Showing results by narrator "William Coon" in All Categories

In his latest collection of literary fiction, Mark Brazaitis evokes with sympathy, insight, and humor the lives of characters in a small Ohio town. The ten short stories of The Incurables limn the mental landscape of people facing conditions they believe are insolvable, from the oppressive horrors of mental illness to the beguiling and baffling complexities of romantic and familial love.

The young man in question, Ross Murdock, is about to embark upon the adventure of his life. In order to avoid prosecution, he reluctantly joins Operation Retrograde, whose members are exploring various time periods. Their goal? To find out where – and when – the ‘Reds’ are obtaining certain scientific breakthroughs, in order to maintain the balance of global power. An outsider in his own time, Ross becomes an outsider in other times as well, and faces one challenge after another.

In First Son, Keith Koeneman chronicles the sometimes Shakespearean, sometimes Machiavellian life of an American political legend. Making deft use of unprecedented access to key players in the Daley administration, as well as Chicago's business and cultural leaders, Koeneman draws on more than one hundred interviews to tell an up-close, insider story of political triumph and personal evolution.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Anton Chekhov saw it all. And he wrote about it as only a master storyteller can, capturing not only the nuances of human behavior, but also the motivations behind the behavior. Often, too, he found universal truths along the way. These stories cover a variety of themes, both comic and tragic, as his characters encounter religion, government bureaucracy, and each other. And although they were written long ago, they are still surprisingly fresh.

Whatever it was that stimulated his creative juices, we are the lucky beneficiaries, as demonstrated in this collection of five stories, all first published in 1954. In “Exhibit Piece” a long-suffering museum worker becomes a little too attached to his display of mid-20th century lifestyle. In “Upon the Dull Earth” a young man refuses to let go of his soul mate, and he creates a chain reaction that he couldn’t have anticipated. In “Progeny” one man’s idea of how to raise a child is challenged by new, more scientific techniques. Also includes "The Last of the Masters", and "Breakfast at Twilight."

In this collection of five stories, all first published in the 1950s, Dick justified his existence by exploring a number of truly interesting ideas. In “Small Town” a man creates a perfect scale model of his own town, as a means of escaping his unbearable reality. In “Human Is” the wife of a scientist notices that her husband has returned from a scientific expedition a changed man, but she’s not complaining. In “Foster, You’re Dead” a father’s unwillingness to participate in his country’s preparations for a war that never happens, leads to unexpected consequences for his family....