Showing results by narrator "John Rubinstein" in All Categories

Into the darkness within; or else the light.... When Margaret Atwood wrote these words, she left open the possibility that even our darkest tales may harbor a glimmer of hope. In Or Else the Light, the third and final entry in the Dystopia Triptych, more than a dozen of the best minds in science fiction conclude their stories with a descent into darkness, or perhaps a ray of light.

Assembled and edited by Julian Hawthorne and first published in 1907, the Old Time English volume of The Lock and Key Library features ten classic mysteries and ghost stories by Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Robert Maturin, Laurence Sterne, and William Makepeace Thackeray. This volume of The Lock and Key Library is sure to haunt and charm fans of ghost and detective mysteries alike.

He wants power, and she wants revenge. The Best Laid Plans is full of manipulators, dirty dealers, and dastardly rascals, all snatching at power—political, financial, and sexual, or all of the above. Against the backdrop of Washington politics and the war in Bosnia, a handsome, charismatic attorney is determined to win the presidency at all costs, while his jilted fiancée is intent on revenge and grows a media empire to destroy him. In a world of beautiful people, money, and deception, two equally determined people are headed on a collision course.

Now the struggle between the Andro-Francine Order of the Named Lands and the Y’Zirite Empire has reached a terrible turning point. Believing that his son is dead, Rudolfo has pretended to join with the triumphant Y’zirite forces—but his plan is to destroy them all with a poison that is targeted only to the enemy.

From some of the hottest names in crime fiction today come original stories written expressly for this collection. These four taut tales, loaded with tension and charged with uncertainty, bring each victim - the unsuspecting, the hunted, the fearful - into the deadly sights of a hired killer's gun.

Innocence is lost to unforgettable experience in these brilliant stories by E. L. Doctorow, as full of mystery and meaning as any of the longer works by this American master. In "The Writer in the Family", a young man learns the difference between lying and literature after he is induced into deceiving a relative through letters. In "Wili", an early-20th-century idyll is destroyed by infidelity. In "The Foreign Legation", a girl and an act of political anarchy collide with devastating results. These and other stories flow into the novella "Lives of the Poets".

The astonishing novel of a young boy's life in the New York City of the 1930s, a stunning recreation of the sights, sounds, aromas and emotions of a time when the streets were safe, families stuck together through thick and thin, and all the promises of a generation culminate in a single great World's Fair.

In this audiobook, you will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”).

Who is the Crimson Empress, and what does her conquest of the Named Lands really mean? Who holds the keys to the Moon Wizard’s Tower? The plots within plots are expanding as the characters seek their way out of the maze of intrigue. The world is expanding as they discover lands beyond their previous carefully controlled knowledge. Hidden truths reveal even deeper truths, and nothing is as it seemed to be.

In Jonathan Kellerman’s gripping novels, the city of Los Angeles is as much a living, breathing character as the heroes and villains who roam its labyrinthine streets. Sunny on the surface but shadowy beneath, this world of privilege and pleasure has a dark core and a dangerous edge. In True Detectives, Kellerman skillfully brings his renowned gifts for breathless suspense and sharp psychological insight to a tale that resonates on every level and satisfies at every turn.

A cynical Hollywood moviemaker confronts his dead wife’s lover and abruptly realizes the depth of his own passion. As his parents’ marriage disintegrates, a precocious fifth-grader distracts himself with meditations on baseball, spaghetti, and his place in the universe. And in the title story, an elderly nun enters a college creative writing class and plays havoc with its tidy notions of fact and fiction. The Whore’s Child is further proof that Russo is one of the finest writers we have.

Few know the city of Los Angeles the way #1 bestselling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure L.A. noir—and vintage Kellerman.

When Jack Swyteck's estranged father becomes governor, Jack's career as a defense attorney becomes a deadly conflict of interests. As governor, his father refuses Jack's last-minute request for a stay, and Jack's client is executed. Later, Jack is accused of a murder he didn't commit and the governor faces political ruin, the climax of a revenge campaign waged by someone connected to Jack's former client. Neither father nor son can help the other without harming himself.

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, child psychologist Alex Delaware does not hesitate. Driving through the dream-lit San Fernando Valley, Alex rushes to Jamey Cadmus, the patient he had failed five years before - and who now calls with a bizarre cry for help. But by the time Alex reaches Canyon Oaks Psychiatric Hospital, Jamey is gone, surfacing a day later in the hands of the police, who believe Jamey is the infamous Lavender Slasher, a psychotic serial killer.

The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something "real dead . . . buried in your marsh." The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it's a prank, but when a young woman's body turns up in L.A.'s Bird Marsh preserve no one's laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city's under siege to an insidious killer. Milo's first move: calling in psychologist Alex Delaware.

Bound by blood but divided by troubles as old as Cain and Abel, Moses Reed and Aaron Fox were first introduced in Kellerman’s bestselling Bones. They are sons of the same strong-willed mother, and their respective fathers were cops, partners, and friends. Their turbulent family history has set them at odds, despite their shared calling. Moses—part Boy Scout, part bulldog, man of few words—is a no-frills LAPD detective.

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive.

From the up-and-coming young American writer who has contributed to McSweeney's and written for the New Yorker comes a masterful collection of short stories that has already received rave reviews from many of the most prominent writers working today. Some of the stories are comic masterpieces, some embody as dark a vision of the universe as you are likely to encounter, and all of them showcase a writer grappling with the great questions of modern life.

For more than 25 years, Charles Schwab has been passionate about demystifying investing. In a user-friendly style, You're Fifty - Now What? offers a mix of clear and workable advice about how to accumulate and grow your money.

A wealthy man with a critically ill wife seeks the help of Matthew Hiller, a gifted doctor with a thriving practice. But in addition to the difficult professional challenge, Matthew finds himself facing the toughest emotional crisis of his life, since he met the lovely patient, Silvia, years ago, when both were young doctors healing the sick in Africa.