Showing results by narrator "Vikas" in All Categories

Eighteen-year-old Niri and his family live a modest but secure life working in the villa of the wealthy Benzes. But when the pandemic comes, they are all let go, and left staring into the abyss of poverty. As their situation grows desperate, he decides he won’t wait at the mercy of a corrupt, indifferent government. Sneaking through the city at night, past military patrols, Niri returns to the villa to take what his family needs to survive. Waiting for him is his childhood friend—and the Benzes’ daughter—Mary, who has a bigger plan that will change their lives forever.

The Long List Anthology is designed to recognize the short works that were nominated for the 2015 Hugo Awards but did not make it into the top five short list for the final ballot. Thus, voted into the Hugo Award's long list of works - the top 15 works nominated for each category - were these nine short stories and three novelettes, now made available to a wider audience by award-winning narrators.

Joseph was an unlikely choice to be the earthly father of Jesus. There was nothing about him on the surface that would have prompted any of us to consider him worthy. And yet, no other man in history has been charged with the tremendous responsibility he was given. He wasn’t randomly chosen by God. He wasn’t chosen simply because he and Mary were engaged to be married. He was, most definitely, not an after-thought or a footnote. He and Mary were betrothed because God had chosen them both and ordered their steps accordingly … from before the beginning of time.

In the Trial of Water, you either sink or swim. The second layer of the dungeon is even more inhospitable than the first. Parth and his allies will need to fight increasingly dangerous enemies on disadvantageous terrain. Between lurking monsters, bloodthirsty competitors, and the hostile dungeon, this expedition is shaping up to be the deadliest one in centuries. Meanwhile, as more secrets float to the surface, the conspiracy implicating the royal family deepens. It all points to a sinister plot centuries in the making. At the heart of it all is the dungeon.

Abandoned by his father after his mother drowns in a frozen Minnesota lake, fifteen-year-old Wes Ballot is stranded with coldhearted grandparents and holed up in his mother’s old bedroom, surrounded by her remnants and memories. As the wait for his father stretches unforgivably into months, a local girl, whose own mother died a brutal death, captures his heart and imagination, giving Wes fresh air to breathe in the suffocating small town.

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.

College senior Aaron Jace is ready to start life in the real world. After the unexpected death of his grandfather, Aaron finds an unbelievable note that will change his world. The unknowing descendent of an ancient and powerful family, Aaron is thrust into a struggle that began long ago and will reach across worlds to pull him into the fight. When he learns of the world of Safanar, it seems to be the stuff of legends: dragons, castles, and technologically-advanced cities. But it's as much a dream as it is a nightmare.

The eyes of the world are gazing at India - the world's largest democracy. But the books you read about this Asian giant only show part of the picture. Delhi Noir offers bone-chilling, mesmerizing takes on the country's chaotic capital, a city where opulence and poverty are constantly clashing, where old-world values and the information age wage a constant battle. Delhi Noir's 15 original stories are written by the best Indian writers alive today - the ones you haven't yet heard of but should have.

Pears is a divorced 40-something living with her mother in Queens when the unsexiest pandemic ever hits the country and smatters her potential love life. If her mother wasn’t enough to cock block her, this virus does a double cock block of trapping her in masks while dosing her in hand sanitizer.

Necessity - the sentient computer that runs the universe - has caught a virus that crashes most of the magical Internet, and Ravirn is tasked with fixing it. And Ravirn hasn’t missed the fact that whoever repairs Necessity will, for that moment, run the universe, able to remake the worlds to their liking.

If it looks too easy, it probably is. The sequel to WebMage sends Ravirn and Melchior on a mission to Hell and back to rescue Cerice’s familiar and her dissertation. CyberMancy also sees Ravirn learning what it means to be the Raven and coping with his new status among the descendants of the Titan’s as he interacts with old "friends" like the Furies and meets new ones like Hades and Persephone.

In the 21st century, magic has advanced with the times and gone digital. But when Ravirn - a computer savvy sorcerer - is thrown into a parallel world where magic runs on a different operating system, he'll need mad skills to get out alive.

Thirty-five years ago, it was a modern-day, mysterious plague. Its earliest victims were mostly gay men, some of the most marginalized people in the country; at its peak in America, it killed tens of thousands of people. The losses were staggering, the science frightening, and the government's inaction unforgivable. The AIDS crisis fundamentally changed the fabric of the United States. Viral presents the history of the AIDS crisis through the lens of the brave victims and activists who demanded action and literally fought for their lives.

In this book, renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel offers a clear, detailed, and practical guide to interfaith leadership, illustrated with compelling examples. Patel explains what interfaith leadership is and explores the core competencies and skills of interfaith leadership, before turning to the issues interfaith leaders face and how they can prepare to solve them. Interfaith leaders seek points of connection and commonality - in their neighborhoods, schools, college campuses, companies, organizations, hospitals, and other spaces where people of different faiths interact with one another.

One phone call in December 2005 begins the compelling, unpredictable story of Fake Missed Connections. A child of divorce with an already fragile sense of trust, Lauer unravels at the betrayal, begins divorce proceedings, and moves back to Brooklyn, where he spends too much time alone, fixated on the idea that a murderer from 1898 might be haunting his apartment. Eventually, as he starts to peruse online dating profiles, he becomes obsessed with "missed connections" precisely because they provide what online dating doesn't: a story.

Brand-new stories by: Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, James Sallis, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Talton, Megan Abbott, Charles Kelly, Robert Anglen, Patrick Millikin, Laura Tohe, Kurt Reichenbaugh, Gary Phillips, David Corbett, Don Winslow, Dogo Barry Graham, and Stella Pope Duarte.

Stroll celebrates Toronto's details at the speed of walking and, in so doing, helps us to better get to know its many neighbourhoods, taking us from well-known spots like the CN Tower and Pearson Airport to the overlooked corners of Scarborough and all the way to the end of the Leslie Street Spit in Lake Ontario.

Letters of a Nation is a unique and timeless collection of extraordinary letters spanning more than 350 years of American history, from the arrival of the Pilgrims to the present day. Many of the more than 200 letters are published here for the first time, and the correspondents are the celebrated and obscure, the powerful and powerless, including presidents, slaves, soldiers, prisoners, explorers, writers, revolutionaries, Native Americans, artists, religious and civil rights leaders, and people from all walks of life.

Nick Antosca's The Girlfriend Game is a tumble through the looking glass into a vortex of violence and desire. The 12 stories in the newest collection by the Shirley Jackson Award-winning author are brutal, urgent and unforgettable. In "Predator Bait", a decoy in a sex-sting news show questions her job and the man who shares her bed. An undependable son watches his mother become a creature he hardly recognizes in "Amphibian". A young man plots the death of his girlfriend's killer in "Winter Was Hard".

The Demonlord Jarsun is poised to claim the Burning Throne and cement his rule over the Burnt Empire. Standing in his way is his daughter, now reincarnated into a new avatar named Krushni, who is determined to avenge her mother’s death by his hand—and put an end to her father’s reign of terror once and for all. Aligned with him is the vast army of the Empire, the One Hundred children of Emperor Adri, and their former guru, the legendary warrior Dronas.