Showing results by narrator "Bronson Pinchot" in All Categories

Kicked out of Yale at age 14, the precocious Judd Breslau takes a questionable job from the eccentric Phillips Chatterton, a bathrobe-wearing Egyptologist working out of a dilapidated home laboratory. There, he falls for young Valerie Chatterton, who quickly leads Breslau away from his research.

Funny Business is based around the theme of - what else - humor, and if you’re familiar with Jon and Guys Read, you already know what you’re in store for: an hilarious story.

It is the autumn of 1999. A year has passed since Lucy Darby’s unexpected death, leaving her husband David and son Whitley to mend the gaping hole in their lives. David, a trauma-site cleanup technician, spends his nights expunging the grisly remains of strangers, helping their families move on, though he is unable to do the same. Whitley—an eleven-year-old social pariah known simply as the Kid—hasn’t spoken since his mother’s death.

Writers & Lovers established Lily King as one of our most beloved authors of contemporary fiction. Now, for the first time ever, King collects 10 of her finest short stories, opening fresh realms of discovery for avid and new listeners alike.

New York. 1977. Be there when it explodes. It’s New Year’s Eve, 1976, and New York is a city on the edge. As midnight approaches, a blizzard sets in - and amidst the fireworks, an unmistakable sound rings out across Central Park. Gunshots. Two of them. The search for the shooter will bring together a rich cast of New Yorkers. From the reluctant heirs to one of the city's greatest fortunes to a couple of Long Island kids drawn to the punk scene downtown.

What kind of man buys his grave at the age of 18 and chooses to spend the rest of his life in a rest home at 35? Meet Antoine, the curious hero of Laurent Graff's Happy Days, an odd young man who somewhat prematurely acquiesces to his terminal destiny.

In the near future, America is crumbling, bankrupt, and teetering on the edge of chaos. Following the Great Bailout, the multinational Lee-Pi corporation is the only institution that can hold the country together, providing basic services, security, and order. Leonard Cheung is Lee-Pi's most reliable field operative: a negotiator, assassin, and clean-up expert who does the behind-the-scenes dirty work to keep the corporation running.

Prince Liam. Prince Frederick. Prince Duncan and Prince Gustav…. The four princes that have the worst luck in the world. After saving the kingdom yet again and going their separate ways, the princes are back in trouble…and this time it's serious! Somehow, everyone thinks they have murdered a princess! And with bounty hunters after them, and a dastardly scheme sure to be behind it all, the princes have to overcome their differences, reunite, and clear their names.

At a remote farm, a group of old friends gather to catch up, sit by the fire, and forget about their overworked lives. But a long weekend in the country is not Joseph's idea of a good time - not when he's promised his ex-wife he'll use the occasion to talk to their troubled 14-year-old daughter, and not when the farm belongs to his former lover and her husband, Alex. Once best friends, Joseph and Alex are now estranged, with much left unspoken between them.

Nate’s best friend Jeremy is missing, and Nate seems to be the only one worried that he’s been captured by hideous creatures that live in the sewers. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

There’s nothing better than taking your timid little cousin Thad to one of those sweet haunted houses the 4-H Club decorates for Halloween. Except, of course, if the house turns out to actually be haunted. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

The year is 1973, and Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, accidental cultural critic, washed-up war journalist, husband, and philanderer finds himself alone on the floor of his study in an existential crisis. His wife has taken their kids and left him to live with her mother in New Jersey, and his best work feels as though it is years behind him. In the depths of despair, he receives an unexpected and unwelcome phone call from his old rival, offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write the definitive account of the end of America's longest war.

Scott O'Connor's novels have been hailed as "astonishing" (Library Journal), and "so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word" (New York Times Book Review). Now, from the author of Untouchable and Half World comes A Perfect Universe, a piercingly emotional cycle of stories in the tradition of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad and Annie Proulx's Close Range. Welcome to the often-overlooked corners of sun-bleached Los Angeles, where a teenaged bicycle thief searches for a kidnapped boy, a young musician emerges as the lone survivor of a building collapse, and an aging actor faces the erasure of his past.

Hamilton Speke is a successful playwright and composer - an extraordinary creative force. He lives and works on an estate south of San Francisco, secure in a woodland sanctuary where, to his surprise, he receives a visitor from his past, an old friend and former partner. Then everything changes. Speke's life of celebrity and vision is ruptured by bloodshed and insanity in a world where it's revealed that no one, and no career, is far from danger.

San Francisco architect Stratton Fields has just discovered that a contest was rigged against him and that the man who engineered the cheat, Ty DeVere, is determined to keep Stratton from success. But when Stratton's enemies, including Ty, start dying mysteriously - and Stratton encounters several apparitions - he wonders if he unknowingly made a deal with a supernatural force. Or maybe he murdered these people himself and has no memory of his deeds.

Writers & Lovers established Lily King as one of our most beloved authors of contemporary fiction. Now, for the first time ever, King collects 10 of her finest short stories, opening fresh realms of discovery for avid and new listeners alike.

This wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie charts Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War. Revealing fascinating untold stories of the colourful characters who ascended in their wake, it tells the story of how the era of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts or the perfect weapon to save the day began to fade.

In 1924, hoping to cure his illness, Franz Kafka traveled to a sanatorium in Kierling, Austria, run by a Dr. Hugo Hoffman. He would spend his last days there. In Robert Cohen’s story, we see the end of Kafka’s life through Dr. Hoffman’s eyes. The doctor attempts to decipher the dying man’s enigmatic communications, scribbled on scraps of paper, while being harried by Kafka’s friend, Klopstock, and a young woman who has fallen in love with the then-unknown writer. As the case progresses, the once-practical and upstanding doctor gets pulled deeper and deeper into his strange patient's world.

As Carolyn untangled the umbilical cord from around my neck and placed me on Lillian’s stomach, I watched my mother look down with an expression that conveyed both reassurance and unconditional joy at my arrival, albeit eight weeks early. I was too new to know about the capriciousness of a red-haired woman’s soul, how it was governed by its own laws and remained half empty no matter how many blessings were poured into it. Truth be told, maternal instincts were as far away from Lillian’s heart and mind as my father was from Interstate 30.

Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man and the dark humour and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive.