perhaps because of them, listeners have always been drawn to tales of death, terror, madness, and the supernatural, and no more so than today when a wildly imaginative new generation of dark dreamers is carrying on in the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft and King, crafting exquisitely disturbing literary nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss - and linger in the mind long after.

On remote Rollrock Island, the sea-witch Misskaella discovers she can draw a girl from the heart of a seal. So, for a price, any man might buy himself a bride; an irresistibly enchanting sea-wife. But what cost will be borne by the people of Rollrock? The men, the women, the children? Once Misskaella sets her heart on doing such a thing?Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire and revenge, of loyalty, heartache and human weakness, and of the unforeseen consequences of all-consuming love.

Somehow, I knew my name was going to be drawn in the Bride Lottery—the hellish agreement that Earth's leaders had made to sell us to the aliens who protected our planet. I'd grown up with the propaganda. It was our civic duty. Men registered for the draft; women registered for the Bride Lottery. No way in hell was I going to be handed over to some giant man to be brutalized into bearing his children. Instead, I cut out my bio-tracker and walked away from everything. I should have realized they'd send one of those hulking, brightly colored aliens to track me down and bring me back.

When Margo Price was nineteen years old, she dropped out of college and moved to Nashville to become a musician. She busked on the street, played open mics, and even threw out her TV so that she would do nothing but write songs. She met Jeremy Ivey, a fellow musician who would become her closest collaborator and her husband. But after working on their craft for more than a decade, Price and Ivey had no label, no band, and plenty of heartache. Maybe We’ll Make It is a memoir of loss, motherhood, and the search for artistic freedom in the midst of the agony.

On a hot night in July 1995, Janet Downing, a 42-year-old mother of four, was brutally stabbed 98 times in her home in Somerville, a city two miles northwest of Boston. Within hours, a suspect was identified: 15-year-old Eddie O'Brien, the best friend of one of Janet's sons.

I thought I'd escaped being given to an alien warrior. I was wrong. I was one hour away from washing out of the Alien Bride Games. None of the Khanavai warriors had chosen me, and I was scheduled on the next shuttle off the filming station. Then, a bright red alien passed me in a hallway—and the next thing I knew, we were all over each other. Bad enough that my name had been drawn in the Bride Lottery. Now, even though they're supposedly over, I'm back in the Games. And not the usual ones, either—a whole new set of challenges, just for me. Guess it'll make for good television back home.

In Driving the Future Oge portrays a future where clean, intelligent vehicles with lighter frames and alternative power trains will produce zero emissions and run at 100+ mpg. With electronic architectures more like that of airplanes, cars will be smarter and safer, will park themselves, and will network with other vehicles on the road to drive themselves.

Picture yourself as a young mother with a three-year-old daughter and a newborn at the playground. In the moment you’ve turned to the diaper bag, your toddler disappears—at first, all you can feel is terror, and then instinctively you look up—and there she is at the top of the slide, looking so proud of herself. At this moment, you might find yourself deluged with conflicting feelings, including anger and relief and resentment and gratitude and fear and even flashes of hate—you told her to wait for you before running off.

Book Vs. Movie is the podcast that ponders the question: "Which was better...the book or the movie?" We spoil away the details, uncover the plot points, discuss casting choices and shower with praise (or pummel with snark) as we see fit. Hosts are Margo P. (She's Nacho Mama's Blog) and Margo D. (Creator of Brooklyn Fit Chick.com) and we are not afraid to tell it like it is!

I thought if I played by the rules, I’d be spared from the cruelty of the vampires. Boy, was I wrong. My plant magic was supposed to keep me safe, but when a fertility plant that I created for a rich vamp is stolen, my neck is on the line. Not only do I lose my cushy position with my master vampire, but I’m also thrown into prison.

Father Hunger is the emptiness experienced by women whose fathers were physically or emotionally absent—a void that leads to unrealistic body image, yo-yo dieting, food fears, and disordered eating patterns.

Georgie de Luca is a tradeswoman who runs an all-female pool cleaning business in Sydney. Managing The Pool Chicks is challenging, but it's her dream. Surrounded by a supportive group of women and a well-to-do surgeon husband, Georgie's got everything she could ever want. Life is perfect. Or so she thinks. When she meets her new neighbor, Drew, a Navy pilot from Perth, she avoids his cheeky grin and shirtless torso at all costs. But over time, as their friendship blossoms and Drew becomes her closest ally, she can't help but wonder: What if she has married the wrong man?

Maud Martha Brown is a little girl growing up on the South Side of 1940s Chicago. Amidst the crumbling taverns and overgrown yards, she dreams: of New York, romance, her future. She admires dandelions, learns to drink coffee, falls in love, decorates her kitchenette, visits the Jungly Hovel, guts a chicken, buys hats, gives birth. But her lighter-skinned husband has dreams, too: of the Foxy Cats Club, other women, war. And the 'scraps of baffled hate'—a certain word from a saleswoman, that visit to the cinema, the cruelty of a department store Santa Claus—are always there.

Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a Mixed Martial Arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new vantage point from which to see how power and masculinity coalesce—and how her body paid the price.

This collection of unabridged, spectacular steampunk speculations includes several classics of the genre. These tales will sweep you away with their amazing automata, daring dirigibles, grinding gears, and scintillating steam as days gone by are infused with tech. In "Smoke City," by Christopher Barzak, a woman comes to terms with the loss of her family to the child labor mills of the city. A doctor tries to cope with a strange plague terrorizing the citizens of London in Jeffrey Ford's "Dr. Lash Remembers."

Elle Dupree has her life all figured out: first a wedding, then her PhD, then swank faculty parties where she'll serve wine and cheese and introduce people to her husband the lawyer. But those plans disintegrate when she walks in on a vampire sucking the blood from her fiancé, Greg. Horrified, she screams and runs - not away from the vampire, but toward it, brandishing a wooden letter opener.

Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child to her mother's abandonment and now an unwanted pregnancy, she knows better than most that small actions can have terrible consequences. Yet when her grandmother calls and asks her to watch over the children of a recent widower in a small, isolated town in Colorado, she takes it as a chance to finally organize her life.

At 17 years old, I’m not ready to marry, and yet that’s what I must do as the crown princess of Austria. But getting to know the foreign princes visiting my kingdom becomes the least of my worries when I touch a bespelled nutcracker and unleash a deadly curse. I have 12 days to feed the nutcracker the magical nut Crackatook. If I fail, my soul will become trapped inside the toy for all eternity, and my body will turn to wood....