Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Written by Samuel R. Delany
Read by Stefan Rudnicki

The story of a truly galactic civilization with over 6,000 inhabited worlds.

Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel’s central issues—technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism—have only become more pressing with the passage of time.

The novel’s topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other’s perfect erotic object out to “point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more?” What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by “cultural fugue,” and the other is—you!

For more information and to purchase your copy, please visit:
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Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Nightwings
Written by Robert Silverberg
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media

Robert Silverberg's enduring classic about one man's journey to find salvation for a planet on the brink of destruction.

"Roum is a city built on seven hills. They say it was a capital of man in one of the earlier cycles. I knew nothing of that, for my guild was Watching, not Remembering."

For a thousand years, mankind has lived under the threat of invasion from an alien race. After the oceans rose and the continents were reshaped, people divided into guilds—Musicians, Scribes, Merchants, Clowns, and more. The Watchers wander the earth, scouring the skies for signs of enemies from the stars. But during one Watcher's journey to the ancient city of Roum with his companion, a Flier named Avluela, a moment of distraction allows the invaders to advance. When the Watcher finally sounds the alarm, it's too late: the star people are poised to conquer all.

And so with the world in turmoil, the Watcher sets out alone for the Hall of the Rememberers, keepers of the past, where humanity's last hope for survival might be hidden.

For more information and to purchase your own copy, please visit:
https://www.downpour.com/nightwings?sp=29238

Nightwings by Robert Silverberg, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Ship of Ishtar
Written by A. Merritt
Read by Stefan Rudnicki

An American adventurer is pitched out of his own time and into a weird world of incredible and enticing marvels.

The goddess of love and beauty is adrift on an enchanted ocean in a magic world. The myriad forces of satanic evil plague the vessel of the passionate red-haired goddess. Only one man, John Kenton, the American adventurer, can try to save Ishtar’s priestess from the black magic that divides her world from ours.

For more information and to purchase your copy, please visit:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Ship-of-Ishtar-Audiobook/1665062053?qid=1626972883&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=GRZZWTRYS74C10YRDR6A

The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, Book 1)
Written by Walter Jon Williams
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone & Skyboat Media

The first book in the completed Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy, followed by The Sundering and Conventions of War.

All will must bend to the perfect truth of the Praxis.

For millennia, the Shaa have subjugated the universe, forcing the myriad sentient races to bow to their joyless tyranny. But the Shaa will soon be no more. The Dread Empire is in its rapidly fading twilight, and with its impending fall comes the promise of a new galactic order...and bloody chaos.

A young Terran naval officer marked by his lowly birth, Lt. Gareth Martinez is the first to recognize the insidious plot of the Naxid - the powerful, warlike insectoid society that was enslaved before all others - to replace the masters’ despotic rule with their own. Barely escaping a swarming surprise attack, Martinez and Caroline Sula, a pilot whose beautiful face conceals a deadly secret, are now the last hope for freedom for every being who ever languished in Shaa chains - as the interstellar battle begins against a merciless foe whose only perfect truth is annihilation.

For more information and to purchase your copy, please visit:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Praxis-Audiobook/B097HW8VY7?qid=1629142117&sr=1-9&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_9&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=VPV3JV56A3XPQYFH57DM

The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, 1) by Walter Jon Williams, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Illuminations: Essays & Reflections
Written by Walter Benjamin
Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone

Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.

Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in a dark historical era. Leon Wieseltier’s preface explores Benjamin’s continued relevance for our times.

For more information and to purchase your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Illuminations-Audiobook/B099T9PZ68?qid=1639592730&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=V9WKN08YKBCNQT4VQC9B

Illuminations by Walter Benjamin, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Star King (Demon Princes, Book 1)
Written by Jack Vance
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone and Skyboat Media

Five intergalactic criminal masterminds raid the tranquil world of Mount Pleasant, leaving behind only ruin and slaughter - and the orphaned child Kirth Gersen, who comes to manhood swearing to take bloody revenge. Now Gersen roams the galaxy, bringing vengeance to the Demon Princes one by one, in Jack Vance's classic series of hardboiled space opera.

In a seedy tavern on Smade's Planet, Kirth Gersen picks up the trail of Attel Malagate, a member of an alien species called Star Kings, who masquerade as humans. Malagate maintains anonymity behind a screen of sinister henchmen, but Gersen will combine subtle guile and stark violence in a strategy to bring him face to face with the first of the Demon Princes.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/the-star-king?sp=579025

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The Star King by Jack Vance, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Wakers (The Side-Step Trilogy 1)
Written by Orson Scott Card
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone

From the New York Times best-selling author of Enders Game comes a brand-new series following a teen who wakes up on an abandoned Earth to discover that he’s a clone!

Laz is a side-stepper: a teen with the incredible power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. All his life, there was no mistake that a little side-stepping couldn’t fix.

Until Laz wakes up one day in a cloning facility on a seemingly abandoned Earth.

Laz finds himself surrounded by hundreds of other clones, all dead, and quickly realizes that he too must be a clone of his original self. Laz has no idea what happened to the world he remembers as vibrant and bustling only yesterday, and he struggles to survive in the barren wasteland he’s now trapped in. But the question that haunts him isn’t why was he created, but instead, who woke him up…and why?

There’s only a single bright spot in Laz’s new life: One other clone appears to still be alive, although she remains asleep. Deep down, Laz believes that this girl holds the key to the mysteries plaguing him, but if he wakes her up, she’ll be trapped in this hellscape with him.

This is one problem that Laz can’t just side-step his way out of.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Wakers-Audiobook/B09GTJSDVV?qid=1647290476&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=HS3P4KRCJGN57BZ8940D

Wakers by Orson Scott Card, read by Stefan Rudnicki

A Dying Colonialism
Written by Frantz Fanon
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

Frantz Fanon’s seminal work on anticolonialism and the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution

Psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, Frantz Fanon was one of the great political analysts of our time, the author of such seminal works of modern revolutionary theory as The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks. He has had a profound impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world.

A Dying Colonialism is Fanon’s incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as “primitive,” in order to destroy those oppressors. Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression. This is a strong, lucid, and militant book; to read it is to understand why Fanon says that for the colonized, “having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death.”

A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Benson Murder Case (The Philo Vance Series #1)
Written by S.S. Van Dine
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization.”

The Benson Murder Case introduces S. S. Van Dine’s brilliant and iconic detective to the world in one of the most popular detective novels of the twentieth century, inspired by the real-life murder of a famous bridge player.

Alvin Benson is found slumped over an easy chair in a room locked from the inside with a bullet in his head, and Wall Street and the high society of Manhattan are set ablaze with the news of the playboy stockbroker’s death. But when NYPD’s top detectives and ballistics experts can’t solve the mystery, it falls to Philo Vance, an art connoisseur and amateur sleuth, to find the killer. Vance’s intellectual and artistic background helps him uncover a series of odd clues, starting with a missing toupee and false teeth, and soon he is delving deep into the case. In a Holmesian display of deduction, Vance also uses a recreation of the crime scene to determine several details about the killer—even down to their height. But he will have to uncover more than these small but vital details in order to find the real killer, deconstruct their alibi, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they in fact killed Alvin Benson.

The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Antiques Liquidation (The Trash 'n' Treasures Mysteries: Book 16)
Written By Barbara Allan
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Skyboat Media

Trouble’s on the wind when an auctioneer turns up dead in the new Trash ‘n’ Treasures cozy mystery—“one of the funniest cozy series going” (Ellery Queen Magazine)

Two o’clock in the morning is the perfect time to be asleep. So when long-suffering Brandy Borne is rudely awoken by her eccentric mother, Vivian, and invited on a surreptitious shopping trip, the idea is less than tempting.

But if Vivian—Serenity’s true-crime writing, septuagenarian super-sleuth—has a nose for sniffing out antiques, Brandy’s sense of smell is just as good … and trouble’s on the wind.

A little light blackmail and one run-in with the police later, and Brandy and Vivian are the ‘proud’ owners of a selection of dead stock, liberated ahead of an upcoming warehouse sale from unsavory auctioneer Conrad Norris. Brandy’s not convinced there’s a fortune to be made in vintage toys, retro plates and pearl buttons - there’s more mileage in their shop’s new Halloween display, even though it’s only August - but she supposes it could be worse.

It soon is. After the auction’s taken place, Vivian and Brandy make an unnerving discovery. It’s not just the stock that’s dead—so is the auctioneer …

This light-hearted, laugh-out-loud cozy mystery also features Brandy and Vivian’s humorous tips for buying and selling antiques, along with a selection of tasty recipes.

Antiques Liquidation by Barbara Allan, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

Antiques Foe (The Trash 'n' Treasures Mysteries: Book 17)
Written by Barbara Allan
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Skyboat Media

Eccentric antiques dealer and amateur sleuth Vivian Borne finds herself in jail—again!—when a podcast star is found dead in her hotel room in this new Trash ‘n’ Treasures cozy mystery—”one of the funniest cozy series going” (Ellery Queen Magazine)

When popular podcaster Nicole Chatterton wants an interview for Killers Caught, true-crime author Vivian Borne is overjoyed. Finally, some recognition for the sleuthing skills the septuagenarian antiques dealer and her daughter Brandy have demonstrated, solving countless crimes in their small hometown of Serenity, Iowa!

Dolled up and dressed to the nines, Vivian figures the interview is going swimmingly … until Nicole turns the tables, accusing the mother/daughter duo of committing the very crimes they solved. Shocked and affronted—and with a spiteful tirade captured by the cameras—Vivian breaks off the interview, ejecting the rude podcaster from the premises of the Trash ‘n’ Treasures shop. How dare the woman?

Later, when Vivian pays the podcaster a follow-up visit at the woman’s hotel—hoping to smooth things out and set the record straight—a very dead Nicole is waiting. Caught as the killer (true to the podcast’s title) by producer Clare Shields, Vivian finds herself behind bars. Now it’s up to Brandy to determine who really did the dire deed before their fiendish foe can strike again!

Antiques Foe is a light-hearted, laugh-out-loud cozy mystery which also features mother-daughter sleuths Brandy and Vivian’s witty tips for buying and selling antiques, along with a selection of tasty recipes.

Antiques Foe by Barbara Allan, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

THE LOWER POWER
Written by Michele W. Miller
Read by Bahni Turpin
Published by Skyboat Media

When Evil Pulls You Back To The Hell You Thought You’d Escaped.

From critically acclaimed Michele W. Miller comes a “superbly written tale of urban survivors fighting to save themselves once more” (Publishers Weekly).

As New York City’s crack epidemic rages, Raven has overcome her addiction and will soon begin law school. But night terrors begin to haunt her and her friends. Many of them return to drug use, disappear, or commit bizarre acts of violence. A mysterious new drug epidemic grips the city, while police corruption, a U.S. attorney campaigning for mayor, and riots hamstring the city’s defense. Raven and her friends—along with a journalist trying to help a teenage prostitute—must stand up to the sadistic man behind the chaos or lose all they’ve gained. Yet, as recovering addicts, they are the most vulnerable to his inexplicably attractive powers.

A gripping reimagining of the early 1990s, The Lower Power combines supernatural suspense and social history for fans of Whitley Strieber’s The Wolfen and Gabino Iglesias’s The Devil Takes You Home.

The Lower Power - Retail Sample

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, BUT GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES
Written by Anita Loos
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Kissing your hand may make you feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.”

Paired together for the first time on audio, Blackstone and Skyboat Media present Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes.

The Jazz-Age classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady was an instant hit when it was first released serially in 1925, and it became the second-best-selling book of 1926 when it was published in its entirety. In her diary, Lorelei Lee, a not-so-dumb blonde from Arkansas, documents her wild adventures to Hollywood, Manhattan, Europe, and back again with her best friend, Dorothy. Along the way, Lorelei and Dorothy are flanked by suitors from all walks of high society, but it might just be the American millionaire who draws her eye.

But just because Lorelei might have found “the one” doesn’t mean the adventures are over! In the sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, Lorelei takes up her diary once again to tell Dorothy’s tale. Dorothy’s journey takes her from her carnival upbringing all the way to the Ziegfeld Follies. Her talent, gumption, and unique personality bring her fame and eventually love as well, but marriage, she learns, is not everything she dreamt it would be …

Lorelei Lee’s punchy, distinctive way with words and her droll yet frank outlook on life are the reason Edith Wharton called Gentleman Prefer Blondes “the great American novel (at last!),” and the novel’s legacy has only grown since. Played by Marilyn Monroe and Carol Channing, this archetypal gold-digger’s story has solidified Anita Loos as one of the great American novelists and screenwriters.

This compilation also features the forgotten short story “Why Girls Go South.” Originally published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1926, “Why Girls Go South” is the outrageously droll tale of Judy Revell, a promiscuous, modern, and surprisingly resilient New York debutante who travels to Florida to pursue a career in the Arts, much to her family’s amusement and, in some cases, chagrin. 

Full Contents:

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
“Why Girls Go South”

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

ORLAND: A BIOGRAPHY
Written by Virginia Woolf
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is the extraordinary biography of a young nobleman in the court of Elizabeth I who transforms into a woman and lives for over three centuries. In his youth, Orlando is a passionate lover and poet. He dotes on the Queen, serves King James faithfully, falls deeply in love with a Russian princess, and becomes an ambassador to Constantinople, but at his heart all Orlando ever wants to be is a great writer (and living at the same time as Marlowe, Donne, and Shakespeare, this is no easy thing). But while living in Constantinople, one evening Orlando is transformed into woman, though she retains all her memories and personality; the only thing that changes about Orlando is her body. Now as a woman, she must navigate complex and exclusionary legal systems throughout the ages, her own previous views on gender, society’s expectations of marriage, and her own ambitions as a poet—not to mention having to grapple with a seemingly immortal lifespan.

An unusual and profound examination of gender roles, expression, and identity, Orlando is one of Woolf’s best known and best loved works, and it remains just as relevant and revolutionary today as when it was first published.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf, read by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir

DECLINE AND FALL
Written by Evelyn Waugh
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!”

Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, is the daring and hilarious tale of Paul Pennyfeather, a theology student expelled from Oxford and sent to teach at a private boys’ school in Wales. Previously a modest young man, Paul finds himself a bit out of place amongst the teachers of Llanabba, who are all misfits, fools, and derelicts themselves: Prendy (the anxious) and Captain Grimes (the drunk), just to name two. There are not only failed men and rowdy boys in this Welsh town to occupy his time, however; Margot Beste-Chetwynde, the mother of one of his students, quickly becomes the object of Paul’s affections. But Margot may not be all she appears to, and Paul’s world is turned upside down all over again.

With a title inspired both by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, Waugh’s Decline and Fall is a brilliant farce and a biting satire of English morals and school life of the 1920s and, by extension, of the experience of generations of so many students and educators since.

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh, read by Stefan Rudnicki

POINT COUNTER POINT
Written by Aldous Huxley
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody’s happy.”

In music, counterpoint is the art of writing melodies that play in conjunction with one another, according to a strict set of rules, in order to emphasize the melody by contrast. In debate, point/counterpoint is a means of persuasion in which the speaker begins by conceding to their opponent’s argument before refuting it wholeheartedly. Aldous Huxley follows these traditions in his masterpiece Point Counter Point. The polarity between passion and reason in the intellectual life of the 1920s is demonstrated both in form and in theme in Huxley’s ambitious satire: This complex novel darts around points of view to portray the convoluted nature of perception versus reality, and it boasts a large cast of characters that come together, almost as an orchestra, performing separate melodies that come together in one great symphony. Not only do these characters serve such a musical purpose in the plot, they also represent real life writers who were popular at the time, such as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, and even Huxley himself (in the form of Phillip Quarles, the “novelist” within the novel).

Point Counter Point was named one of “100 Best Works of the 20th Century” by Modern Library.

Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley, read by Stefan Rudnicki

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN
Written by Agatha Christie
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir with John Rubinstein and Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing

“Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it. […] And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows.”

Unhappy with her marriage, Ruth Kettering, a pampered American heiress, is on her way to meet her lover in the French Riviera, but she will never reach her destination. When the train stops in Nice, the heiress is found dead and without her precious jewels aboard Le Train Bleu. But in the midst of robbery, murder, and tragedy, famed detective Hercule Poirot is there to solve the mystery.

The gruesome murder is believed to have been performed by Ruth’s estranged husband, but Poirot believes there is more to the story. On top of the motive of murder, Poirot must consider the theft of the famous ruby, “Heart of Fire,” that was given to Ruth by her father, the American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin. And it is her father’s secretary, Major Knighton, who convinces Poirot to unmask the perpetrator of the crime. Poirot receives conflicting stories from the key players, witnesses, and suspects aboard the train, and so to find the murderer, the Belgian detective must stage a reenactment of the fatal journey.

The Mystery Of The Blue Train by Agatha Christie, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

CUTOUT
Written by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Skyboat Media

A young woman from the Midwest, recipient of an unexpected college scholarship, is recruited into a lucrative courier job that shuttles her from Manhattan to Washington, DC. There’s a slight drawback: the previous two “cutouts” died by violence.

Sierra Kane—who has bounced from one foster family to another—faces an uncertain future when she receives an unapplied-for scholarship to Barnard College specifically designed for orphans whose academic records are merely above average. A second unexpected boon comes her way when another recipient of that somewhat mysterious scholarship offers her a part-time courier job.

Soon Sierra is caught up in a whirl of espionage and murder, with a new boyfriend who may or may not be part of a plot, a college mentor with a possible agenda of her own, and an FBI agent who rebuffs Sierra’s plea for help.

It’s a classic story of a small-town girl caught up in an overwhelming big-city world; but Sierra Kane is a young woman whose curiosity and determination will lead her to the truth … and into more than one deadly confrontation.

Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins, the married writing team behind Bombshell and Regeneration, and whose Antiques mystery series is a long-running fan favorite under the name Barbara Allan (of which Antiques Liquidation and Antiques Foe are also read by Gabrielle de Cuir)—have crafted a novella that is at once as timeless as a fairy tale and as modern as a headline.

Cutout by Max Allan Collins & Barbara Collins, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

Raw studio sessions of the audiobook THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER by Harlan Ellison. Cast includes Paul Boehmer (Narrator), Stefan Rudnicki (The Guardian of Forever); John Rubinstein (Captan James Kirk) and Scott Brick (Mr. Spock). Directed by GAbrielle de Cuir. Kickstarter: http://kck.st/219ujCS More info at www.skyboatmedia.com

CITY Scene 44 GdC RAW SESSIONS(44)

Harlan speaks about his feelings on THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER. This is an unedited Studio Sessions.
Kickstarting now: Harlan Ellison Kickstarter http://bit.ly/1Pf2Vur Sc 44 Harlan's Original CITY http://kck.st/219ujCS #startrek
#adultlanguage #maturecontent #adultcontent

Harlan Ellison on CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER

Heartborn (The Shattered Skies Series, Book 1)
Written by Terry Maggert
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Skyboat Media

Her guardian angel was pushed.

Keiron was made to be a hero. Born high above in a place of war and deception, he is Heartborn, a being of purity and goodness in a world where violence and deceit are just around every corner. His disappearance will spark a war he cannot see, for Keiron has bent time to save a girl he has never met.

Livvy Foster is seventeen, brave, and broken. With half a heart, she bears the scars of a lifetime of pain and little hope of survival ... until Keiron arrives.

In the middle of a brewing war and Livvy’s failing heart, Keiron will risk everything for Livvy, because a Heartborn’s life can only end in one way: sacrifice.

Fall with Livvy and Keiron as they seek the truth about her heart, and his power, and what it means to love someone who will give their very life to save you.

For more information, and to buy your own copy please click the following link:
www.downpour.com/heartborn?sp=224915

Heartborn (Shattered Skies, Book 1) by Terry Maggert, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

The CIA as Organized Crime 
Written by Douglas Valentine 
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone & Skyboat Media

The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency’s activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. 

While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA’s relationship with the federal agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence, and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure the unimpeded flow of drugs to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ.

Ultimately, portions of his research materials were archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

This book includes excerpts from the aforementioned titles, along with subsequent articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA’s ongoing illegal and extralegal activities. These articles and interviews illustrate how the agency’s activities impact social and political movements abroad and at home.

A common theme is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable, government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability.

Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis today. Valentine tracks the agency’s steady expansion into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people themselves.

For more information and to buy your own copy please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/the-cia-as-organized-crime?sp=192102

The CIA as Organized Crime by Douglas Valentine, read by Stefan Rudnicki

In this original collection from Skyboat Media and Blackstone Publishing, Elizabeth Gaskell showcases the height of gothic fiction's ability to delight in the otherworldly and to dig deep into what truly haunts us. Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, "Lois the Witch" reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America. Though she is a God-fearing and honest girl, it seems her identity as the strange, new, English girl is all anyone can see and she becomes a target for the superstitious townsfolk. In "The Grey Woman", we follow a young woman who learns the true nature of her new husband and is forced to flee their isolated home. In "Curious, if True" we are given a peek into a party attended by some very familiar fairy-tale figures. And finally, in "The Doom of the Griffths", we must wait and see if the prophecy of an old family curse will be fulfilled. A collaborator and friend of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell is a leading figure in Victorian literature.

Full Contents:

“The Old Nurse’s Story” read by Justine Eyre
“Curious, if True” read by Stefan Rudnicki
“Disappearances” read by Juliet Mills
“The Half-Brothers” read by Stefan Rudnicki
“The Grey Woman” read by Juliet Mills
“The Doom of the Griffiths” read by Justine Eyre
“Lois the Witch” read by Gabrielle de Cuir

Read by Justine Eyre, Juliet Mills, Gabrielle de Cuir, and Stefan Rudnicki.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link: https://www.downpour.com/lois-the-witch-and-other-gothic-tales?sp=357689

Lois the Witch, and Other Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell, read by Gabrielle de Cuir

Dhalgren
Written by Samuel R. Delany
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing & Skyboat Media

Nominated for the 1975 Nebula Award

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel that rivals the best American fiction of the 1970s.

Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there … the population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man—a poet, lover, and adventurer—known only as the Kid.

Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and a groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/dhalgren?sp=129972

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Nova
Written by Samuel R. Delany
Read by Stefan Rudnicki

Finalist for the 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel

Given that the suns of Draco stretch almost sixteen light years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor driving the thirty-second century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the core of a recently imploded sun in order to obtain seven tons of it. The potential for profit is so great that Lorq has little difficulty cobbling together an alluring crew, including a gypsy musician and a moon-obsessed scholar interested in the ancient art of writing a novel. What the crew doesn’t know is that Lorq’s quest is actually fueled by a private revenge so consuming that he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it.

In the grandest manner of speculative fiction, Nova is a wise and witty classic that casts a fascinating new light on some of humanity’s oldest truths and enduring myths.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/nova-129975?sp=129977

Nova by Samuel R. Delany, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Motion in Light of Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village
Written by Samuel R. Delany
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing & Skyboat Media

Born in New York City’s black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married white poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city’s new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961. 

Through the decade’s opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned among the crowded streets and cheap railroad apartments. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a black gay writer in an open marriage, with tertiary walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, W. H. Auden, and James Baldwin, and a panoply of brilliantly drawn secondary characters.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/the-motion-of-light-in-water?sp=357035

The Motion of Light in Water by Samuel R. Delany, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Return of the Elves , Book 4

A reluctant prince 

After more than 300 years on Earth, Prince Ralan has finally returned to Moranaia. But with his wicked brother Kien on the loose, the homecoming is a short one. A dire vision sends Ralan back to Earth to save his soulbonded from his dark brother. The problem? Ralan's Sight grows more erratic by the moment even as danger closes in on every side. 

A woman far from home 

Ever since a failed alliance ruined her family, Cora has lived on Earth. Far from discontent, her days are spent running her clothing shop and helping newly arrived fae adapt to mundane life. Then a golden-eyed prince strides into her store, trouble stalking his heels. Big trouble. 

A fate foretold 

Ralan's Sight might be broken, but one thing remains clear - stopping Kien will mean Ralan's death. So how could the Gods choose now to introduce his soulbonded? As Ralan and Cora search for Kien, their relationship grows stronger. Unfortunately, so does the threat. Now Ralan must choose between his own life and the fate of all their worlds. 

Read by Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Seared-Audiobook/B07FNXJPTL?qid=1595282403&sr=1-2&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_2&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=3PRBKFTN32KQNBXMTQVH

Seared (Return of the Elves, Book 4) by Bethany Adams, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Take a seat in the court of ancient Athens as Socrates goeson trial for his life. Hear the philosopher face his accusers with histrademark wit, his cutting logic, and the courage of his ideals. Consider hisarguments on virtue, justice, politics, civic duty, love of life, and hope indeath, and make your own judgment.

Think. Question. Change.

Translated and directed by Yannis Simonides and Loukas Skipitaris.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/socrates-now?sp=94472

Socrates Now by Plato, read by Yannis Simonides

The first installment in the legendary Matt Helm thrillers.

Matt Helm, one-time special agent for the American government during the Second World War, has left behind his violent past to raise a family in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When a former colleague turns rogue and kidnaps his daughter, Helm is forced to return to his former life as a deadly and relentless assassin. 

Originally released in the era of the James Bond novels, the Matt Helm novels were considered grittier and more realistic than Bond, garnering them critical praise and an ardent audience.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/death-of-a-citizen?sp=98768

Death of a Citizen (Matt Helm®, Book 1) by Donald Hamilton, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The Sorrows of Satan: Or, the Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire
Written by Marie Corelli
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Published by Blackstone Publishing. Produced by Skyboat Media

The Devil arrives in fin de siècle London.

The setting is London, 1895, and the Devil is on the loose, in the guise of the handsome and charming Prince Lucio Rimânez. He is searching for someone morally strong enough to resist temptation, but there seems little chance he will succeed. Britain is all but totally corrupt. The aristocracy is financially and spiritually bankrupt, church leaders no longer believe in God, Victorian idealism has been banished from literature and life, and sexual morality is being undermined by the pernicious doctrines of the “New Woman”.

Lucio sets his sights on Geoffrey Tempest, a starving novelist who has just inherited a fortune, and promises to show Geoffrey how best to invest his newfound wealth. As the tragic story of Geoffrey’s meteoric rise and fall unfolds, Marie Corelli exposes the hypocrisy and immorality of modern life in this Faustian novel and best seller of its time.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/the-sorrows-of-satan?sp=410981

The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli, read by Stefan Rudnicki

"I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man", a nameless voice cries out. And so, from underground, emerge the passionate confessions of a suffering man; the painful self-examination of a tormented soul; the bristling scorn of a lonely individual who has become one of the greatest anti-heroes in all literature. 

In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels - Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky penned the darkly fascinating Notes from Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes - moral, religious, political, and social - that dominated Dostoevsky’s later works. 

Those who are familiar with his works will immediately recognize the novel's richly complex philosophical, political, and psychological themes; those who are not will find the best introduction to Dostoevsky's grander masterpieces.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Notes-from-Underground-Audiobook/1799926958?qid=1604085124&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=WPB4F082GKWJTZ1ZDBES

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, read by Stefan Rudnicki

In this original compilation from Skyboat Media and Blackstone Publishing, Nikolai Gogol’s stories range from the whimsical and bizarre to the incisive and satiric, from the horrific and terrifying to the nonsensical and hilarious.

A lowly government clerk, Akay Akakiyevich, must scrimp and save to purchase a new coat for the cold Russian winter in “The Overcoat”. But after one night of basking in the warmth of his new coat and the respect of his colleagues, Akaky’s one-of-a-kind overcoat is stolen from him. In his pursuit of justice, Akaky receives no help and is consumed by the loss of his prized possession.

In “The Viy”, Gogol recounts a popular folk story in which a monstrous creature, known by the population of Little Russia as the king of gnomes, helps a witch get revenge on a young student who escaped from her trap years before.

“How the Two Ivans Quarrelled” begins as a merry farce, telling the story of the friendship-ending fight between Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Nikiforovitch. The two Ivans have been neighbors and best friends for years despite their numerous differences, but this fight infiltrates every facet of their lives, until they cannot stand the sight of one another.

Then finally in “The Nose”, we see the peak of Gogol’s humor and absurdity when a government official wakes to find his nose has disappeared. 

The Russian critic D.S. Mirsky (1890-1939) described the story as “a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense. In it more than anywhere else Gogol displays his extraordinary magic power of making great comic art out of nothing.” This extraordinary power is woven throughout all the stories in this compilation, and it firmly establishes Gogol as a master of the peculiar and the surreal.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Overcoat-and-Other-Russian-Tales-Audiobook/179992775X?qid=1606767643&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=N587QEMQBDCGX2NXB0DS

The Overcoat and Other Russian Tales by Nikolai Gogol, read by Stefan Rudnicki

The King of Elfland's Daughter
Written by Lord Dunsany
Read by Stefan Rudnicki

A masterpiece of fantasy literature that shaped the high fantasy genre and influenced such authors as J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft

After 700 years of being ruled by man, the Parliament of Erl is ready to be ruled by a magical lord. Obeying the immemorial custom, the lord of Erl sends his son Alveric to fetch the King of Elfland’s daughter, Lirazel, to be his bride. Alveric makes his way to Elfland, where time passes at a rate far slower than the real world, wins her hand, and they return to Erl together. 

Alveric and Lirazel marry and have a son, but marriage between a mortal and a fairy princess is never simple. Lirazel struggles to adapt to the customs of humans. Torn between two worlds, Lirazel must decide whether to return to her home and live forever, or remain in Erl with her husband and son, doomed to die a mortal death. Meanwhile, the King of Elfland, missing his daughter greatly and fearing her demise, must utilize his limited sources of magic in order to get her back.

The King of Elfland’s Daughter is a love story for the ages and a fairy tale in the truest sense of the word. First published in 1924, it remains one of the most beloved novels of the genre.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/the-king-of-elfland-s-daughter-410938?sp=410977

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, read by Stefan Rudnicki

Alicia: My Story
Written by Alicia Appleman-Jurman
Read by Gabrielle de Cuir with Stefan Rudnicki; includes supplementary audio of Alicia responding to school children's questions about the Holocaust
Published by Blackstone Publishing & Skyboat Media

Here is a thrilling, uplifting story of true-life heroism unequaled since the publication of Anne Frank’s diary - a story that the young must hear and their elders must remember. Take Alicia’s hand - and follow.

Her name is Alicia. She was 13 when she began saving the lives of people she did not know - while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland. 

Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother’s brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child’s faith in human goodness - or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds. 

After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine. She swore on her brother’s grave that if she survived, she would speak for her silenced family. This book is the eloquent fulfillment of that oath.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link:
https://www.downpour.com/alicia-my-story?sp=410052

Alicia, My Story by Alicia Appleman-Jurman, read by Gabrielle De Cuir

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (The Hercule Poirot Mysteries, Book 1)
Written by Agatha Christie
Read by John Rubinstein. Directed by Gabrielle de Cuir
Published by Blackstone Publishing. Produced by Skyboat Media

Agatha Christie’s debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, features the first appearance of the eccentric Belgian Detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot must use his unusual methods and his singular charm to solve the murder of the rich, elderly Emily Inglethorpe. Fortunately, Poirot’s old friend Arthur Hastings happens to be staying at Styles Court, an Essex country manor, at the time of the murder, and he is a ready right-hand man during Poirot’s investigation.

With suspects abound, Poirot employs all his wits to determine who did the deed. Could it have been Mrs. Inglethorpe’s much younger husband? Or perhaps her resentful stepsons? The family friend working as her nurse is not free of suspicion, nor is her maid of many years. It may even have been the poisons specialist who just so happens to be staying in a nearby village.

Everyone staying at Styles has secrets they are trying to keep, but Poirot cuts through these deceptions with the resourcefulness, exactitude, and attention to detail that has made him one of the most intriguing figures in literary history.

For more information and to buy your own copy, please click the following link: 
https://www.downpour.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-styles-410937?sp=410973

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot, 1) by Agatha Christie, read by John Rubinstein

Grammy, Hugo and Audie winning audiobook publishers and production company since the turn of this century. Company owned by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir.

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