Showing results by narrator "John Kirby" in All Categories

One planet. Three sapient species living peacefully together. And one deadly virus that could wipe out every world in the Starways Congress, killing billions. Is the only answer another great Xenocide?

Funny and scary, romantic and gruesome - and featuring a childless queen who devours the heart of a sea monster cooked by a virgin, and who then gives birth the very next day; a lecherous king aroused by the voice of a woman whom he courts, unaware of her physical grotesqueness; and a king who raises a flea to monstrous size on his own blood, sparking a contest in which an ogre vies with men for the hand of the king's daughter - The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature.

From the up-and-coming young American writer who has contributed to McSweeney's and written for the New Yorker comes a masterful collection of short stories that has already received rave reviews from many of the most prominent writers working today. Some of the stories are comic masterpieces, some embody as dark a vision of the universe as you are likely to encounter, and all of them showcase a writer grappling with the great questions of modern life.

In the fall of 1969 eight prominent anti-Vietnam War activists were put on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, was literally bound and gagged in court by order of the judge, Julius Hoffman, and his case was separated from that of the others.

Stephanie and Jessica have nothing and everything in common. The two women don’t know each other but are on the same plane heading to California. Stephanie is on a business trip and Jasmine is fleeing an abusive relationship. After a few days, they text their friends the same exact messages about the same man—the messages becoming stranger and more erratic. And then the two women vanish. The texts go silent, the red flags go up, and the panic sets in. When Stephanie and Jasmine are each declared missing and in danger, it begs the questions: Who is Trent McCarthy?

Dava Sobel’s thoughtful play brings to life the story of Nicolaus Copernicus, the Renaissance astronomer, and mathematician who proposed the heliocentric model of the universe in which the Sun stands at the center. Plagued by self-doubt and threatened by religious censure, Copernicus resisted the publication of his work until just before his death in 1543. The play follows Copernicus in those final years as he works to complete his research with the help of Georg Rheticus, a young disciple from Wittenberg, Germany.

Two women - strangers - board a plane. Different lives, different purposes for their trip. Three days later, they text their friends the same exact messages about the same man. They say they've fallen for handsome stranger Trent McCarthy and are running away with him. And then the texts go cold, the red flags go up, and the woman are declared missing. Who's telling the truth? Who is this Trent, and what has he done with these women? Or, what have they done with him? . . .

Pandemics have ravaged the world since the dawn of time, but some say there are end-time prophecies of a pandemic to control all of mankind. What if the coronavirus was planned long ago by the ruling elite manipulating the internet and the media to control our minds, our spirits, and our lives to create a "new normal" that aligns with an Orwellian nightmare of grand design to truly create dominion over the masses?

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”