Showing results by narrator "Jeffrey Kafer" in All Categories

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus, we don't like to talk, or even think, about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain".

A newly repaired ship...A willing and eager crew...A host of new technologies...A long anticipated return home...The crew of the UES Aurora finally has the chance to fulfill their mission, but first they must complete a long and dangerous journey across a thousand light-years of unexplored space.

Frank Cotton's insatiable appetite for the dark pleasures of pain led him to the puzzle of Lemarchand's box, and from there, to a death only a sick-minded soul could invent. But his brother's love-crazed wife, Julia, has discovered a way to bring Frank back - though the price will be bloody and terrible...and there will certainly be hell to pay.

After two decades of learning at the Nexus, the children of Van and his crew are ready to take their first steps out in the big black. Aboard their new ship, the AnaDarko, the young officers begin unraveling a mystery that goes beyond the depths of time—where did Gabby's people come from, and why does life, scattered across the gas giants, all sound so familiar to her? Under the capable guidance of Rab, a seasoned Peacemaker, the young crew pursues science and knowledge—even as Van and Torina push back against a threat that originates on earth itself.

Jon Reznick doesn’t trust the CIA—but when operative Daniel Black shows up near his home in Maine, he listens. A high-value target has been taken out by a sniper in Mallorca. The kill was clean. Professional. And just the beginning. Reznick is sent in under deep cover to hunt for the assassin and retrieve a cache of Cold War-era surveillance tapes—evidence so explosive it could bring down presidents. As bodies begin to fall and the sniper’s true mission comes into focus, Reznick realizes the stakes are far higher than anyone imagined.

Includes books one and two in the Sleeping Gods series: Endeavor and Erebus.

A world recovering from a devastating plague. A brutal enemy threatening invasion. A young man seeking to escape the shadow of his father. A ship manned by a crew of fresh academy graduates. A top-secret experimental propulsion system. A questionable alliance with a mysterious green-eyed woman. What destiny has in store for the crew of the UES Aurora is far greater than any of them could ever imagine. And this is only the beginning....

The newly renamed Vance Turbo has sabotaged his own career at Space Fleet Academy due to a desire to atone for a training accident. Unfortunately, his actions result in him getting press-ganged into an expendable crew of misfits recruited by a legendary starship captain. Their mission? To recover a collection of lost sun-destroying missiles that could restart a galactic war. Unfortunately, Vance is smart enough to know something is wrong with this picture. After all, no sane person would recruit this crew to save the universe.

Convicted of a minor traffic violation, Rev Pelletier is conscripted into the Perseus Union Marine Corps...for up to a 30-year term of service. Anxious to get back to his civilian life and job, Rev opts for a shorter term as a Marine Raider taking the fight to the enemy. But with extremely high mortality rates, can he and his friends survive until their term of service is over?

Vance Turbo, Hero of Space, has spent most of his hard-won officer's career helping refugees. This ends when a star gets blown up and he accidentally ends up saving everyone. Now the captain of the E.S.S Ares, he is on a goodwill mission to Contested Space. Unfortunately, his crew is made up of people who couldn't qualify for Space Academy but are now in thanks to lowered enlistment standards.

Brash, brilliant, handsome Nicholas Deketomis has built a highly successful career as a lawyer, protecting the rights of the innocent while winning multibillion-dollar lawsuits from the powers that be. "Deke" may have come from the wrong side of the tracks, but he's built a wonderful life for his close-knit family. His wife and two children live in a beautiful house in a seaside community along the Florida Panhandle. But their comfortable life is endangered.

Time is running out. An ally has all but fallen. Resources are running low. The time for attack has come... The Alliance must strike deep into the heart of the empire. This time, the Aurora will be going home, or going to her grave.

Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist. This first volume contains the short stories : "The Book of Blood," "The Midnight Meat Train," "The Yattering and Jack," "Sex, Death, and Starshine," and "In the Hills, the Cities,"

In a universe run by corporations, where profit matters more than life, how can an orphan with no skills, no money, and no prospects survive? When Ishmael Wang's mother dies in a senseless accident, he's given a choice: leave the planet on his own, or the company will remove him. To avoid deportation Ishmael finds work as a mess deck attendant on an interstellar freighter.

On New Year's eve 2022, unknown flying objects appear over Europe and ignite an inferno of violence among themselves. Debris from one of the spacecraft falls on Athens, turning the city center into a smoking crater. The destroyed remnant of the former metropolis is declared a restricted zone by NATO forces and sealed off. Amid the few survivors struggling for food, medicine, and clean water, Nikos takes care of his girlfriend, Maria, only to soon find out that to avert a creeping death, there is only one way out of the hell of Athens—the wreckage of the alien ship.

I’m a voyeur—it means I like to watch. And in my line of work, that’s a gift. As one of the four owners of the Salacious Players’ Club, I’m comfortable on the sidelines. This is what I was made to do, and I work better alone. Until the day I stumble on a certain cam girl app and find myself watching the one person I should never have watched—my stepsister. There are three big problems with this. One, Mia and I can’t stand each other. Two, she has no idea I’m the man on the other end of the video. And three…I’m hooked—on the app and on her.

A time to recover. A chance to make a new ally. A brief respite to repair and rearm. An opportunity for a people to regain their honor. For every civilization there comes a moment when a stand must be made against tyranny. The time has come for the Alliance to draw a line in the sand.

When the star system of Legatus was preparing to secede from the Protectorate of the Mage-King of Mars, it was the secret agents of the Legatan Military Intelligence Directorate that laid the groundwork and fought the covert war to make it happen. Now, as the open conflict draws to a bloody stalemate, LMID has been broken. Their leader is dead, murdered by agents of the Republic they helped birth. Their surviving agents have scattered, following a final protocol that orders them to defect to the Protectorate. An old friend brings all of this to Damien Montgomery.

On the run and out of chances, he guides his ship and crew into the heart of a relic older than the galaxy itself—and find himself on the edge of an eternal war he never knew existed. The relic is a mech, lost to history and forgotten by all who remain. Built by an ancient race to be the ultimate weapon, the machine is capable of unspeakable destruction, and its discovery could unhinge the balance of power throughout known space.

When a kidnapping attempt on the Mage-Queen of Mars is thwarted by luck, leaving thousands dead in its wake, Prince-Chancellor Damien Montgomery returns to field operations one more time. The evidence leads to one place: Tau Ceti. In Tau Ceti, Mage-Commander Roslyn Chambers finds herself without a posting as her teaching tour ends. Before she can take any kind of vacation, an old friend from her pre-Navy days shows up claiming to have information about the attempt on the Queen.