Showing results by narrator "LIsa Flanagan LIsa Flanagan" in All Categories

Hollywood, 1946. The war is over, and 18-year-old Clara Berg spends her days shelving reels as a vault girl at Silver Pacific Studios, with all her dreams pinned on getting a break in film editing. That and a real date with handsome yet unpredictable screenwriter Gil. But when she returns a reel of film to storage one night, Clara stumbles across the lifeless body of a woman in Vault 5. The costume, the makeup, the ash-blonde hair are unmistakable - it has to be Babe Bannon, A-list star. And it looks like murder.

From Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the youngest comedy writers ever for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and masterminds behind the viral 2018 Yale graduation speech, comes a hilarious collection of short stories taking on coming-of-age, memes, sex, politics, relationships, and Goop, with satire, self-deprecation, and utter irreverence.

A Is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan’s first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull, along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan’s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind....

Even as her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, FBI Agent Elsa Myers can't ignore a call for help. A teenage girl has disappeared from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads obscures the fact that she did not go willingly. With each passing hour, as the hunt for Ruby deepens into a search for a man who may have been killing for years, Elsa's carefully compartmentalized world collapses around her. She finds missing people, but she knows too well how it feels to be lost.

Stay-at-home mom Sarah Johnson has the perfect family - a handsome, hardworking husband and two healthy and beautiful children. At least, that's what she's been telling herself for years. After the tragedies in her youth, Sarah deemed living a lie easier than dwelling on the past and facing her everyday failures. But Sarah's world is about to crumble around her when she receives a phone call from a man with a heavy foreign accent telling her that her perfect husband has put a price on her head. She is offered two weeks to come up with a counteroffer or die.

After Catherine Wells’ ship experiences a deadly incident in deep space and loses contact with NASA, the entire world believes her dead. Miraculously - and mysteriously - she survived, but with little memory of what happened. Her reentry after a decade away is turbulent: Her husband's moved on with another woman, and the young daughter she left behind has grown into a teenager she barely recognizes. Catherine, too, is different. There are periods of time she can’t account for, and she begins waking up in increasingly strange and worrisome locations, like restricted areas of NASA.

Louisiana, 1875: in the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest. Louisiana, 1987: Arriving in Augustine, Louisiana, first-year teacher Benedetta Silva finds herself teaching students whose poverty-stricken lives she can scarcely comprehend. The town is impossibly set in its ways, suspicious of new ideas and new people. But amid the gnarled live oaks and ancient plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey and a hidden book that could change everything.

The year is 1861, the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. For Kate Warn, the first female private detective in American history, the only assignment tougher than exposing a conspiracy to assassinate the new president is training her new mentee, Hattie MacLaughlin, in the art of detection. The two women’s mission to save the president takes them from the granges of rural Maryland to the heart of secessionist high society, and sets them on a collision course that could alter the course of history.

At 800 feet in length, the Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built - just slightly smaller than the Titanic! Also of a disastrous end, the zeppelin burst into flame as spectators watched it attempt to land in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937. In under a minute, the Hindenburg was gone; people jumping from windows to escape. However, only 62 of the 97 crew members and passengers onboard survived. The exact cause of the disaster is still unknown and remains a fascinating historical mystery, perfect for this series.

In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories - Kiernan's 12th collection of short fiction since 2001 - she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir.

Kyler Centaurus isn't your typical runaway. All he wanted was a quick trip to the legendary Fasti Sun Festival. Who wouldn't want to see new stars being born? Um, try Kyler's entire family. When an accidental launch sequence ends with Kyler hurtling through space on the family cruiser, the thrill of freedom is cut short by two space pirates determined to steal his ship. Not happening! Luckily, Kyler bumps into Fig, a savvy young Wanderer who makes a living by blowing up asteroids. She could really use a ride to Earth and Kyler could really use a hand with the pirates.

Early on, the United States imposed war taxes that both demanded sacrifices from all Americans and served as reminders of their participation. Since the Korean War, the United States has increasingly moved away from war taxes. Instead, borrowing has become a permanent feature of contemporary wars. The move serves leaders well because reducing the apparent burden of war has helped mute public opposition and any decision-making constraints. But by masking accountability, however, the move away from war taxes undermines the basis for democratic restraint in wartime.

A discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history. From these strands of fact, Geraldine Brooks weaves a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history. A gripping reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America, Horse is the latest masterpiece from a writer with a prodigious talent for bringing the past to life.

Here is a celebration of the bizarre and beautiful, and a marriage of unlikely worlds. From a reverence of the dead to the sacrifices the living make to unspeakable gods, from clockwork dreams to tales of merciless revenge, Kiernan blurs the artificial lines of genre, and shows us a world where there is no division between the light and dark.

Lydia and Lucas Moore are in their late 20s when the stranger enters their small world on Wolf Island. Lydia is the responsible sister, has cared for her pathologically shy brother, Lucas, ever since their mom's death a decade before. They live together, comfortable yet confined, in their family house by the sea, shadowed by events from their childhood.

This collection of 22 short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow.

On a cold November night, Evelyn Van Pelt steals her roommate’s two underfed and neglected little girls from their beds and drives to the northwestern hometown she fled 14 years earlier - Cormorant Lake. There, hidden in the mountains and woods, dense with fog and the cold of winter, Evelyn grapples with the guilt of what she’s done, and as she attempts to reconcile her wild independence with the responsibilities of parenthood, she reconnects with the two women who raised her - her foster mother, Nan, and her biological mother, Jubilee.

Luckily for humanity, scientist Marie Curie applied her brilliant mind and indomitable spirit to expanding the frontiers of science, but what if she had instead drifted toward the darkness? At the cusp of between child- and adulthood, at the crossroads between science and superstition, a teen Marie Curie faces the factual and the fantastic in this fabulous collection of stories that inspire, delight, and ask the question: What if she had used her talents for diabolical purposes?

In recent years, nicotine has become as verboten as many hard drugs. The literary styles in this volume are as varied as the moral quandaries herein, and the authors have successfully unleashed their incandescent imaginations on the subject matter, fashioning an immensely addictive collection.

Lilian Quick is 40, single, and childless, working as a pet-portrait artist. Her estranged cousin has become Internet-famous as "Eleven" Novak, the face of a massive feminine lifestyle empowerment brand, and when Eleven comes to town on tour, the two women reconnect. Despite 20 years of unexplained silence, Eleven offers Lilian a place at the Temple, her Manhattan office. Lilian accepts, moves to New York, and in just three months, Lilian's life changes drastically. But can Lilian trust everything Eleven says?