Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Van Dyck" in All Categories

Swede escape! Calista Swanson has begun her study abroad semester in Stockholm, Sweden, and she couldn’t be happier! There’s finally some distance between her and the constant piano-playing of her annoying sister Suzanne. Calista isn’t at all focused, but she always has her friends, and a boyfriend, by her side. Jonas, who’d been an exchange student at her high school in Wisconsin, lives in Stockholm. He’s the main reason Calista is studying in Sweden. Calista loves Sweden from the moment she arrives, but...why hasn’t Jonas called?

Having spent the past three decades' worth of summers on Nantucket, the Warners are as much a part of the island as the crust of salt on the ferry. But this year is different: Tripp is no longer the father he was, and it becomes clear that nothing - not the beams that hold the house together, and not the values the family clings to - can survive the ravages of time. When tradition turns to tragedy, the creaky old house swirls with suspicion. There are just so many reasons to want someone gone.

Daphné loves to spend time with her late husband's family in its sprawling mansion in the South of France. It was there that she spent the happiest years of her life married to Ivan before he died tragically in a domestic accident. Eight years on, she still spends time there with Max, her father-in-law, a famous sculptor who's been a recluse since his son's death; Nelly, the matriarch; and Ivan's siblings.

Caribbean-born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel, Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering readers a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining. Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time.

As your future doctor, Maureen Miller is getting the best 21st century medical education post-financial crisis America can buy. Her profession's in flux, her life's sometimes a mess, but if she doesn't know how to solve any of her problems, at least she can search for answers online: Do you get a good cell phone signal in the hospital? How do you help solve the financial crisis in American health care when you have a hard time finishing a premed problem set?

Pittsburgh has recently (and more than once) been called the most livable city in America; yet the old image of smoky skies and steel mills spewing forth grit has never quite disappeared. Its history as a dirty industrial center is a part of its residents, a part of their toughness. The people of the steel city fight.

This short story is from the anthology Mitigated Futures. Twelve science fiction stories about the oncoming future, each of them representing a possible glimpse of what could be just around the corner... or much further down the corridor. These stories previously appeared in places like Clarkesworld Magazine, The Year's Best SF, Subterranean Magazine, and in various anthologies. They deal with the future of war, our climate, and technology's effect on our lives.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

When eco-terrorists blow up a series of dams crossing the Columbia River, US Fish & Wildlife undercover agent Venus Diamond attempts to find out what happened to her friend and fellow eco-cop Louie Song, believed drowned during the massive explosion at the Priest Rapids Dam. A dead salmon sent to Venus suggests the reason behind the series of dam blasts, and simple logic maps the deadly path that lies ahead, including the potential eco-disaster that could come with blowing up the grandest of them all...

Eco-Breeder or Satan’s Scientist? A nightclub fire claims fifty-three lives, including that of Dr. Hannah Strindberg, a scientist who runs the secretive Breedhaven project on a remote island near the US-Canada international border. The nightclub fire proves to be arson. US Fish and Wildlife Undercover Agent Venus Diamond suspects the target was Dr. Strindberg.

The honeymoon is over for Seattle Fish and Wildlife agent Venus Diamond. Literally. Hawaii and her new husband must wait while she heads a massive search into the disappearance of a baby in the Bogachiel wildlife preserve. Natives believe the baby was snatched by "the Unknown," a half-man, half-elk creature of Native American lore. Venus suspects the incident may involve a recent elk poachings in the area, and carcasses found with sawed-off hooves.

Ozone Beach, Washington, where the clams dance and the chowder's poisoned: Timber queen Madge Leroux's body has washed up on frigid backwater Ozone Beach in Washington State, the last place on Earth Venus Diamond wants to visit. Recently returned from steamy, exotic adventures tracking poachers in East Asia, and hanging out in sophisticated nightclubs, Venus has brought home malaria fevers and a jaundice the shade of hot mustard.

For Fish and Wildlife Agent Venus Diamond, it's the perfect day to investigate a murder. It's foggy and raining on the Olympic Peninsula, Venus's eccentric mother is having trouble with her adopted son Timmy, and her fiancé has just broken off their engagement - by email, no less. What better distraction from this sudden mayhem than a crime scene?

Nursing heartbreak and a bullet wound, undercover wildlife avenger Venus Diamond has learned all the survival tricks at the government's rehab facility in Hawaii, and has just about decided that life on a tropical beach, however tarnished with disgrace, is tolerable, unlike the real world, where she'd barely survived. Her self-indulgent wallowing is interrupted, though, by the arrest of her stepbrother who's charged with drowning a young girl.

The chase begins when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Venus Diamond is summoned by local authorities to the scene of a bloody ambush: Eight men are dead and one woman is missing from one of Canada's prestigious diamond mines. Along with the woman, presumed to be a hostage, one of the world's priceless diamonds, the 384-carat Lac de Lune, has disappeared. The rare blue diamond was recently mined from the Zone Mine Big Jim Hardy and his little mine on the map in the diamond industry.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

With unflagging courage, wit, and eloquence, Darcy shares what she calls her "fast-forward" life, a life in which she applies for disability, leaves her job, and plans her own funeral as well as meets and moves in with her true love, buys a house, and gives birth to her first child in less time than it takes most of us to accomplish even one of these things.

With the outbreak of the American revolution, Abigail Lovell's family is torn apart - while her schoolmaster father is an outspoken loyalist and prominent figurehead in the community, she and her two brothers engage in acts of espionage to undermine the British forces in Boston. Her sickly older brother, James, operates the patriots’ spy ring while Abigail acts as a courier, eluding increasingly aggressive British patrols. Meanwhile, her younger brother, Benjamin, slips out of Boston to fight alongside Abigail’s love, Ezra, in the battles at Lexington and Concord.

Vaun, born a peasant in the stinking mud flats of Ult, a thriving colony planet, claws his way to survival and fame by becoming the toughest young officer in the Space Patrol. A veteran of the brutal training academy, he seizes opportunities as they arise, leading the first ship out against a surprise attack by the mysterious Brotherhood. He returns to a hero's welcome as the Brotherhood ship falls to the surface of his home planet in shattered pieces.

Catherine Ling was abandoned on the streets of Hong Kong at age four. Schooled in the art of survival, she traded in the only commodity she had: information. As a teenager, she came under the tutelage of a mysterious man known only as Hu Chang - a skilled assassin and master poisoner. As a young woman, she was recruited by the CIA and now she is known as one of their most effective operatives. Having lived life in the shadows, Catherine is aware of the wobbly moral compass of her existence....