Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

Eva Forge is the last paladin of the dead God, Morgan. Eva, forsaken by her parents and forgotten by her family, was the last child dedicated to the Cult of Morgan. Morgan, God of battle and champion of the Fraterdom, was assassinated by his jealous brother, Amon. Over time, the Cult of Morgan has been surpassed by other Gods, his blessings ignored in favor of brighter technologies and more mechanical miracles. Now, Eva watches as her new family, her Cult, crumbles around her.

Self-exile became Sira's only choice when she discovered how deeply she'd been betrayed by the leaders of her own people. Rather than allow them to continue to use her for their own ruthless purposes, Sira, the most powerful being ever born to the alien race known at the Clan, fled with the human telepath, Jason Morgan. Now, living on a distant world in an environment over which she has control, Sira is striving to carve out a new life for herself.

Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky - but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem.

As a Shadowchaser, Kira Solomon has been trained to serve the Light, dispatch the Fallen, and prevent the spread of chaos. Its a deadly job, and Kira knows the horror of spilling innocent blood. But now she has a new role, as the Hand of Maat, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth and Order, and an assignment that might just redeem her.

When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the soon-to-be-deceased themselves.

Dr. Alice Cameron is a famous scientist - an archeoastronomer - devoted to studying ancient Mayan culture. The era driving her career has always been the end of the Mayan baktun, so she's on the Yucatan Peninsula in December 2012 with her daughter Nixie...and so are fellow serious scholars, plenty of end-of-the-world crazies, and - at an international summit - the President of the United States and other heads of state.

Ava Kalle's empty soul devours magic. And her hunger is deadly. She's sharp, quick and can live in shadow, making her work as a spy for the Mages a natural choice. She lives on the fringes of society and likes it that way. When the man she loves takes another woman for his mate, the darkness in her heart unravels and she'll do anything to get him back. She makes a dangerous deal with a fire elemental, Heyerdar, who has a vested interest in agreeing.

Rising from the shackles of slavery, Sojourner Truth would become one of the most charismatic evangelical preachers of her time and would lead America to institute reforms in race relations and women's rights. A prophetic force, Truth would anticipate many of the social changes to come and would lead the way for the modern civil-rights movement.

From the introduction by Jonathan Santlofer: "Like film, literature has been no stranger to marijuana and hashish, going back to Charles Baudelaire's 1860 Artificial Paradises, in which the French poet not only describes the effects of hashish but postulates it could be an aid in creating an ideal world.

Eighteen years ago, FBI profiler Evelyn Baine's best friend Cassie Byers disappeared, the third in a series of unsolved abductions. Only a macabre nursery rhyme was left at the scene, a nursery rhyme that claimed Evelyn was also an intended victim. Now, after all these years of silence, another girl has gone missing in South Carolina, and the Nursery Rhyme Killer is taking credit. But is Cassie's abductor really back, or is there a copycat at work?

Modern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In 11 stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.

Six months ago her three daughters walked out and left Charlotte Rodgers to fend for herself in her small home in Murphy, Kansas. Charlotte is left resentful and bitter toward her children—Clarice, Connie, and especially Camille—for abandoning her when all she wanted was to return home, finally, to Denver and escape from the memories of her painful past. What Charlotte doesn’t know is that the past is hot on her trail and, to her horror, will soon catch up with her once again.

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

Eel River brings an original, hippie commune angle to horror, furthering our commitment to offering the best in innovative dark fiction.

A heartwarming and engaging coming-of-age tale that highlights the power of embracing one's own uniqueness. The rain in Spain falls mainly on plain Janes. Elena is lost in the shuffle among her three overachieving siblings. But now that she’s on her own for a whole semester, she intends to...

Buffalo, New York, is still the second-largest metropolis in the state, but in recent years its designation as the Queen City has been elbowed aside by a name that's pure noir: The City of No Illusions. Presidents came from here; and in 1901 a president was killed here while visiting the Pan-American Exposition, by a man who checked into a hotel under a name that translates as Nobody.

What happens after we die? Does our consciousness vanish at the moment of death? Or does it continue in some form? Former Los Angeles Times national correspondent Erika Hayasaki sets out to explore the controversial science behind near-death experiences. The journey leads her to forge an unexpected bond with a distant family member who becomes her tour guide and ends up teaching her not only how awesome it can be to die but how precious it can be to live.

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.

Phillis Wheatley was just another child kidnapped into slavery from Senegal, until she began to show enormous intellectual promise, eventually shocking a room of Boston scholars by translating Ovid at the age of 14. Wheatley would go on to become a major voice in the American literary scene and would pave the way for African American writers to come.

For Kira Solomon, normal was never an option. Kira's day job is as an antiquities expert, but her true calling is as a Shadowchaser. Trained from youth to be one of the most lethal Chasers in existence, Kira serves the Gilead Commission, dispatching the Fallen who sow discord and chaos. Of course, sometimes Gilead bureaucracy is as much a thorn in her side as anything the Fallen can muster against her. Right now, though, she's got a bigger problem....