Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Anthologies

His father bent on making him a true Spanish nobleman, romantic young Eduardo crosses the seas to join his bumbling, megalomaniacal uncle, Cortés. Once he arrives in the new world, Eduardo falls passionately in love with an Aztec princess yet still assumes his place as a reluctant conquistador.

John, a widower and retired judge, has had a hard time letting go of the things that remind him of his beloved deceased wife, Millie: most of all their cherished robotic (but stunningly lifelike) spaniel, Sheila, who has been his stalwart companion for twenty-five years.

Pat, a Vietnam vet finished with marriage and booze, gets his dose of society sitting alone and dry at the local bar. One afternoon, watching a pre-season Red Sox game, he ends up next to a group of loudmouth writers gathered around a man in a wheelchair. The writers get under Pat's skin, and he says something lousy to the big-shot who, it turns out, is also a big-shot writer.

Thirty years hasn't changed Las Vegas - the desert just got dirtier. The biggest game in town centers on a massive, deadly roller coaster that winds its way through the Strip's most famous attractions. On the first Saturday of every month, twenty-four desperate passengers get strapped into the notorious ride and gamble with their lives in a twisted game of chance, to the thrill of webcast audiences worldwide. One of them will win, and one will die, but the other twenty-two will escape with nothing but their lives.

Every year, on the same night in November, a bouquet of flowers, a vintage bottle of wine, and a handwritten note appear next to a small wooden cross on the side of a lonely country highway. Year after year, it's the same offering at the same time. On his way home from work at the factory, Tom notices these roadside tributes and wonders who the mysterious mourner might be.

Anna Reuben intends to get out of Summer Breeze - the quaint seaside resort where she's just inherited a house - and back to the city as quickly as possible. The last thing she wants to do is stick around and dredge up old emotions about the mother who abandoned her as a child. But her plans are foiled by an encounter with Scott Murray, a sexy single dad and a neighbor and close friend of Anna's late mother.

This year, Ali and Stephen are both just trying to make it through the holidays. Stephen is fresh out of a relationship and dreading the prospect of Christmas alone. Ali, on the other hand, can't celebrate with friends or family. The most important man in her life is dying - decorating cookies and hanging tinsel aren't even on her radar. When the two meet during a chance encounter, Stephen's instant attraction to Ali spurs him into action.

Psychiatrist Dr. Renee Conway has taken on a new patient: Kevin Reynolds, the local hero who ran into a burning building to save a young family from certain death. When the rescue goes horrifically wrong, a boy is dead and Kevin suffers excruciating burns. Plagued with nightmares and left with a horribly disfigured face, Kevin finds celebrity its own torture.

The catcher is a statistical savant, the first baseman speaks in Buddhist koans, and the twin star pitchers may or may not derive mystical powers from scars betraying their Siamese birth. In fact, everything about the Birmingham Barons baseball team is remarkable - except for their performance on the field. For decades, the Barons have been woefully mediocre and Pudge Morrison - former better-than-average left fielder now long past his prime - has become the symbol for the team's disappointment.

Unemployed Colin is living back at home in the small town where he grew up in the shadow of his older brother and a gang of neighborhood bullies. He's still struggling to overcome his best friend Danny's unexpected death five years before. The strange series of events that took place on Danny's last night haunt Colin, and as he puts the pieces together, he discovers it may not have been an accident after all.

Wes can't get enough of Eardrum Buzz's first CD, Misery Machine. So when he sees an ad in a music magazine calling for fans to join the "Swarm" and promote the band, Wes doesn't hesitate to sign on. At the next pre-show party, Wes meets the band in all their insectoid glory and, convinced by a beautiful goth girl's hot breath on his neck, eats one of their hors d'oeuvres - a strange fried insect. After that, the music crawls inside his skull and the buzzing won't stop.

When Terry and Wayne stumble upon a backwoods bar while camping in the Rockies, they just want a beer and a burger. And maybe a warm bed for the night, if they're lucky. Instead they find themselves in the middle of a strange group of disturbingly scarred locals, served by a one-armed bartender. Even the sexy waitress with the elaborate octopus tattoo has what looks to be...bite marks? They know they should leave.

In these funny, surprising, and touching stories, Gordon gets at the big stuff - art and religion, literature and madness, the supernatural, and the dark fringes of sexuality - in his own unique style, described by novelist Rivka Galchen as "Dashiell Hammett divided by Don DeLillo, to the power of Dostoyevsky - yet still pure David Gordon."

After her testimony sent an innocent man to prison, law student Gina Blanchard vowed to spend her life righting that wrong. She passed up more prestigious opportunities to intern at a Tallahassee nonprofit dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions. But when she catches the eye of sexy green-eyed hunk Landon Vista, she realizes there’s room in her hardworking life for a little fun.

The Firelight Girls is a story of three generations of women and men whose lives are pieced back together when they return to the place that made them who they are, a summer camp on Lake Wenatchee in Washington State.

A young man fleeing heartbreak back home meets a mysterious expat at a café in Paris. What begins as a friendly conversation between two outsiders soon transforms into a heart-pounding confession that threatens to shake both men to their cores. In this darkly funny, Sopranos-meets-Sebald page-turner by acclaimed mystery writer David Gordon, people aren’t always what they seem, and digging for the truth could have fatal consequences.

The Idaho Territory gold mines and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom come together for a wilderness-dwelling drifter in this tale of the Weird West.

USA Today bestselling author of Nine Jan Burke delivers chills, suspense, shockers, and sharp wit in eighteen works of short fiction sure to satisfy longtime fans and newcomers alike. This positively addictive anthology is full of surprises—a patchwork of settings and characters not soon forgotten, and mysterious twists and revelations not quickly shaken!

Incendiary Girls explores our baser instincts with vivid imagination and humor. In these stories, our bodies become strange and unfamiliar terrain, a medium for transformation. In "Fundamental Laws of Nature", a doctor considers her legacy, both good and bad, when she discovers that her mother has been reincarnated as a thoroughbred mare. In the title story, a mischievous angel chronicles the remarkable life of a girl just beyond death’s reach.

Crimes happen in a flash. Before you even know it, the shots have rung out, the jewels have been stolen, and the bodies are cooling on the floor. In this anthology, over eighty authors - including veterans such as Chuck Hogan, Ken Bruen, and Tasha Alexander - come together to tell tales of murder and mayhem, all in one thousand words or less. Dare to confront these fearful, furious tales, each offering a glimpse of the darkness lurking in the human heart.