Showing results by narrator "Chris Andrew Ciulla" in All Categories

Max is a cheery xeno-archeologist from Earth, stranded and trying to find a way home. Lahra is a stern warrior of a nearly extinct race, searching for her people's heir. Wheel is the couple's cybernetic pilot, running from her past and toward an unknown future. On Wheel's ship the Kettle, the trio traverses the galaxy, dodging Imperial patrols and searching ancient temples and ruins for anything they can sell. Back on the Wreck, their home and base of operations, they're deeply in debt to the drifting city's most powerful gangster, and she wants her money back.

In The Coming of Democracy, Mark R. Cheathem examines the evolution of presidential campaigning from 1824 to 1840. Drawing on period newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and public and private correspondence, The Coming of Democracy is the first book-length treatment to reveal how presidents and presidential candidates used both old and new forms of cultural politics to woo voters and win elections in the Jacksonian era.

Hope Beiler needs Aaron Kanagy’s help. She is determined to give her sister a beautiful new bed frame as a wedding present, and Aaron is the best carpenter in Charity Creek. Unfortunately, she can’t move past something he said last year...and there’s unexplained animosity between their fathers that makes interacting difficult. Aaron wishes he could spend more time honing his woodworking craft, but his parents need help running their gift shop. When Hope approaches him with a solution that will allow them both to achieve their goals, he accepts.

Sylvie Snow knows the pressures of expectations: a woman is supposed to work hard, but never be tired; age gracefully, but always be beautiful; fix the family problems, but always be carefree. Sylvie does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the scheduling, the schlepping, and the PTA-ing, while planning her son’s Bar Mitzvah and cheerfully tending her husband, Paul, who’s been lying on the sofa with a broken ankle.

In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family man - until he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs. Now he’s marking time between sunny days surfing and dark nights working security at an industrial complex. His isolation is broken when Cindy, a charming 22-year-old drifter he sees hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway, hustles him for a breakfast and a place to crash - two cynical kindred spirits.

Rocco is still reeling from the death of his best friend’s girlfriend, who was murdered as she slept in his bed. There’s no doubt that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid the ultimate price. With the identity of the hit man still unknown, a cloud lingers over Rocco, dulling his judgment and leaving this antihero exposed to other threats. For Rocco has stepped on one too many people’s toes over the years, namely the Mafia that is still being rooted out in Aosta.

James Michael Curley was the stuff of legend. Twice jailed while serving in office, yet a champion of the people; builder of schools, yet a shameless grafter; born in the slums of South Boston, yet rising to become one of the most wealthy, powerful politicians of his day.

Life was never easy for Marcus, even before his parents’ murder/suicide in a seedy trailer park in Florida. Now he’s landed in Vegas with his older brother, Mac, hoping to start over. But plans usually go sideways when Mac’s involved. He’s a mean brawler, and Marcus all too often ends up on the receiving end. Then Marcus meets Trina—a ray of hope in his sea of despair. He’s smitten. Trina, however, has a thing for bad boys, and Mac is as bad as they come.

The Chameleon, an Artificial Intelligence expert, can create a deepfake of almost anyone—living or dead. Even more frightening is the Chameleon’s ability to seek out disturbed souls and laser-focus their rage. A talent she employs to compel her subjects to commit violence on her behalf. Kylee Kane, a security consultant for Welch HOA Management, finds the Chameleon’s first victim, Andy Fyke, crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Kylee suspects the fall’s no accident and is tied to Andy’s campaign to prohibit rentals in his Hilton Head Island community.

Bishop Rider Lives! And for a dead man, he’s been busy. His story and the parts of it yet to be told being what populates Brand New Dark.

Everyone wonders what it's really like in space, but very few of us have ever had the chance to experience it firsthand. This captivating collection brings together stories from dozens of international astronauts - men and women who've actually been there - who have returned with accounts of the sometimes weird, often funny, and awe-inspiring sensations and realities of being in space.

Under Cancún’s hard blue sky, a beach boy provides a canvas for tourists’ desires, seeing deep into the world’s underbelly. An enigmatic encounter in Copenhagen takes an IT consultant down a rabbit hole of speculation that proves more seductive than sex. The collapse of a love triangle in London leads to a dangerous, hypnotic addiction. In the Nevada desert, a grieving man tries to merge with an unearthly machine.

Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age. Between 1870 and 1900, the United States’ population doubled, accompanied by an unparalleled industrial expansion and an explosion of wealth. America was the foremost nation of the world, and New York City was its beating heart. There, the richest and most influential—Thomas Edison, J. P. Morgan, Edith Wharton, the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carnegie, and more—became icons, whose comings and goings were breathlessly reported in the papers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. It was a time of abundance, but also bitter rivalries.

Twelve-year-old Rain Winter narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend’s house. Her two best friends, Tess and Hank, were not as lucky. Tess never came home, and Hank was held in captivity before managing to escape. Their abductor was sent to prison but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice — and killed him in cold blood.

The third collection in the Music and Murder Mystery Series, Back in Black features one story for each song from the seminal hard rock album of the same name. This book showcases ten brilliant mystery writers at the top of their game, including Reed Farrel Coleman, Heather Graham, Tori Eldridge, Ward Larsen, and Andrew Child, among others.

After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is attempting to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA career, and she knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth.

Warin is one of a small team charting the demise of the last few inhabitants of Retti 4, a distant planet in the throes of an extinction-level virus. It’s not Warin’s job to intervene in natural evolution or to question the whims of a cruel universe. He is only to observe and report. Until Warin actually steps foot on Retti 4.

Anthony “Tony” Costa grew up admiring his Uncle Dom - a made member of the New England mafia - so when Dom asks him to collect gambling debts from around the neighborhood, Tony is happy to help. Even after his uncle gets thrown in jail, he does his nephew a good turn from behind bars, getting him a job as a longshoreman on the Boston waterfront. The year is 1958, and Tony is only 18. His new job quickly teaches him what it will take to survive on the docks.

Drawing upon his experiences as a diplomat, including his observations of Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli crafted The Prince to explore the nature of power. Through an unflinching portrayal of brutality, Machiavelli reflects on what it takes to be a successful ruler.