Showing results by narrator "Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

It begins with a tantalizing clue: a recent photograph taken of Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man - one of the most priceless masterworks ever plundered by the Nazis, which disappeared and was believed destroyed. Now, with proof of its existence, the Polish government wants it back. One wrong move and it could vanish forever. Because bound together with the missing artwork are secrets that have remained buried for a reason.

Audible brings to life through dramatic performance the 1945-1946 radio broadcast reports covering the greatest courtroom drama of the 20th century - the Nuremberg trials. The original broadcasts have been lost forever, but the verbatim text - written by Harold Burson, founding chairman of one of the world’s leading public relations firms, Burson Marsteller, who at the time was a reporter for the Armed Forces Network - has been newly interpreted by an ensemble of some of our fine actors.

For the first time in more than 15 years, Ben Bova returns to the adventures of Orion - hunter, warrior, assassin, and time-traveler. Created by Aten, one of the god-like descendants of the human race 50,000 years in the future, Orion is forced to travel throughout space-time to do his Creator’s malevolent bidding. In this audio exclusive, Aten sends Orion to the Britain of the Dark Ages.

Gennady’s an expert on nukes, so when the Interpol man hires him to track some stolen plutonium, it seems like business as usual. Except for this: All signs lead to – a place that doesn’t exist. This story was originally published in the Hugo Award-nominated METAtropolis. It was also selected for inclusion in Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

The title work in this collection of ten short stories and poems is widely regarded as the most famous of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings. This unsettling tale in verse tells of a man’s slow descent into madness as he mourns the loss of his lover. The mysterious visit of a talking raven that utters only one word sparks the man’s steady decline.

In an isolated olive grove on the idyllic Aegean island of Tinos, revered by religious pilgrims around the world as the Lourdes of Greece, two bodies charred beyond recognition are discovered, chained together amid bits and pieces of an incinerated Greek flag. An enraged press screams for justice for the unknown victims, until the dead are identified as gypsies, after which the story simply fades away. When the government orders the investigation closed, Inspector Andreas Kaldis, feared head of Greece’s special crimes division, has other plans.

When the colony worlds Adirondack and Silvern fell to the Troft forces almost without a struggle. Outnumbered and on the defensive, Earth made a desperate decision. It would attack the aliens not from space, but on the ground with forces the Trofts did not even suspect. Thus were created the Cobras, a guerilla force whose weapons were surgically implanted, invisible to the unsuspecting eye, yet undeniably deadly.

Considered by many to be the father of supernatural fiction, Robert W. Chambers' work continues to influence writers today. Originally published in 1897, The Mystery of Choice brings together seven chilling tales, most of them set in Brittany. Distinguished by its atmospheric use of natural scenery, this important collection presents an author at the peak of his craft.

The Sojourn is the story of Jozef Vinich, who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a family tragedy and returns with his father to an impoverished shepherd’s life in rural Austria-Hungary. When World War One comes, Jozef joins his adopted brother as a sharpshooter in the Kaiser’s army, surviving a perilous trek across the frozen Italian Alps and capture by a victorious enemy. A stirring tale of brotherhood, coming-of-age, and survival, this novel evokes a time when Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians, and Germans fought on the same side while divided by language, ethnicity, and social class.

When 10-year-old Dinah Kirkham saw her father leave their Manchester home in the middle of the night, she asked when he would be back. “Soon,” he replied. But he never came back. On that night in 1829, John Kirkham laid the foundation of his daughter’s certainty that the only person Dinah could ever really trust was herself.

As the world slips into the throes of war in 1939, nine-year-old Maciek's once closeted existence outside Warsaw is no more. When Warsaw falls, the orphaned Maciek escapes with his sharp-tongued aunt Tania. Posing as Catholic Poles to hide their Jewish identity, they endure the war together - running, hiding, changing their names, forging documents to secure their temporary lives - as the insistent drum of the Nazi march moves ever closer to them and to their secret wartime lies.

Donal Graeme was a Dorsai, a mercenary soldier, and also a mutant gifted with insight into the path forward for the human race. Through his gifts, Donal would come to bend time and live three lifetimes - and, in the process, run into problems he had not expected: first, his own flaws, and second, the existence of another mutant, Bleys Ahrens. Bleys is a man with a clear vision of the struggle in which he's involved - but an increasingly deficient sense of human values.

In The Final Encyclopedia the human race is split into three Splinter cultures: the Friendlies, fanatic in their faith; the truth-seeking Exotics; and the warrior Dorsai. But now humanity is threatened by the power-hungry Others, whose triumph would end all human progress. Hal Mayne is an orphan who was raised by three tutors: an Exotic, a Friendly, and a Dorsai. He is the only human capable of uniting humanity against the Others. But only if he is willing to accept his terrifying destiny... as savior of mankind.

Step Fletcher, his pregnant wife DeAnne, and their three children move to Steuben, North Carolina, with high hopes. But Step's new job with a software company turns out to be a snake pit, and 8-year-old Stevie's school is worse. As Stevie retreats into himself, focusing more and more on a mysterious computer game and a growing troop of imaginary friends, the Fletchers' concern turns to terror.

This two-story compiliation, read by Stefan Rudnicki, offers two stories from David Drake's popular Hammer's Slammers series. In At Any Price, Col. Alois Hammer's indomitable Slammers are called in to support human colonists against a native uprising in this novel-length adventure. But even though the natives' off-world weapons are no match for the Slammers, their ability to teleport gives them a frightening advantage! In Rolling Hot, the battle-crazed troop of recruits and vets, led by Captain Ranson, must cover 300 miles of hostile enemy territory.

It is 2076: Lancer, Earth’s first starship, is on a mission to find interstellar civilizations. Although astronaut Nigel Walmsley’s experiences with alien encounters make him the expert, no one believes Nigel’s theory that machines are the dominant intelligent beings left in the galaxy and that their purpose is to annihilate all organic life. Then the explorers discover once-living planets where only machines remain – and ruined worlds where fugitive survivors must evade omnipresent and lethally advanced A.I. warships.

When Flinx, no stranger to galactic intrigue, found an unconscious woman on a riverbank deep in the jungles of Alaspin, he took it in stride. When he learned that the woman, Clarity Held, was a brilliant scientist abducted from a remote outpost on inhospitable Longtunnel by a group of fanatic assassins, he tried to help the beautiful Clarity back to her project. Unfortunately, the assassins were still at work.

At last, New York Times best-selling author Alan Dean Foster returns to his acclaimed Humanx universe, where a young human orphan called Flinx seeks to unlock the dangerous secrets of his past - and the uncertain prospects of his future with the aid of the formidable minidrag known as Pip. This is the most mind-bending Pip and Flinx adventure yet - a roller-coaster ride into the unknown, filled with wonder and humor, and a host of deadly adversaries.

Where Flinx and his flying minidrag Pip went, trouble always followed - that law had governed their lives through years of unsought danger and galactic intrigue. Now, an evil rich man was out to kidnap the minidrag for his personal zoo, and Flinx and Pip were on the run again - this time into uncharted space, on a random course they hoped would foil their pursuers.

Millions of people each year take trips. But how many are able to make each trip a journey of personal growth? The Way of the Traveler is the book to help people make the most of every trip. It's about learning to make the time before, during, and after travel an enriching experience; drawing on personal virtues to help you through potentially stressful encounters; and setting goals to ensure that even the most mundane two-day business trip brings new insights.