Showing results by narrator "Gary Bennett" in All Categories

In 2008, the American economy collapsed, taking with it millions of Americans' jobs, homes, and life savings. The impending financial crisis was devastating, and many are still feeling its effects today. Though the crisis was debilitating, the US government has yet to implement policies that would prevent a repeat of the Great Recession. Nothing Is Too Big to Fail holds a microscope to the very policies and corruption that led to this major economic recession.

In the bleak, not-too-distant future, most people who could fled to the virtual reality OVR World Online. Zachary "Zee" Jones will never be able to afford to become a player of the game. After committing a crime in order to save his mother's life, he was arrested and included in the Inmate Player Program. Even without perception filters to limit his pain, it was better than the alternative. He has the opportunity to earn more money in a five-year sentence then he could have in his entire life as a hospital janitor.

The Empire is dead! And Captain Josiah Bleys, smuggler and charmer though he may be, is likely to soon follow unless he is willing to at least pretend to be something he loathes: a hero. His "pal" Chief Ragnar Kane, one of the Emperor's finest warriors, likewise harbors no aspirations toward gallantry, just increasing his kill count. Fate, however, has other plans.

Pella, Greece; 341 B.C. Alexandros is a middle child caught between two warring spouses, born to both a king and queen, but never meant to rule himself. When a mysterious young man arrives from the north, fleeing his own family, and meets Alexandros in a garden in the Macedonian capital, the bond that's created between them will soon become unbreakable and ultimately define both the direction of the Ancient World and ours.

When fifteen-year-old Denzel Payton is charged with the murder of a disabled veteran at a homeless camp, he's trapped in a no-win situation: remain silent and risk almost certain conviction, or name the real killer and face the wrath of a monster who terrifies him.

When humanity is threatened by an explosion at a Russian research laboratory, coworkers and friends in a small southern town must band together for survival. They realize too late that this is no ordinary plague . . . and that the enemy they have to fight may not be the only thing they need to worry about.

The survivors lived through the horrifying first days of the plague and its aftermath. They've found their friends, their family . . . but others are still missing. Finding them means leaving the only safety they have, which may not be so safe after all. It's the dawn of a new era. One of violence, war, destruction, and horror. Just when they feel as if they've gotten a grip on the situation, fate throws another curveball their way. Every day is a new struggle, a new terrible reality. The only way forward is through it.

The suspect's family turns to Tony Valenti for help. The case is a bewildering maze, with multiple potential killers and a mountain of contradictory evidence that points both to and away from the ex. Is he innocent? Even Tony isn't sure. Tony is fully immersed in the battle to win the case when a lethal terror from his past surfaces and shakes his faith in himself. Now desperate to protect himself and his family as he fights to free his client, Tony fears that he is being pulled in too many directions to save anyone. He'll need every trick he knows to get everyone out alive.

Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others.

One set wants the "Chosen Warrior" on a dissecting table; others want to silence him to keep their own secrets. And his divinely tempestuous and vengeful ex-lover, the Valkyrie Kara has her own sadistic amusements in mind. Maybe his newest allies can make the difference. Maybe he can be tough enough, fast enough, and lucky enough to pull it all off. And maybe somewhere in his confused memories are the keys to getting out of this mess. Or maybe he's just nuttier than Aunt Sally's pecan pie. Good thing he's tougher than her roast beef.

When Grazyna Zaluski's marriage takes an ugly turn, she finds herself isolated in a remote corner of Wyoming. Her husband's family controls almost everyone and everything in the county . . . including the courts. Is divorce an option for a young immigrant living in the United States on a visa? Will her husband simply sweep away the problem of Grazyna, or even—quite literally—bury it?

Charlie thought building a spaceship had been tough, so being king should be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, it was like a cake made of cement. Hard to swallow, and just might kill him. It was good being king, or so Charlie had believed. After an abrupt crash arrival, people had finally stopped trying to kill him - for the most part, anyway - and his new subjects respected him. Or feared him. It was sort of hard to tell, what, with the ginormous dragon who had eaten the previous king standing right behind him.

Adrian Hell is an assassin with a legendary reputation. When he’s hired to take out a corrupt businessman, he quickly realizes that the job isn’t as straightforward as it first appears. The more Adrian learns about his target, the more he becomes one himself. Caught in the middle of two powerful enemies, Adrian must use every tool in his deadly arsenal to survive.

He had survived a spaceship crash, alien slave traders, space pirates, and fierce gladiatorial combat. Hell, he’d even faced an actual fire-breathing dragon and lived, but now, he was presented with an even greater challenge. Domestic living, captive on a strange world. Charlie almost had to laugh at his changing circumstances, having seen it all since a wormhole spat him out in a distant galaxy. He learned to fight, he learned to use magic, he even learned to kill - to survive at all costs.

When a horribly disfigured woman breaks into the underground depository of the Stockholm National Library in Sweden and tears out pages of satanic spells hidden deep inside the Codex Gigas - The Devil’s Bible - teams of investigators quickly realize that there is more to this than meets the eye. Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, Colonel Cameron Skull is investigating the ravaged remains of the cemetery outside the infamous, and now touristy, Church of Bones. But when a manlike creature appears and Colonel Skull realizes the danger, it’s too late.

Jake has it all — a new home, an amazing girlfriend, and nearing a promotion at work. Best of all, he feels he’s finally moved on from the horrors of his traumatic past. But when he learns that his estranged brother, Trevor, has moved back into their haunted childhood home, Jake knows his past is not quite finished with him yet. Jake rushes to the old house in Rose Grove — a small town with a tragic history — to pull his brother from that dangerous place. But it’s too late. There, he finds Trevor trying to make contact with the spirit that tormented them years ago.

Cain, still reeling from the attack on his girlfriend, gets even more suspicious of Project Specter when they send him to Russia to find Dmitri Kurylenko, a man he has already secretly killed. After another attempt on his life, he soon learns of the agency's involvement in keeping his memory from him and sets to meet with a man who seems to know everything.

When a hungry ghoul uncovered a cache of treasure hidden beneath Lost Falls, he thought all his problems were behind him. When he realized how wrong he was, he came to me for help. As Lost Falls' resident folk wizard, breaking curses is my specialty. But the ghoul and his treasure hunting friends found more than cursed gold down there in the dark. They unleashed something old. Something alive. Something better left buried.

A murdered vampire. No witnesses. A blood feud ignited. Some folks say the only good vampire is a dead vampire. But when the murder of a vampire threatens the fragile peace between vampires and ogres, someone has to wade into the fray to sort the truth from the lies. Guess who gets that job. But there's more to this murder than an ancient blood feud. Behind the scenes, someone is stoking the fires of war. And if I can't uncover the truth soon, we'll all be feeling the heat.

Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He's returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn't in the cards. Tony's elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff's deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn't talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.