Showing results by narrator "Joel Froomkin" in All Categories

I, Ethan Antonio Giovanni Callahan, first son of the former head of the Irish mob, Liam Alec Callahan, and former head of the Italian mafia, ex-governor, Melody Nicci Giovanni Callahan, solemnly swear to ruthlessly protect our family name, business, and way of life, no matter the cost to me or anyone else. I shall show no mercy; I shall offer no forgiveness; there will be no peace for those who stand against me. I will live for my family. I will kill for my family. I will marry for my family.

Following an unfortunate encounter with Spanish gin measures and an enthusiastic estate agent, retired special effects engineer Terry England is the proud owner of a nearly completed villa in a new urbanization in Southern Spain. Not quite how he intended to spend his enforced early retirement, Terry nevertheless tries to make the best of his new life. If only the local council can work out which house he actually bought and the leaf blowers would please stop.

The plan is finally set: a divine, multi-pronged ambush targeting Providence where it's weakest. Five gods. Five demons. Five simultaneous strategic executions. Against a brutal corporate autocracy, the odds are worth the risk. But even as deities start falling, it becomes clear the company hasn't given up all its secrets. In the opening left behind, background forces converge, exposing other plans than Loki's. With the balance of power crashing, creation steers with it.

Convicted of a murder she didn’t commit, sniper Henri Anderson suffers two years of hard time before she’s given a choice - accept an unknown assignment offered by a seedy foreign dignitary or head for home. The decision took all of two seconds. At least that’s what she thinks, until a mysterious Scottish man shows up and offers a deal sweet enough to tempt a saint. But has the rugged, blue-eyed closer met his match?

Windsor, 1943. Britain is in the grip of war and treachery is afoot. The body of controversial former courtier Lord Blackwater is found in the abandoned Fort Belvedere, once the country bolthole of the King’s wayward brother. And all signs point to murder. Royal confidant Guy Harford is called in to solve the mystery quickly and quietly, before any hint of scandal reaches the public. Investigating with the help of Rodie, his roguish burglar girlfriend, his enquiries lead him into the world of the Royal Ballet, where on-stage glamour hides an undercurrent of off-stage deceit.

As author Ethan Mordden looks back at Chicago's various moving parts - including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical - we learn how the American theater serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society. Opinionated, witty, and rich in backstage anecdotes, All That Jazz brings the American musical to life in all its artistry and excitement.

Everything I've done, everything I will do, there will be no regret. The world is a vicious place for a woman. It's even crueler to the daughter of the Ceann na Conairte - discarded, married off, left powerless. But I am no ordinary daughter of the mafia. Unlike every other mafia family, my mother was Melody Callahan, Bloody Mel, the Don of the Italian Mafia, and the Don didn't raise some precious mafia princess. Bone by bone she broke me first, so no one else could - and bone by bone, I pieced myself back together.

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. It Came from the Closet features twenty-five original essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.

Avis Blackthorn's family is the most evil family in all of the Seven Magical Kingdoms. The problem? Avis isn't evil. Not one bit. His magical wizarding family will do anything to make Avis's life a misery. Even the horses that pull the carriages don't like him. But he has a way out at last... Hailing Hall School for Wizards, a sanctuary, a place for good wizards, where he can make some nice, normal friends, learn magic and live a normal life, finally escaping the notoriety of the Blackthorn name... or so he thinks.

For almost thirty years, Shirley Jackson Award–winning horror author Gemma Files has consistently served up tale after tale celebrating monstrosity in all its forms: the imperfect, the broken, the beautifully alien, and the sadly familiar. Her characters make their own choices and take their own chances, slipping from darkness into deeper darkness yet never losing their humanity—not even when they’re anything but.

All Callie wanted was a quiet weekend with her best friend. She promised her mom she could handle running her family’s escape room business while her mom is out of town. Instead a Satanic cult shows up, claiming that the prop spell book in one of the rooms is the real deal, and they need it to summon the right hand of the devil. Naturally they take Callie and her friend, Mag, along with them. But when the summoning reveals a handsome demon in a leather jacket named Luke who offers to help Callie stop the cult from destroying the world.

The Great Detective has more in store for his landlady's niece than washing jars and labeling specimens: pistol shooting, fencing, boxing, and Jiu-Jitsu. This she can master, but Mirabella Hudson must face the greatest horror of all: *Miss de Beauvais' Finishing School for Distinguished Young Ladies.

Listeners will discover lost and forgotten women who wrote horror every bit as effectively as their male contemporaries. They will learn about their lives and careers, the challenges they faced as women working in a male-dominated field, the way they overcame those challenges, and the way they approached the genre - which was often subtler, more psychological, and more disturbing.

I feel like I’ve been given a place in life–expectations of me–that it’s useless fighting. So I don’t bother. I’m the guy they all think I am; fighting, smoking, drinking. Because what else is Roman Lombardi but a troubled teen? No one’s convinced I’ve got anything going for me. I take what–and who–I want when I want it, and never think about anything more than a couple of hours in the future.

After ten years of meditative solitude, the prophet Zarathustra descends from his mountain cave to preach the power of the Superman - a human divinity emancipated from the construct of God. The Superman is free to create his or her own moralities, values, notions of good and evil, and purpose in life. Although people of the town are confounded, Zarathustra resolves to persuade the herd by illuminating the heights to which they can ascend by ignoring promises of otherworldly fulfillment.

In the end...we all lose. How well do you think you know the Callahans? Yes, I'm asking you. Because I know you've been watching. The chaos, the violence, the love, and the madness - who could look away? Not me, for sure. My grandmother always told me...where you look is where you go. So I ask again, how well do you think you know the Callahans? Do you really think you understand Melody, Liam, or even Ethan? I have to wonder - will your mind be able to handle it?

Life has never been easy for the second-born Callahan son, Wyatt. Trained as a doctor, but born a Callahan, his life has always been one of warring dualities. But when the Callahan family suffers a massive blow, it's time for Wyatt to step up and decide, once and for all, who he really is. Will Wyatt rise to the challenge as his enemies close in or will his actions lead to destruction of the world's most powerful mafia family?

Maxine Parker expected to lose her life when the Vampire King swept through her city like a plague. She did not expect to lose her heart to him as well. Caught between her desire to protect the living and her love for Dracula, she suddenly finds herself the enemy of the hunters who had once been her allies. As the Vampire King unleashes his army of the damned and turns Boston into a sea of carnage, she must decide if she can love the monster for what he is or if she must be the one to end his bloody crusade through history once and for all....

Iggy Peck is an architect at his very core: When he's not making houses out of food, his head is up in the clouds, dreaming of design. So he's totally blown away when Ada Twist's Aunt Bernice inherits an old house from ice cream mogul Herbert Sherbert that is filled with countless rooms from all his favorite architectural periods. But something's not quite right....

Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.