Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Short Stories

"Spore" follows hard-working Rosália, a manicurist who has built herself a solid reputation and is trusted by her wealthy clients; that is, until she unexpectedly discovers her own dark side. Now she will have to go to great lengths to hide her twisted urges.

At once surreal and grounded in stark reality, these stories offer poignant, touching, and at times shocking insight into the lives and minds of women in modern Brazil. Varied in detail, each tale explores a woman's sense of identity and place, within Brazilian society and at vulnerable moments within her most intimate relationships. Diving deep to the raw psychological core of her protagonists, Leite shatters the traditional rules for both women and literature, producing a powerful voice of female rebellion.

For twenty-two-year-old Julia, just out of college, Vancouver has become a social wasteland. Her boyfriend has gone off to London to study art history, leaving her feeling abandoned in the not-quite-derelict historic apartment where she is alone - surrounded by people. While working a series of odd jobs, Julia inadvertently befriends Oliver, one of her aloof neighbors.

In a tripping and absorbing style, award-winning Brazilian writer Claudia Lage asks listeners to gaze into the dark side of love and desire, and ultimately even to sympathize with her flawed hero and heroine. A Little Death is both an unconventional love story and a raw, visceral tale that explores the journey to adulthood in all its complexity and hilarity.

When Beatriz, lonely and desperate for money, places an ad as a writing consultant in the local paper, her first client is Dolores Maria Rubia de Alicanto, an imposing old widow who has hired her to transcribe the story of her life. Beatriz is taken aback when the woman starts with the words "My husband betrayed me..." and proceeds to relay a gripping story of deception, crumbled desire, and vengeance.

In these two short thrillers, best-selling author L.J. Sellers explores how the dark side of human nature takes over in crucial, fearful moments and leads to irreversible, life-changing repercussions.

The detective is losing his mind. Suffering from a panic disorder that has him haunting emergency rooms in rising waves of crisis, the detective begins to lose his grip - on his relationship with his fiery young lover, on his ability to work, on his health.

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.

Lola McInnis has hit rock bottom after catching her fiancé cheating with his personal trainer. In a desperate attempt to make a fresh start, she sinks the last of her savings into renovating two houses in an up-and-coming Atlanta neighborhood, but the project hits the skids when her contractor bails.

No one likes Jack. His wife is gone and his neighbors avoid him. He's a recluse and a creep, and that's just the way he wants it; he can ignore what they say behind his back if they leave him to his work and his daily walks. But when ten-year-old Emma goes missing in the nearby woods, the eyes of his neighbors turn toward him, their fear and accusations escalating as the days go by. Jack proclaims his innocence, but what the neighbors - and the listener - find out is the last thing anyone would suspect.

Junior exec Ben thought working for a prestigious bank in Hong Kong would be a career-building adventure and an exotic change from his staid Long Island upbringing. In the complex splendor of Hong Kong, he finds himself in a position of extreme privilege - a position in which everything is seen as a commodity. When he and his colleagues take an outing on the South China Sea to escape the city smog, a sordid secret is revealed.

For vampire Colleen O'Hara, work is also play. She hunts demons not just for the paycheck, but also for the thrill of the fight. It's better than sex, at least the sex she's had so far. But then she meets Seth, a smoldering-hot shadow demon. With him she feels an undeniable, untamable urge to blur the lines between ally and enemy, predator and prey. Meanwhile, as the barrier between hell and earth grows weaker, threatening thousands of human souls, Colleen must track down the traitor who opened the rift.

For ace PI Dix Dodd, this assignment should be a piece of cake: help her best friend Rochelle's sister, Tatum, get rid of a persistent (not to mention married!) ex-boyfriend. Unfortunately, Dix's plan backfires, and Tatum winds up kidnapped.

Cynical single gal Larissa has been to too many weddings. Nonetheless, when her friend Malena asks her to be a bridesmaid, she's a good sport, despite the floor-length aqua satin nightmare she's made to wear.

In the wilds of Alaska, Assistant District Attorney Shyla Pierce is supposed to be dead, killed in the pursuit of justice. But in fact she is very much alive, quietly in hiding and slowly recovering from her near-fatal injuries.