Showing results by narrator "Laurel Lefkow" in All Categories

John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with ten new tales of cosmic horror in Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies. In these stories, he continues to chart the course of 21st century weird fiction, from the unfamiliar to the familial, the unfathomably distant to the intimate.

Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when an alluring woman in her 30s walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. She is an awkward 19-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realises how much they both stand to lose....

Almost every day we are bombarded with the seemingly incontrovertible message that we must reduce our consumption of meat and dairy—or eliminate them from our diets altogether. But what if the pervasive message that the plant-based diet will improve our health and save the planet is misleading—or even false? What if removing animal foods from our diet is a serious threat to human health, and a red herring in the fight against climate change.

This is the compelling story of two women, born centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them. Ella Turner tries hard to fit into the small, close-knit community of the French town that she has moved to. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high-school French. However, isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, with heart-wrenching results.

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives. Indeed their lives, in their own eyes, become almost meaningless, their sense of themselves subsumed under a myriad of problems, whether real or imagined. Seismic events in a life might crush them; the loss of a loved one for instance. Coping is difficult, support hard to find and isolation abounds.

In a small suburb of Connecticut, and totally unaware of each other, four lives are about to collide. But will their lives entangle before experienced cop, Nate Bennett, and rookie cop, Maggie Zucha, complete their investigation of tracking down footage that, if released, will shake America to its very core? Their detective skills are put to the toughest test, but they'll need to be quick because they're not the only ones searching for this story… and whoever finds it first will hold all the power.

Music mogul Rowena Krebs is now a legend - she’s even made it to the Hall of Fame. Her old rival, now best friend, Topaz Rossi, is the designer-clad top dog at American Magazines. Both women are happily married - and life seems sweet. But things are changing: Rowena senses a shift, both in business and maybe on the home front. Topaz knows her circulation figures are dropping but not what is wrong with her husband.

When the world was supposed to end everyone did things they never normally would…none more so than Siobhan, who wakes up on her floor, hungover, dumped by her no-good boyfriend and with a strange man in her bed…who turns out to be more than a little bit dead. 

How well do you really know the person you love the most? Billie is charismatic. She is beautiful. And she has the perfect life. So when she disappears without a trace, the police think she must be dead. But what if the truth is even worse? A year after Billie disappears, her daughter Olive and husband Jonathan are determined to find out what happened to her. Together they begin to examine Billie's past - for answers, for closure, and with the underlying hope they will bring her home alive. But their search unearths her darkest secrets and only raises more questions....

Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922, 11-year-old Lucy is caught up in the excitement that surrounds the hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb. When she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, the two girls spy on the grown-ups and a lifelong bond is formed. Haunted by the ghosts of her past, the mistakes she made, Lucy disinters her past. And she finally comes to terms with what happened after Egypt, when Frances needed Lucy most.

Covering diversity and equality, globalization, human rights, modern urban living and the role of work and institutions, The Sociology Book looks at the big questions of how we cooperate: What is society? What makes it tick? Why do we interact in the way that we do with our friends, co-workers, and rivals?

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement.

Susannah has two beautiful daughters, a high-flying medical career, a successful husband and an enviable life. Her hair is glossy, her clothes are expensive: she truly has it all. But when—on the hottest day of the year—her strict morning routine is disrupted, Susannah finds herself running on autopilot. It is hours before she realises she has made a devastating mistake. Her baby, Louise, is still in the backseat of the car, and it is too late to save her.

The future is here...in an adventure of cosmic dimension. In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future - and our own.

A twisty collection of short stories from the master of classic crime fiction, Peter Lovesey, one of which stars his most popular creation, Peter Diamond. More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey's life-long passion for short form crime fiction.

A magnificent portrayal of 1890's America and the harsh realities of a dog-eat-dog world, Sister Carrie lies at the forefront of American Naturalism. When poor young provincial woman Carrie Meeber arrives in Chicago, she little expects to be catapulted from lower-class woman to prominent Broadway actress. Passive and yielding, she lets circumstances coerce her into action and by good fortune she arrives at fame. It is in Chicago that Carrie meets a successful businessman, Hurstwood, who helps her establish her name. 

Patricia Highsmith was one of the great 20th-century novelists, celebrated for classics The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train, but she was also a masterful and prolific short-story writer. This definitive new collection, featuring two stories that have never been published before, confirms Highsmith as a genius of the genre. Peerlessly disturbing, exhilarating and savagely funny, Highsmith's stories still have the power to startle, presenting a world that is frighteningly familiar and as relevant today as when they were written.

Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That's how Sophie lives. Annie can't help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the town seems… a little afraid of her.

An unknown vessel, not of this world, materialises in London. A colossal figure towering over the city, it makes no move. Is this a peaceful first contact or the prelude to an invasion? Every child has nightmares. But the only thing scarier than little Eva Reyes' dreams - apocalyptic visions of death and destruction - is the habit they have of coming true. Scientist Dr Rose Franklin has no memory of the last few years. The strangers she works with say she died, and was brought back to life. The question is not just how...but why?

The Age of Innocence is a powerful depiction of love and desire in New York's glamorous Gilded Age. When Newland Archer, happily engaged to May Welland, meets his fiancée's cousin Ellen, his entire future is cast into doubt: strong-willed, witty, and entirely unpretentious, Ellen is unlike any woman he has ever met. He is torn between his infatuation for her and his duty to marry May. In subtle and elegant language, Wharton delivers a critical look at the social mores of the time.