Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle De Cuir" in All Categories

In the middle of the night in early April 1994, Arsene, an eight-year old Rwandan boy, flees his village as shouts and gunshots draw near. Carrying only a battered suitcase of his father's, hastily packed with a few essential items by his grandmother - who along with the rest of his family and the entire village will be massacred that night - he runs into the wilderness and wanders alone and afraid through unspeakable horrors. Some years later, Arsene is a teenager adopted by a Parisian couple....

Silvariah Frandelle, a brilliant and beautiful business woman, falls from wealth and success into exile and poverty, indentured - barely one step above slavery - as an off-world laborer to escape prison. Her last calculated risk as a free woman, paid for with years of service, becomes the key to surviving hostile environments. Space, gravity, and Mars wastelands were expected. Intrusive AIs, obscure experiments, and shadowy foes were not.

In 1978, daredevil film director Kathryn Whitney comes to Iran to shoot a package of TV commercials at the ruins of Persepolis. She leaves Hollywood behind and arrives in a country exploding with revolution. While visiting the Bank of Tehran, Kathryn is drawn to a display case housing The Persian Glories - a private jewelry collection of priceless canary diamonds with a powerful legacy owned by Sir Anthony Evans. Kathryn has no idea how these legendary jewels will endanger her life.

As the heat rises on a New York summer, a suicide bomb set off in a Times Square subway station nearly claims the life of 68-year-old ex-madam Kathleen. Then a woman is brutally murdered, her body dumped on a marshy beach in Queens. The woman, Sharon, was last seen by 26-year-old Emily - a deputy press officer working at City Hall - getting into a car in front of the building where she and Kathleen both live in far Upper Manhattan.

In this compilation from Skyboat Media, composers and artists, miners and soldiers, tinkerers and amateur psychologists must fend for themselves in the struggle for their own “ideal” wherein they may find either happiness and salvation, or tragedy and madness. Originally published in German from 1816-1818 and in English from 1885-1908.

Fifteen-year-old Esperance Darbois, the only daughter of philosophy professor François Darbois, is determined to become a woman of the stage. But becoming an actress will sully the respectability of the Darbois family, damage her marriage prospects, and harm her father’s distinguished reputation.

When three-year-old Joshua Gortler and his family were forced from their hometown in Poland during World War II, they scrambled for safety across border after border, finding refuge at last in Europe’s Displaced Persons Camps. Undocumented and unschooled, Gortler spent his adolescence learning to survive. When his family eventually relocated to the US, Gortler found himself starting over, and after teaching himself English, Gortler managed to complete high school in three years, earn an MSW, and begin what would become a distinguished career in the field of eldercare.

Sherlock Holmes has not only captivated readers for more than a century and a quarter, he has fascinated writers as well. It is little wonder, then, that when the renowned Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger invited their writer-friends and colleagues to be inspired by the Holmes canon, a cornucopia of stories sprang forth. Now, King and Klinger have invited another 15 masters to become In League with Sherlock Holmes. The contributors to this volume include award-winning authors of horror, thrillers, mysteries, westerns, and science fiction.

In Speculative Los Angeles, 14 of the city’s most prophetic voices reimagine the city in very different ways. In this audiobook, you’ll encounter 21st-century changelings, dirigibles plying the suburban skies, black holes and jacaranda men lurking in deep suburbia, beachfront property in Century City, walled-off canyons and coastlines reserved for the wealthy, psychic death cults, robot nursemaids, and an alternate LA where Spanish land grants never gave way to urbanization.

Sixteen-year-old Pelly has a master plan: After years of therapy, medication, and even a stint in a mental hospital, she’s finally ready to re-enter the world of the living. Pelly has been suffering from severe panic attacks ever since her best friend, Tara, disappeared from a mall six years ago. And her plan seems to be working, until an unkempt girl accompanied by an older man walks into the coffee shop where she works. Pelly thinks she’s seen a ghost, until the girl mouths “help me” on the way out, and Pelly knows she’s just seen Tara.

Agatha Webb and her cook are found dead in the early hours of the morning after a successful party, and it seems just about anyone could be the killer. Some suspect her aging husband; others think it a robbery gone too far. A few nosy villagers draw a connection between this murder and the deaths of her six children so many years prior: Was she truly a victim, a grieving mother? Or did she play some role in these deaths? The list of suspects grows when a certain wealthy townsmen is blackmailed by someone who believes he murdered Agatha Webb and her cook.

Rita Van Arsdale, a member of the high society in New York, is invited to an elegant party where she falls in love with a gentleman called Mr. Durand, who returns her feelings and proposes to her. But their plans are derailed after Mrs. Fairbrother, who has arrived at the party wearing a spectacular diamond, is discovered murdered in an alcove. The prime suspect is none other than Mr. Durand, so Miss Van Arsdale gets down to work to reconstruct the true course of events and prove that her love is indeed innocent.

During its heyday, the Chelsea Hotel in New York City was a home and safe haven for Bohemian artists, poets, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, and Dee Dee Ramone. This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic facade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.

How will the world end? With aliens or angels? Or a groundhog? Bleak despair? Martial fervor? Or a belly laugh? Whatever the apocalypse, it will be borne by people and their families and their dogs and most of all, it will challenge their notions of themselves. This anthology includes international award-winning writers, poets, and thinkers that give you their version of the apocalypse.

Old Roger Melton has died, leaving behind one of the greatest fortunes in Europe. His arrogant relative Ernest Melton expects to be the heir, but, much to the family's surprise, Roger leaves his vast estate to his obscure young nephew, Rupert Sent Leger. But Rupert's newfound wealth comes with strange conditions attached, one of which is that he must inhabit the old castle of Vissarion in the remote Balkan nation known as the Land of the Blue Mountains.

Two tales from the golden age of supernatural fiction.

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.

Best known for his masterpiece of horror, Dracula, Bram Stoker wrote a number of other novels and many short stories, all with supernatural themes or filled with a physical terror reminiscent of Poe. The title story, "Dracula's Guest", was originally part of the great novel but was excised and published separately. The accompanying stories, such as "The Squaw", "The Judge's House", and "The Burial of the Rats", are classic tales of the macabre in their own right.

At first blush, Widdershins is a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend, and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. It can be interpreted as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious, possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject’s view.

Guy de Maupassant was a master of the short-story genre, producing more than 300 during his lifetime. These concise stories contain twists and shocking turns, and range from the fantastic and supernatural, with characters descending into madness....