Showing results by narrator "Matt Godfrey" in All Categories

In October of 2013, Drew Hayes began posting a story to his website. Written over the thirteen days leading up to Halloween, when each chapter ended the next step was chosen by the readers. Sometimes this led to great discoveries and triumphs, other paths led to Dead Ends, though even in those there was much to be gleaned. For ten years, this tradition occurred, until in the year of 2022, the readers chose a finale. This is their story: a tale of deaths and decisions that spanned a decade.

Get the details, examples, and best practices you need to build generative AI applications, services, and solutions using the power of Azure OpenAI Service. Microsoft AI specialist Adrián González Sánchez examines the integration and utilization of Azure OpenAI Service within the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.

One of the great pulp writers, Fredric Brown (1906-1972) combined a flair for the horrific, a quirky sense of humor, and a wild imagination, and published many classic novels in the mystery and science fiction genres. But he was also a master of the "short-short story", tales only a page or two in length, but hard-hitting and with a wicked twist at the end.

From paranormal plots to stories of the supernatural, tales of the unfamiliar have always fascinated us humans. To keep the tradition alive, fantasy aficionado Paula Guran has gathered the most delightfully disturbing work from some of today's finest writers of the fantastique! No two mysterious shadows are alike, and the same can be said for the books in this series. The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 4 contains more than twenty stories. Listener beware and indulge if you dare, because these chilling tales are sure to spook and surprise!

I'm finally accepting that my psychic talents serve a purpose, that I can use them to help people. But two mysteries plague me. What happened to my good friend Lucas' sister after she disappeared then years ago? And if my father was murdered when I was young, why do I keep seeing him? When I find the long-buried remains of Lucas' sister, her murdered body only opens more questions.

Kyle Murchison Booth, archivist at the Parrington Museum, has heard of Thirdhop Scarp. Everyone has. The house has been notorious ever since the night that homeowner J. A. Cathcart murdered his entire family, and was found cupping the heart of his eldest daughter in his hands as tenderly as he would a wounded bird.

The greatest popular songs, whether it’s Aretha Franklin singing ‘Respect’ or Bob Dylan performing ‘Blind Willie McTell’, have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.

Jason has secured a tentative peace for Dragon Haven. With his control over illusion, and the Lorach threat thwarted for now, his time is spent preparing for the next attack, knowing the Dragon Souls will not be easily stopped. An old ally to Dragon Haven returns, but Jason questions his motives - along with his techniques. Now, Jason must choose whether to stop the Dragon Souls or save them. Stopping Lorach for good might mean destroying the captured dragons. It's a choice Jason fears to make, but doing otherwise means betraying those who have come to rely upon him.

One of the preeminent writers of weird fiction, Robert Aickman is celebrated for his unsettling and often ambiguous "strange stories", but he once wrote that "those, if any, who wish to know more about me, should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters," his only novel, originally published in 1964.

Hovern Bog. People live in terror of it - especially the residents of Fenchurch St. Jude, the little village located at its edge. They think of it as a living being. When 2,000-year-old bodies are recovered from the bog, perfectly preserved, it is the discovery of a lifetime for archaeologist David Macauley. But close examination of the corpses reveals a curious fact: all were cruelly, mysteriously murdered, gnawed to death by some unimaginable creature.

Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, working in a Louisiana circus and as a hootchy kootch dancer in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory. Disguised by years in exile and a name she found on a gravestone, Genevieve intends only to visit briefly and leave.

Aiden Anderson got off to a tough start in life. He had a small family to begin with, and they were all gone by the time he turned 16. He did his best to shake off his grief and go on to a successful life as a musician. He was talented, but just missed the big time. When Aiden dies in a car crash, he couldn't be more surprised to open his eyes in his grandmother's kitchen in 1961. He has a second chance at everything: family, friends, and fame. Even in Middle Falls, second chances don't always turn out right.

The details of the Bell family's terrifying experience with the supernatural have never been told in quite the way that Bram Stoker Award-nominated horror author John F.D. Taff has conceived. In his novel, for the first time, the Witch has her own say. And what she reveals about the incident and the dark motivations behind her appearance reaches way beyond a traditional haunting. Forget what you've heard about this wholly American legend. What you believe you know about the mysterious occurrences on the Bell farm is wrong.

Thirty years ago, the world ended. Giant electrovoric ants and pterodons came through a rift in space-time, millions of humans died, and that was that. Thirty years later, humanity has rebuilt … to an extent. Human ingenuity has provided some creative solutions to life without electricity, but most folks survive at the subsistence level, farming to keep themselves and their families fed.

It has many names: Bigfoot...Yeti...Sasquatch. But whatever it is, it’s out there in the woods and leaving a trail of blood and severed heads behind it. For John Moon, a half-mad Indian, it is a spirit that holds the key to his inner self. He worships its power and he’ll kill to protect it. Desperate, exhausted, half-starved, Moon will follow it wherever it goes. For Raymond Jason, killing it has become an obsession. He was the only survivor of a hunting trip to the Rockies where the hunters became the monster’s prey.

A comet, red and smiling with jagged teeth, flashes across the sky. People try to leave but find they are trapped by some acidic goo surrounding the entire drive-in. They grow hungry, homicidal, and suicidal. Then along comes the Popcorn King, a jiving, rhyming creature formed by blue-white lightning, with four arms and a popcorn bucket on its head.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.

In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides listeners through a scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has watched 146 times. Some fighters might not have time to bleed, but Monson has the patience to consider their adventure, one frame at a time. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly examines his own life, formed by mainstream white male American culture.

I find the murdered woman crumpled under a tree. Blood stains her back and her hands are bound. If I touch her, my psychic abilities will show me what happened to her. But I've lived through murders before, and the visions leave scars. Fighting my fear, I touch her—and only see four names—Addlynn Jeanette Claire Margaret.

A gifted, idolized singer returns to his poor hometown and a life and family he is so far removed from he now holds them in contempt. The Gospel Singer reveals the absurdity of blind religious faith and idol worship and the hypocrisy that results with the offering of money or sex. Crews grapples with race, gender, religion, and place and steps back to divulge the secrets of his characters - including a dead girl awaiting the gospel singer’s melodious eulogy, his dysfunctional family, a murderer, the zealous town residents, and a traveling freak show.