Showing results by narrator "Kevin Collins" in All Categories

In working-class Bay Ridge, Michael drives for a car service and gives lifts to his father, a former sanitation worker and current small-time bookie. He has a friend with a heroin habit, and a longtime girlfriend who expects they’ll get married one of these days. Michael spends most of his time on the familiar streets where he grew up, but now he’s crossing the bridge into Manhattan for some college classes—where he meets a seductive female classmate who seems to come from a whole different world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth global anxiety about linkages between the environment and society at a fundamental structural level. Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life provides an accessible exposition of the latest foundational knowledge on how natural and social systems science can inform planetary crises. Humanity has either tried to conquer or capitulate to natural order, whereas we should be seeking to understand latent structures and patterns that permeate all systems and develop an "earthly order," that is socially functional and sustainable.

A man arrives home from an international flight to find that the airline has delivered his lost luggage. Wonderful, except he never lost his luggage in the first place. The story is told through his increasingly maddening call to customer service as he tries to figure out how, and why, the airline created a perfect replica of his suitcase and possessions.

A lonely terraforming AI is delighted when a spacecraft unexpectedly makes an emergency landing on his planet. Hoping that the mysterious woman aboard might want to stay, he strives to be the best host in the universe.

For fans of Charles Yu and Matt Haig, this short tale features a grandfather who claims not merely to have been abducted by aliens when he was a young man, but to have fallen in love in the process. His grandson (the story's narrator) is the only person who believes him. My Grandfather’s Ship is a quirky examination of how the passions (real or imagined) of our elders can inspire us.

This fourth volume collecting Lee and Miller's shorter Liaden Universe® stories features four novelettes, two novellas, and two short stories—including the celebrated linked stories, "Block Party" and "Degrees of Separation."

A dozen recent Liaden Universe short works are added to the collection in the third volume of A Liaden Universe Constellation. Ranging from comic to cosmic, only one of these works was first published before 2011. These welcome new additions bring the collected Constellation of Lee and Miller Liaden short stories to forty-five works in three volumes. Here is a vast tapestry of tales of the scouts, artists, traders, priestesses, sleight of hand magicians, and pilots who fill the Liaden Universe with the excitement, action, and romance that fans of the hit series have come to adore.

Fifteen short tales of the Liaden Universe® brought together for the first time. Space opera and romance on a grand scale in a galaxy full of interstellar trading clans.

Autumn, 1864. Rebel bushwhackers have seized and looted a small town in Missouri. Wounded and left for dead by his half-brother, 17-year-old Owen Wainwright is captured and conscripted by the Confederate Army. As the troops' blacksmith, he witnesses the horrors of war firsthand: the savagery of General Selby's Iron Brigade, the massacres of Union troops, the bloody battles at Lexington, Westport, and Mine Creek. Against all odds, Owen survives with the help of an unlikely ally-a new friend in arms and the only person he trusts. But if fate is cruel, war can be crueler.

Michiko Nakatomi, an ancient vampire and leader of the Dark Council, is missing. After giving up control of the blood blades - weapons designed to destroy supernaturals - the Dark Council challenged Michiko’s leadership…and her right to exist. Rising tensions within the alliance of vampires, mages, and weres are threatening to tear the Dark Council apart.

The Appalachians are an ancient and mysterious mountain range, whose peaks at one time rivaled the Himalayans. The mysteries of these mountains have been cataloged by Native American tribes and settlers alike. One of these mysteries is that Bigfoot inhabits these parts. Building off his book, Tracking the Stone Man: West Virginia's Bigfoot, Dr. Russell Jones, a certified master naturalist, lifelong outdoorsman, and longtime Bigfoot researcher, has put together one of the most complete examinations of these creatures in Appalachia with The Appalachian Bigfoot.

When Tom is invited to the reading of a will of a great-uncle he’s never heard of, there’s no way to know what to expect. But on the long list of possible things to inherit, a travelling carnival ghost train is the very last on the list. To get his full $10 million inheritance, all Tom has to do is run the antique ride until his 18th birthday. Easy. Except for a strange caped-creep he’s never met, who’s trying to con him out of the money...and the actual ghosts and ghouls who call the ride home.

What does the world get from God? What does the world lose when it loses reason? For centuries an aggressive secularism has fought to occupy the place once held by religion in Western society. Its intellectual leaders are ambitious. Their goal is to remove God from public discourse and then from memory. While they claimed that godlessness would bring about an era of peace, it brought history’s bloodiest century instead. Civic institutions founded on Judeo-Christian principles began to crumble apart from them.

Back in Washington, DC for the funeral of his college roommate, Mac Callahan reluctantly agrees to spend one night in Senator Price Redding’s apartment before flying home to Alabama. But when a dead, naked woman falls from the closet of Redding’s secret bachelor pad and into Mac’s arms, someone must atone for the sins of the sitting senator. The perfect setup for murder will lead to an immaculate warrant for the arrest of former FBI agent Mac Callahan. But the scandal he stumbled into wasn’t meant for him.

The Palace Program is now in full effect. Sirus O'Sullivan, the Palace director, has been repurposed outside of the current reality, thus leaving a gaping opening for the next in line to see the Program through to the final phase. Meanwhile, Mary escapes the battlefield with the Eagles squad intel specialist Dale. After seeing the battle has not gone in their favor, they retreat into the depths of the Palace, leaving Mary to live with the fact she left many men and women to die by her orders.

FBI agent and playboy Tristan Bleu is in deep. Undercover for the last 18 months, his assignment has been handed down personally from the Director of National Intelligence. Meeting with his contacts in the darkness of a global and elite, members-only sex club, Tristan spends his time not chasing women, but the origins of a dangerous Shadow Broker - a double agent selling US weapon security codes to Russian intelligence. When Champagne magnate Renè Lebleu reaches out to him, Tristan puts his duties on hold for two days, flying to his birthplace in France to meet a man he’s never seen - a father he’s never known....

Mac Callahan has left the fast lane of the FBI, but he's restless. When the North Star Gala unexpectedly finds its way to his home in Shadeland, Alabama, he’s asked to oversee security for the event filled with Washington insiders, politicians, and the elite. Finding his way back to Washington, DC, to lead the project, he meets his long-time assistant, Micah. But when Micah’s sister goes missing from a college field trip, Mac takes the opportunity to lead the hunt for the young girl. Expecting an open-and-shut case, what he discovers is far worse than he could’ve imagined.

Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right.

On the surface, King Giles’ life seems quiet. A non-operational cover (NOC) agent for the government, he spends his days caring for his patients and his nights and weekends keeping tabs on operational terror cells. But when an ex-girlfriend shows up dead in his front yard with lace panties shoved in her mouth and his address in her hand, the FBI wants answers, and his secret life and next mission are compromised.

Newlyweds Polly and Leo Xanthus long for a life where they never have to hide from the mafia that forced them into seclusion. The Marcello crime family is on the brink of going under. With their revenue streams drying up and the feds ever-present on their tail, aging crime boss Alfonso Balivino looks to steal a diamond owned by his one-time boss, Kostas Xanthus, to fund the family. Now, Polly and Leo will be forced to leave their unknown location and find their way home to New Orleans before the Marcello family murders again, forcing them and the ring on Polly’s hand out of hiding.