Showing results by narrator "Michael Curtis" in All Categories

The way we live, work, and consume will massively transform soon. Do you see it happening already? The COVID-19 pandemic was just the first of many disruptions to come. Before year 2030, ecological thresholds will be surpassed, humanity will be fully connected via the internet, social inequalities will reach critical mass, and exponential technologies will become truly “smart”. We have reached the inflection point in which all of humanity can pause to reexamine and to redefine our “normal” mode of operation in business, politics, community, and life!

Sex. Drugs. Lust. Courage. Loyalty. Betrayal. Drag divas. Hustlers. Porn. Gogo boys. Anything is possible at the gay club scene. Even love. Joey, fresh from the suburbs, gets involved in the gay club scene in Philadelphia during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He shares the stories of a diverse cast of characters, including his own special love story. Everyone at the club has a story, and every story deserves to be told.

James McKinney has always dreamed of having a house of his own and a place he can call home. After finding the perfect house, and ready to work to make it his home, nothing can put a damper on his happiness—even when he discovers the house is filled with the previous owner’s belongings. He focuses on the fact the house is now his and doesn’t mind at all when his cute neighbor offers to help him sort through it.

Twelve-year-old Charlie is down on his luck: His dad just died, the share crops are dry, and Cap'n Buck - the most fearsome man in Possum Moan, South Carolina - has come to collect a debt. Fearing for his life, Charlie strikes a deal with Cap'n Buck and agrees to track down some thieves. It's not too bad of a bargain for Charlie...until he comes face to face with the fugitives and discovers that they escaped slavery years ago and have been living free in Detroit. Torn between his guilty conscience and his survival instinct, Charlie needs to figure out his next move - and soon.

Moustafa Ghani El Souwaim has come far in life. Raised illiterate in a remote village in the Soudan, he set out at sixteen to better himself. His journey took him to the great archaeological sites of Africa, where he became a leading researcher versed in several ancient and modern languages. His life took an even stranger turn when he teamed up with Sir Augustus Wall and his street boy sidekick Faisal to solve murders.

“There’s no time. Remember, I love you.” It all started with a discovery. A cave beneath a waterfall that held a crystal. Two boys—best friends—embark on a journey they’re told will help all mankind. As the years go by, their friendship turns to love, and their adventure turns into a battle.

Prometheus was more than an asteroid. It was a cosmological time capsule eons in the making, revealing that space is an even bigger mystery than could be fathomed. As a paleoarchaeologist, Dallas was no stranger to ancient mysteries. But after witnessing the destruction of millions of lives, she’ll need more than determination to stop it from becoming billions. Broken, alone, and with nowhere else to turn, she teams up with an unlikely group destined to save mankind.

After spending the year suffering as a reality TV villain IRL, Alec Braud will do anything to get his redemption arc. Alec Braud may have won his season of the hit teen reality TV show Campfire Wars, but he’s lost the war of public opinion. At seventeen, he’s the most hated teen in America just because he betrayed his showmance, Joaquín Delgado. Alec only did it to use the cash prize to help his parents’ wildlife rehabilitation center. And Joaquín forgave him―so why can’t everybody else?

Beneath the veneer of everyday life, a clandestine world thrives in the shadows, filled with powerful telepaths who call themselves adepts. These superbeings have guarded their secrets for millennia, but when a brilliant scientist, Joe Martin, maps and prepares to publish their genome in a famous medical journal, the adepts realize they can’t hide forever and further exposure to the human world threatens their existence.

This book celebrates Madvillainy as a representation of two genius musical minds melding to form one revered supervillain. A product of circumstance, the album came together soon after MF DOOM's resurgence and Madlib's reluctant return from avant-garde jazz to hip-hop.

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories.

A dark and gritty trip into the imagination of one of science fiction's most gifted authors, this collection presents all nine tales of the Budayeen gathered together in one must-listen volume. Here is the Budayeen: a gritty fusion of Bogart's Casablanca, New Orleans' notoriously seedy French Quarter, and a futuristic Muslim city, all welded together and serving as the perfect backdrop for Marid, a drug-addled policeman and anti-hero of world-class proportion.

Since being thrown out of his home by his parents, Caden has been struggling to survive on the streets. He lives in constant fear, stresses over his next meal, and dreads trying to find a safe place to sleep at night. He eventually finds an unlocked car and settles in to sleep, but is soon interrupted when someone steals the car. With little choice but to ride along, Caden soon learns that first impressions aren’t always correct. Seventeen-year-old Damario has been raising his little brother and sister by himself since his parents were deported.

Inspired by America's beloved national parks, Campfire Stories Volume II is a collection of modern prose, poetry, folklore, and more, featuring commissioned, new, and existing works from a diverse group of writers who share a deep appreciation of the natural world. While the original Campfire Stories captured many historic tales reflecting the first 100 years of the National Park Service, this completely new collection, focused on five different parks (plus two long-distance trails), depicts the parks as we know and experience them today.

Rafael owns my heart. He stole it with the first clumsy bump in a Parisian bookstore, and I never asked him to return it. He gifted me a night to remember, a night that shaped the person I would become. And then, I lost him. I lost every trace that could have helped me find him. Until fate meddled again and put Rafael and me on the same cross-European train through the Alps.

Rio and Caden have been together for a few years now. It’s a rare weekend they get to spend alone. When Rio suggests they get away to Tahoe for the weekend a few weeks before Christmas, Caden is too excited to even think of saying no. They start their trip and even though they think they’ve planned for every emergency, they can’t control what Mother Nature has in store for them.

Rio and Caden met under harsh circumstances when they were both teenagers trying to survive on their own. Together, they raised Rio’s brother and sister and have created a great life for them all filled with lots of love and warmth. But just one thing is missing. Together they’ve made a family for themselves, and now they have a chance to add one more—a child of their own. When Caden’s sister offer’s to be their surrogate they’re overjoyed. Now if they can navigate nine months of pregnancy hormones, morning sickness, and mood-swings everything will be easy.

Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic is a unique firsthand account from three public health leaders of CDC's early response to AIDS. Drawing in part on interviews from the CDC's AIDS oral history project, the authors trace the evolution of AIDS from newly recognized disease to pandemic.

Seventeen-year-old Mariana Villalobos's mystic gift creates a sensation in northern Mexico as hundreds of people undergo a personal religious epiphany. Even gangsters reject crime. Seeing revenues tumble in the drug trade, the Liones cartel issues a hit order on the girl.

The short stories in Dance Me to the End of Love reflect the real day-to-day life of ordinary people of different ages, genders, professions, and ethnicities with connections to a believable world of imagined events. They take place in the former Soviet Union, the United States, and the emigration in-between.