Showing results by narrator "David Bendena" in All Categories

Todays software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow? Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias, where artificial minds help...

The Seven Keys have been collected, and the world created solely to entertain has come alive. The one who gains control over them will rule Sphere. Who will it bethe Demon King, the digitized players, the corporations, or the people hiding under the masks of the Seven Brothers? The stakes are...

Morris Young has always felt like the odd man out in the huge Young family. He’s one of the youngest brothers, excluded from the band until now, and the only one without a child. His pro-football career lasted a mere three years, and his marriage about the same amount of time. He’s been divorced for a few years now, but his feelings for his ex are as strong as ever. So when he runs into Leighann Drummond, the sparks are immediate and hot.

Just as Jeremiah Goodbye is set to meet his fate in the electric chair, he is given a second chance at life. With the flip of a coin, he decides to return to his home town of Nowhere, Oklahoma, to settle the score with his twin brother Josiah. But upon his escape, he enters a world he doesnt...

Kelly Eads joined the 101st Airborne Division soon after 9/11, his experience reflecting the patriotism and commitment of so many young men and women who responded to the attack. He deployed to Iraq twice with the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment. Early in their deployment to Iraq, the 2nd...

Jim Gordon was the greatest rock drummer of all-time. Just ask the world-famous musicians who played with himJohn Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Frank Zappa, Steely Dan, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Joe Cocker, and many more. They knew him for his superior playing...

They say that the Sphere of Worlds has no limits and that its players enter a new universe brimming with mysteries. And this universe is now readying to defend itself. Whoever has got involved in the game just can't stop anymore. In the search for the Keys, Cat and Weldy set off for the Abyssthe...

In the endless game of Sphere of Words, the trader named Cat continues searching for the Keys hidden by the dead creators of the virtual reality...

This full-cast performance of Dracula offers a new way to experience Bram Stoker's seminal vampire story, which follows Abraham Van Helsing's efforts to track down Lucy Seward after she becomes the victim of Count Dracula.

Pandorum is launching a massive offensive, aiming to destroy Cat and his clan. As theyre blazing through everything in their path, thousands of players clash in battle, and the biggest alliances of Sphere join the fray. Can Cat stay on the sidelines? After all, hes able to buy and sell almost...

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.

Meet Cat. He thinks everything has its price. You can pay in gold, or you pay in steel. And for the right price, even the entire Sphere of Worlds can be bought. Ever the merchant, he pays in souls, freeing the Goddess of Darkness in the astral fortress of Pandorum and becoming the archnemesis of the most powerful alliance in all of Sphere. Even as an enormous bounty is placed on his head with hunters trailing his every move, he never wavers. His patron, the God of Shadows, sends Cat to the twilight world of the Hole to find the third of the seven Keys.

Hi, I’m Dee, and I’m captain of the friend zone. I didn’t ask for this dubious honor, but don’t worry, I like it this way. I’m happy not dating and just being “one of the guys” on my volleyball team. At least I was until my scary new boss informs me that my job—I’m a developer at a dating app (ironic, right?) that I coded from scratch, an app that is essentially my baby—is in jeopardy. So I lie—tell him that I’m living proof the app works, because I’m engaged to a man I met on it. And who do I name as my lucky (fake) fiancé? My best friend, Noah Jackson.

Ten years ago, the small town of Bates, South Carolina, was changed forever with the appearance of a slip of paper. Six names. Six people set to die. Six months later, they were gone. But the list maker was far from done with their town. Like clockwork, new lists come out every six months. To keep their names off of them, the citizens go to extraordinary lengths and keep terrifying secrets. Someone is controlling their town. But who? And, most importantly, why?

On January 22, 2003, four men stepped onto a stage in Brooklyn and did something no one else was doing at that time, in that place. They played rock 'n' roll: old-fashioned rock 'n' roll with skyscraping riffs and sloppy solos, topped with extraordinary lyrics about an out-of-focus America, blurred by pills and powders, of crime and fear and desperation and redemption. Twenty years later, The Hold Steady are one of America's most beloved rock bands. To mark those twenty years, The Hold Steady tell their full story.

Now that Cat has discovered his sword’s secret and received the task to collect the Seven Keys, he’s not in a hurry to complete the new quest. Why would he care about the future of the world when he has much more exciting things to do, like claiming his place in the clan, participating in the redistributing of trade influence, and just plain making money? Cat starts building his own trading empire—and ends up getting involved in an all-out economic war. Having gotten the taste of real money, he travels to the Bazaar, the world’s biggest marketplace at the crossroads of trade routes.

Twenty-five-year-old Linda Donovan has spent her life working for her father, Anthony, at Donovan and Daughter Exterminators in New York City. On the anniversary of her mother’s death, her father makes his annual visit to his late wife’s grave while Linda heads to a Park Avenue apartment building to work solo. When she arrives, she finds the body of an elderly resident, partially eaten by rats. The gruesome death not only speaks poorly of the Donovans’ exterminating services, it also points to foul play.

Cat is a wannabe merchant who specializes in procuring in-game valuables to sell for real money. He's a cunning trickster who wriggles his way out of trouble thanks to his quick wit and his trading talents, and his credo is “Anyone can be bought provided the price is right." He starts from scratch, using every opportunity to advance his plans. The first book in the Rogue Merchant series, The Starlight Sword is the story of this common trader’s rise to becoming the world’s newest legend, the most famous merchant in the entire Sphere of the Worlds

Do I want to move in with my ex-fiancé? No. But will it probably end up being a good thing? Also no. Because the truth is, I'm still in love with Jude Anthony. It doesn't matter that it's been years since we've spoken or that he was the one who walked out on me. It's hard to stay mad when I understand why he did what he did. But I need a place to stay, at least until I can find something new. So I'll keep my walls up, keep my distance, and everything will be fine. I'm sure Jude doesn't have feelings for me anymore, so there's nothing to worry about. My heart is perfectly safe.

I didn’t ask to have a hopeless (and unrequited) crush on my best friend’s grumpy older brother. For years, I’ve had feelings for Luke Brooks, but it’s time to move on—I’m on a mission to find my perfect match and secure my very own happily-ever-after. But then one tiny mishap with a dating app lands me a new job: planning singles events for the whole town. It seems simple enough…until the town council forces Luke to play cupid with me.