Showing results by narrator "Emily Card" in All Categories

At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children—the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. The time dilation granted by the speed of their travel gives Earth's scientists generations to seek a cure, to no avail. In time, they are forgotten—a fading ansible signal speaking of events lost to Earth's history. But the Delphikis are about to make a discovery that will let them save themselves, and perhaps all of humanity in days to come.

Andrew Wiggin is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is the truth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Savior of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered Earth Hegemony. He is offered the choice of living in isolation on Eros, at one of the Hegemony's training facilities, but instead the 12-year-old chooses to leave his home world and begin the long relativistic journey out to the colonies.

One planet. Three sapient species living peacefully together. And one deadly virus that could wipe out every world in the Starways Congress, killing billions. Is the only answer another great Xenocide?

Welcome to the Sweet Tooth Ice Cream & Candy Shoppe, where the confections are a bit on the... unusual side. Rock candy that makes you weightless. Jawbreakers that make you unbreakable. Chocolate balls that make you a master of disguise. Four young friends - Nate, Summer, Trevor, and Pigeon - meet the grandmotherly Mrs. White, owner of the Sweet Tooth, and soon learn about the magical side effects of her candies.

When Runnel leaves his mountain valley to head for the great city of the water mages, he has no idea of his own magical talents. But he soon finds that without meaning to, he complicates and then endangers the lives of everyone he comes to know and care about. For when it comes to magic, there are rules and laws, and the untrained mage-to-be must be careful not to tap into deep forces and ancient enmities. Otherwise, other people might end up paying the price for his mistakes.

Danny North knew from early childhood that his family was different - and that he was different from them. While his cousins were learning how to create the things that commoners called fairies, ghosts, golems, trolls, werewolves, and other such miracles that were the heritage of the North family, Danny worried that he would never show a talent, never form an "outself"....

Originally published in 1778, Evelina is Frances Burney's first and most beloved novel. It was a landmark in the development of the novel of manners and went on to influence such enduringly popular authors as Jane Austen. By turns hilarious and grim, witty and lyrical, the story follows young Evelina as she leaves the seclusion of her country home and enters into late eighteenth-century London society - both its pleasures and its dangers. Life in eighteenth-century England is vividly rendered as Evelina is educated in the ways of the world and, eventually, love.

Best-selling writer Orson Scott Card founded the online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show in 2006. It has been a big success, drawing submissions from well-known science fiction and fantasy writers, as well as fostering some amazing new talents. This collection contains some of the best of those stories.

Podkayne Fries, a smart and determined maid of Mars, has just one goal in life: to become the first female starship pilot and rise through the ranks to command deep-space explorations. So when she is offered a chance to join her diplomatic uncle on an interstellar journey to distant Earth via Venus, it's a dream come true - even if her only experience with diplomacy is handling her brilliant but pesky younger brother, Clark.

When Rigg and his friends crossed the Wall between the only world they knew and a world they could not imagine, he hoped he was leading them to safety. But the dangers in this new wallfold are more difficult to see. Rigg, Umbo, and Param know that they cannot trust the expendable, Vadesh - a machine shaped like a human, created to deceive - but they are no longer certain that they can even trust one another. But they will have little choice.

The young street urchin Hissune gets his due for helping Lord Valentine regain his throne. As a reward, he is sent into the depths of the Labyrinth, a massive library of memory cubes in which the entire history of Majipoor is preserved. As Hissune prepares for a summons to return to Castle Mount, he relives the lives of Majipoor's most famous and notorious inhabitants.

A hero without peer or scruples, Sam Gunn has a nose for trouble, money, and women, though not necessarily in that order. A man with the ego (and stature) of a Napoleon, the business acumen of a P. T. Barnum, and the raging hormones of a teenage boy, Sam is the finest astronaut NASA ever trained and dumped. But more than money, more than women, Sam Gunn loves justice—and he really does love money and women.

As teenager Blue van Meer tells her story we are hurled into a dizzying world of murder and butterflies, womanizing and wandering, American McCulture, The Western Canon, political radicalism and juvenile crushisms. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class, Blue's wickedly funny yet poignant tale reveals how the imagination finds meaning in the most bewildering times, the ways people of all ages strive for connection, and how the darkest of secrets can set us free.

Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages - until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.

It is almost impossible to envision what childhood would be like without the enchanting world of fairyland. Three-headed trolls, horses that carry their masters up mountains of glass, giants and dwarfs, monsters and magicians, fairies and ogres - these are the companions who will thrill young boys and girls of all lands and all times, as Andrew Lang's phenomenally successful collections of stories have proved.

Things are a little complicated for the Beacon Street Girls right now...Charlotte's dream is to be a writer. But she doesn't seem to care that The Abigail Adams Junior High opened its newspaper, The Sentinel, to seventh-grade writers. Why? Because she's got a heartbreaking secret and it involves moving...again! And just when Charlotte really needs her friends, they've got major problems of their own.

Charlotte Ramsey is the new girl again. After causing the biggest cafeteria blunder in history, Charlotte's assigned lunch partners - the very stylish Katani, irrepressible Avery, and super-friendly Maeve - can't wait to dump her. Can it get any worse? Absolutely! Nobody is talking, and Katani wants out of the group. What a mess! Can the girls become true friends or will they remain worst enemies forever?

alaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies. The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

When the spaceship Viking encounters a variety of adversaries in the Asteroid Belt - including a prospector and his family, a cyborg, the solar system's greatest sculptor, and an evil industrialist - a confrontation begins that transforms the human solar system.

In a post-apocalyptic America, Jamie Teague helps a group of travelers make their way past the murderous Bushwhackers. Jamie comes to find that the strangers are Mormons headed for Utah to avoid being massacred. Knowing that they will die without his help, he agrees to take them as far as his cabin.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.