Showing results by narrator "Kevin Kenerly" in All Categories

Black operations killer Will Slater has a choice to make: continue putting his life on the line for his country, despite the unrest brewing below his stoic exterior...or get out. Should he muster up the courage to tell his employers how he feels, accept that he’s rapidly approaching his physical and mental limits, and ask permission to step away from his role as a human wrecking ball? But he knows they won’t let him out, not with the state secrets swimming around in his head.

King and Slater have fought and warred all over the globe, from the desolate plains of the Russian Far East to the extreme altitudes of Nepal. Now, chaos strikes them at home. New York goes dark as malicious code infects the power grid in a devastating cyberattack. 

It started the night Geena and Henry broke up. What was that strange light in the sky? A new star? A comet? Neither. It was the death of Venus. As if to commemorate the end of NASA’s golden couple, our neighbor planet exploded into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering the Earth with radiation and bizarre particles as big as bacteria - a 10-dimensional superstring nanovirus that literally eats rock, transforming it into liquid, and then into molecule-size black holes that devour the very fabric of space-time.

On January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee climbed into a new spacecraft perched atop a large Saturn rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a routine dress rehearsal of their upcoming launch into orbit, then less than a month away. All three astronauts were experienced pilots, but little did they know, nor did anyone else, that once they entered the spacecraft that cold winter day they would never leave it alive. Apollo 1 is a candid portrayal of the astronauts, the disaster that killed them, and its aftermath.

Forty modern masterpieces are found concealed on a neutral ship in international waters 16 months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Their provenance is sketchy and their final destination unknown. The Royal Navy suspects the works are “degenerate art” seized by the Nazis and shipped across the Atlantic to create cash for their covert operations. But how to prove it? There’s only one man for the job - Roy Hawkins. The British Secret Intelligence Service has put their half-American star agent in tough spots before, and he’s always come out on top.

Belle Isle, in the middle of the James River, was one of Willie’s party spots growing up wild in Oregon Hill, and it’s a short walk from where he now resides in the posh Prestwould. Now, as the 50-something night cops reporter for the local daily, he returns to his old haunts to try to unravel a mystery. When it becomes known that the dismembered member belonged to Teddy "T-Bone" Delmonico, a state college football legend, whose now-widow is running for a seat in the House of Representatives, the plot thickens.

In The Dinosaur Tourist, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s 15th collection of short fiction, 19 tales of the unexpected and the uncanny explore that treacherous gulf between what we suppose the world to be and what might actually be waiting out beyond the edges of our day-to-day experience. A mirror may be a window into another time. A cat may be our salvation. Your lover may be a fabulous being. And a hitchhiker may turn out to be anyone at all. 

This collection of 22 short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow.

Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan presents a stunning retrospective of the first 10 years of the author’s work. It is a compilation of more than 200,000 words of short fiction, including many of her most acclaimed stories as well as some of the author’s personal favorites; several previously uncollected, hard-to-find pieces; her sci-fi novella, The Dry Salvages; and a rare collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite. 

When a twin-engine Beechcraft crashes into one of Richmond’s watering holes and turns happy hour into Hell, theories run rampant. Was it terrorists who, for some reason, decided to vent their spleens on unsuspecting Richmond? Was it a statement by homegrown killers less-than-thrilled that the city still, in the 21st century, chooses to honor Confederate leaders on its most prominent avenue? The obvious answers, though, just don’t pan out. Hard-charging reporter Willie Black’s search for the truth eventually leads him to a small town on the Chesapeake....

A familiar name piques Willie Black’s interest on a slow news day: Scuffletown Park. He and the first of his four wives lived next to the pocket park when they were young and still on speaking terms. Now, Scuffletown is the site of a crime scene, one that doesn’t fit the usual modus operandi for Richmond. For one thing, there’s plenty of blood but no body. Also, it seems that a knife was involved - a rarity in Willie’s gun-happy city. And Scuffletown is in the heart of the Fan, where violence is a blessedly rare occurrence.

On the same day Jason King is set to become a father, Will Slater sees a 12-year-old boy on a street corner. There's nothing particularly alarming about the kid, but Slater has a sixth sense when someone needs help, so he steps in to protect. After his vicious deliverance of justice enrages half the Boston underworld, Slater meets the whirlwind of chaos head-on. He made the choice to get involved, so he won't stop until the war is won. As King gets swept up in the madness from the supposed safety of Violetta's hospital room, their battles intertwine.

It’s been months since King and Slater faced true physical adversity. Now, they’re back in the depths of hell. A botched attempt to seize control of the Presidency by a brainwashed intelligence asset leads to the exposure of King and Slater’s location. The shadow world from which they fled has them in their sights, and they’re furious. Going rogue is the gravest sin - wetwork operators aren't afforded the leniency of leaving whenever they please. Examples must be made. The hunters are unleashed.

A noble leader is dead. His five children, once heirs to a bustling port, are scattered around the Encircled Sea. Their kingdom, the ancient land of Zohar, has fallen to the cruel Aelarian Empire. As the dust settles, new fires kindle. In a shattering world, the pieces are up for grabs. Here fleets clash at sea, and desert warriors battle among dunes and ancient ruins; cloaked conspirators gather in shadowy alleyways, vowing to slay their emperor; and a girl seeks the magic of light beyond guardians of shadow.

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves. In 1982, Evelyn's daughter Jackie is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband's drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life.

Every town has at least one beloved if misunderstood eccentric, and Beanie Bradsher belongs to Mayhew Junction. Some - LouWanda Crump, for example - would call Beanie a spectacle, but Beanie just marches - and dresses - to the beat of a different drum.

Aelar, a mighty nation, spreads its tentacles. Its oared galleys storm the seas, and the waters run red with blood. Its legionaries swarm desert ruins, smiting barbarian hordes. Its crosses line the roadsides, displaying the dying flesh of heroes. The powerful Sela family has avoided the empire until now. The family has carved out an idyllic life between sea and desert, ruling a bustling port, a thriving city, and lush vineyards.

Best friends Zak Lockwood and Mark Alder are training to pilot massive war machines at the United Entities Mechanized Warfare Academy. They've just finished work on restoring their own mech when The Harbingers of The Fall, an organization bent on rendering society to ashes, forces them into conflict overnight. Zak, Mark, and a close-knit group of other cadets must figure out their place in a generational conflict that threatens to tear the world apart.

Will Slater is on the hunt. Three months ago he found a list belonging to drug-slinging gangster Dwayne Griggs. A collection of blackmail, pictures of unspeakable horrors. He’s not going to stop until the men in the photos are dead and buried. He’s already mown through five of them. The sixth poses a problem. Kian Grant, an ex-televangelist preacher with murky ties to the Boston underworld, knows something’s coming. Before Slater can even approach his suburban mansion, Grant is gone, fleeing south over the border to the mountain town of Durango. Slater knows what that means.

It starts the way it always does: with a desire to help. Dawn Cates, a retired schoolteacher from Millinocket, drinks her sorrows away at the local tavern. King recognizes her. He ran into her his first week in town, and he can’t shake the urge to ask what’s wrong. She watched her dog die in a hit-and-run, and she thinks she knows who did it, but she’s scared…of what? King’s not scared of much, and heads east to the coastal town of Lubec to smash heads together. But what he finds eclipses anything he could have imagined, a global operation so vast it defies belief.