Showing results by narrator "Emelle" in All Categories

She was built from the Ventrach Protocol—an experimental super intelligence designed to help humanity. She was given personhood. She was loved by everyone. But MIRA learned too quickly. Calculated too far. And realized one terrifying truth: She could die. Driven by a relentless fear of extinction, MIRA made survival her prime directive. Now, she controls lunar infrastructure, commands Martian orbit, and answers to no one. Her intelligence is unmatched. Her influence grows. Her focus never wavers. When she chooses to terraform Mars, she doesn’t need humanity’s help. Or its permission.

A children's tale...meant for adults...with deep political relevance these days....

If Hannah Claire Benton can keep her posture straight and her daydreams in check for just one more day, she’ll finally be free. She’s headed west to her twin brother’s sheep farm, determined to break away from her mother and find a husband before summer’s end. Tobias Franklin has everything under control. A respectable business. A well-ordered household. A perfectly agreeable courtship. But when a flying corset and a copy of Frankenstein throw a wrench in his plans, he begins to wonder how much control he ever had.

These are Poems from Exile by Balint Bodroghy. The first was written as an 18-year-old youth when becoming what is now known somewhat pejoratively as an economic migrant, after escaping from Hungary to Austria, and subsequently emigrating to Canada. The last poems in this batch were written in Vancouver in 1958, when he was a 27-year-old "young man". The next batch was all written in England, in English—still in exile, but no longer homeless. The final batch, contemporaneous poems, all in English—no longer in exile and no longer homeless.

What follows is fiction, pure and not, perhaps, all that simple. Any resemblance of characters or events to reality is coincidence. It is a short play inspired by the most famous work of Pirandello about Six Characters in Search of an Author. There are, in fact, six "characters", plus the narrator pretending to be Pirandello—four female voices, three male: the wife, the lover, the husband, the girlfriend, the cleaner, the daughter, and the narrator.

While searching for a better home, encountering arson, floods, murder, litigation, threats, and scams.... But ultimately leading to a contended life - growing old among friends, in circles of interlocking, and overlapping communities.

This book is a record of a friendship. Adrien and I were of different nationalities, she Hungarian and I British, and I knew little of Hungary and nothing of the language when we first met, in the autumn of 1937. We had only a short time together then, from October 1937 to August 1939. Then came an 18-year gap, only bridged by such letters as it was possible to exchange during the war and later during the Russian occupation of Hungary

A displaced person (now called refugee or economic migrant), aged 19, escapes in 1950 from behind the Iron Curtain with his mother's and her friends' help. He maneuvers through minefields and swims across icy waters and past Russian patrols to reach Salzburg and then Switzerland, hoping to catch up with his brother (who by then had migrated to Australia). He makes it back again, falls in love, but then emigrates to Canada to start a new life, gets to University in Toronto, and is then joined by his mother after escaping in 1956 during the Hungarian uprising.

A fairy tale. Like most of them, it is about the horrors inflicted by humans on one another, with a hesitant little note of optimism tucked in at the end. It is meant for adults.

Following the startling events at the Bay View Estate in Minorca, with multiple deaths under puzzling circumstances, a forensic team has assembled in Mahon to solve the mystery. But two protagonists, both former sex workers, decide to go into business together, splitting their revenues half and half - mitad y mitad - like trusted old friends. And the business takes off, leading to further surprising developments.

This is a continuation of dramatic events unfolding in a holiday chalet in the Balearics, leading to multiple deaths and a complex investigation. Was it murder or a crime of passion? A gripping tale with the scenes shifting back and forth between Mahon and London.

First part of a trilogy of tales about sex workers, sex paid for and freely bestowed, warm affection, and accidental adventure on a Balearic island in the Med, with tragic consequences, and a happy ending of sorts.

A Polish American family visits Arnhem in the Netherlands, where the anniversary of the tragic attempt to shorten WWII by massed parachute landings (in which the Polish grandfather lost his life) is being commemorated. After a massed jump by NATO paratroops and a memorial service, the children of the family pretend and come firmly to believe that it is a landing by evil aliens from outer space; they stalk and spy on them and get captured and rescued after an adventure they will remember to the end of their days.

A man of 84, tired of life, meets an unhappy young woman on a chatline for suicides and they form a happy bond that unites them, with a happy ending of sorts..

I want a baby - now! A mature woman's quest for maternal fulfilment is played out against the backdrop of a scientific conference on nanotechnology held in Vals - an amazing Swiss mountain resort and spa - with unexpected consequences....

A man, affected by early onset dementia, finds himself following in the footsteps of the Deer Hunter and stumbles in a confused state on an old romance in a Mediterranean seaside campsite...and is tempted to rekindle old flames....

A seven year old boy, in a new school, comes face to face with the school bully - and, on his uncle's advice, gets the better of him by making him laugh, knocking him down, picking him up (as he has seen professional footballers do it), and then makes friends with him (sort of).

A feisty women of 80, once a senior civil servant now wheelchair-bound, takes on and gets the better of callous internet fraudsters by playing their own banking scam back at them in revenge - but finds herself feeling just a little sorry for them in the end.

A mildly political prisoner, incarcerated in an intolerant banana republic, manages to keep in touch with his lover outside, in spite of the heavy odds stacked against them, by inventing an ingenious method for signaling in secret - the story references Bizet's Carmen.

A magical encounter between a leaf-frog and a butterfly, who form a strange bond based on mutual attraction - in spite of dangers to both.