Showing results by narrator "Marc Vietor" in All Categories

How much sacrifice should anyone have to give? Petal and Gabriel are forced to decide, as the mad, digital entity Elliot Robertson is determined to dominate the world. His influence, spread by an insurgent group, The Ronin, seeks to control and enslave the last of humanity. With time running out, Petal and Gabriel must travel to the far reaches of the abandoned lands in order to repair a server they believe will be the key to defeating Elliot and his Ronin.

Gabriel and Petal have tracked Gabe's mother back to Hong Kong. But to find her Gabe has to face his old gang and the ghosts he thought he had laid to rest years before. While helping him, Petal stumbles on a way of getting Gerry's mind out of her head, but like Gabe, she too has to return to a place full of ghosts: Libertas. Enna is now the Prime Minister of the domed city, and when Petal arrives she discovers Enna has developed her transcendent technology.

In a post-apocalyptic future, humanity survives within a single city run by a shadowy benefactor known only as The Family. Each week, the death lottery claims more lives and Gerry Cardle, head of the lottery, inexplicably finds himself next on the list. Something's wrong with the system. A deadly artificial intelligence has breached security. Gerry has just seven days to live. Forced off the grid, Gerry has to do the unthinkable: willingly leave the city. What he finds in the abandoned lands will shatter his perception of what it means to be human.

The fanatical Red Widows sweep destruction across the abandoned lands. Their aggression threatens to destroy the city Gerry had risked his life to save. Petal, the woman Gerry has come to love, is dying. The despotic cabal, The Family, demand he brings her to them, but she's missing, running from the Widows, searching for the truth of her origins before it's too late. When their paths cross, Petal and Gerry will hold the fate of humankind in their hands - if they can survive the malevolent digital entity that stalks them.

From former assistant secretary of state Kurt M. Campbell comes the definitive analysis and explanation of the new major shift in American foreign policy, its interests and assets, to Asia. There is a quiet drama playing out in American foreign policy far from the dark contours of upheaval in...

Detective Doyle Carrick is awakened in the middle of the night by frantic banging on his front door, followed by gunfire. Ron Hartwell, a complete stranger, is dying on his doorstep. A halfhearted investigation labels the murder a domestic dispute, with Miriam, Ron's widow, the sole suspect. Doyle discovers the Hartwells both worked for a big biotech company and suspects something else is going on, but it's not his case. Then Miriam tracks him down and tells him her story.

Faith is the greatest battle. To fallen paladin Ederras, right and wrong aren't as clear as they once were, and even the forces of good seem tainted by sin. Lost and broken, the formerly righteous warrior joins up with the crusaders of Mendev, the last bastion of civilization fighting desperately against the demonic tides of the Worldwound. There he plans to rediscover his faith - or die trying.

Can an idealist from the city stop his estranged friend in the country from exposing a grim and damning secret from their past? On the surface, Greg Simmons seems an utterly improbable informant. He's an idealistic, Cascadia independence proponent from the city of Portland. When the FBI calls on Greg to go undercover to investigate a dangerous militia movement out in rural Oregon, he knows exactly why: his long-estranged friend from the country, Donny Wilkie, could have deep ties to the militia.

"Io, Robot" is a short story from the collection Tides from the New Worlds. Caribbean-born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel, Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering readers a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining.

Omar Haddad is a brutal jihadist in Syria who appears to be invulnerable and capable of supernatural feats. But is Haddad divine, as he claims? Is he a gifted magician? Or is he making use of a stunning scientific breakthrough? And what, exactly, is keeping him from unleashing the global apocalypse he’s so eager to bring about? Brennan Craft, a quirky quantum physics genius, has the answers, and the US military is desperate to capture him.

A trip to an island off the New England coast - and away from the demands of police work - might be just what is needed to jumpstart Detective Doyle Carrick and Nola Watkins' stalled relationship. But a mysterious plague is killing the island’s bees. Nola takes a job at an organic farm hit hard by the disease, working for the rich, handsome, and annoying Teddy, with whom she quickly becomes a little too friendly for Doyle's liking.

When Philadelphia narcotics detective Doyle Carrick loses his mother and step-father within weeks of each other, he gains a 20-day suspension for unprofessional behavior and instructions to lay low at the unfamiliar house he’s inherited in rural Pennsylvania. Feeling restless and out of place, Doyle is surprised to find himself falling for his new neighbor, Nola Watkins, who’s under pressure to sell her organic farm to a large and mysterious development company.

Returning from the remote continent of Zu, the crew of the Talion is stricken by a mysterious plague. When Captain Shae goes ashore on a small island to find medicinal plants to treat his men, Mercarian League mercenaries ambush him, and their ships, fast and deadly pirate hunters, close in on the Talion. In a desperate bid to outrun or outgun the Mercarian vessels, the Talion takes to open waters.

The corrupt Earth government is sending an army to Greenwood to remove the pioneers who discovered and settled the planet: the potential profits are too great to leave the world to scraggly ne'er-do-wells! Though the rugged individualists of Greenwood may be fractious and disinclined to agree on most things, the greedy politicians of Earth will learn a harsh lesson if they think the settlers won't join together to save their livelihoods and homes!

This novel represents the first appearance of Lawrence Sanders' most famous character, Edward X. Delaney, and the masterpiece of murder and suspense that launched Sanders' career. This suspenseful classic is brought to life by a full cast, including L. J. Ganser, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett, Zoe Hunter, Gabra Zackman, Lauren Fortgang, Kevin T. Collins, Josh Hurley and Peter Ganim.

A photographer descends into New York City’s chaotic and brutal underground in this sweeping story of the Big Apple at its seediest. It’s 1982, and Clarence Dmitri Larkin is working as a photographer at Bellevue hospital in Manhattan. The job offers a painfully clear perspective on a city sick with madness, fraught with crime, and coming apart at the seams. Larkin’s curiosity soon leads to a subterranean world of all the city’s secret dangers, including domestic terrorists with a nuclear device, a serial killer inspired by an occult past, and a disfigured arsonist who just might be the one to burn the whole city down.

In a distant future in which the empire of humanity has spread throughout the stars, the Xenic Bureau of the Grand Ekumenical Security Directorate investigates any hint of aliens, strange disappearances, or other anomalous events. When rumors spread of the mysterious reappearance of a long-lost battleship, a priest, an alien-killer, and a cashiered starship engineer find themselves caught up in a chase across the empire and into secrets better left forgotten.

Heaster Wharton is dead, and his passing might mean an end to hostilities between the Manders and the Coys. If the the elderly patriarch showed the kindness and foresight to split his land cleanly between his feuding descendants, then a truce could be arranged. But his final request is a strange one, delivered across the country to the straggling remnants of his tribe. Representatives from both families must visit a cave at the edge of his property in the hills of Kentucky.

The second American Revolution has propelled the Southern-controlled United Republic of America into power, its oppressive laws enforced by the National Reform Program's re-education camps. The citizens are suffering from a militaristic tyranny and federal extortion at the expense of an ambitious space program designed to propagate the galaxy with model citizens of the Republic. A special bonus, author Allen Steele introduces this Hugo-nominated novella.

Union laborer Rohr Furland begrudgingly takes a job on a space freighter piloted by Captain Future, an immature and slightly crazed captain with an obsession for early 20th-century science-fiction novels. When they receive a distress call from a nearby space station, Furland and the first officer blend the dangers of reality into the captain's fantasy world.