Introduction: Unseen Academicals (Discworld #37) The wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University are renowned for many things—wisdom, magic, and their love of teatime—but athletics is most assuredly not on the list. And so when Lord Vetinari, the city's benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university revive an erstwhile tradition and once again put forth a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff, the wizards of UU find themselves in a quanView Details>
Introduction: "Bread Overhead" is a story Fritz Leiber could have written to send up today's bewildering bread aisle -- all those claims of low-cal and low-low-carb. In fact, the story probably reads better now than it did in 1958, back when the choice came down to white or whole wheat. Leiber slyly imagines a near-future when giant machines not only harvest the wheat field, but grind flour and bake bread on the spot -- the ultimate in big farming. In this toasted tomorrow, the highly-mechanized PuView Details>
Introduction: Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you've had hints of the Change War. It's been going on for a billion years and it will last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides--"Spiders" and "Snakes"--battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memorieView Details>
Introduction: Mortimer Tate was a recently divorced insurance salesman when he holed up in a cave on top of a mountain in Tennessee and rode out the end of the world. Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse begins nine years later, when he emerges into a bizarre landscape filled with hollow reminders of an America that no longer exists. The highways are lined with abandoned automobiles electricity is generated by indentured servants pedaling stationary bicycles. What little civilization remains revolves around Joey ArmView Details>
Introduction: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror Sleepy Pine Cove, Calif., is abuzz with Christmas spirit, but Lena Marquez is fed up with her despicable ex-husband, Dale Pearson. On his way home from playing Santa Claus at the local lodge, Dale spies sneaky Lena uprooting his Monterey pines he pulls a gun on her, she lashes out with a shovel and-oops!-kills him. Seven-year-old Josh Barker, thinking he's just seen the murder of Santa, prays for a miracle to save Christmas. To LenaView Details>
Introduction: 'Lunar Park' confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting psychological and supernatural horror toward an astonishing resolution - about love and loss, fathers and sons - in what is surely the most powerfully original and moving novel of an extraordinary career.View Details>
Introduction: The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the liviView Details>
Introduction: Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland strays from the path while she and her recently divorced mother and brother take a hike along a branch of the Appalachian Trail. Lost for days, wandering farther and farther astray, Trisha has only her portable radio for comfort. A huge fan of Tom Gordon, a Boston Red Sox relief pitcher, she listens to baseball games and fantasizes that her hero will save her. Nature isn't her only adversary, though - something dangerous may be tracking Trisha through the dark wView Details>
Introduction: Paul Sheldon, a writer of historical romances, is in a car accident rescued by nurse Annie Wilkes, he slowly realizes that salvation can be worse than death. Sheldon has killed off Misery Chastain, the popular protagonist of his Misery series and Annie, who has a murderous past, wants her back. Written by Stephen King Dramatised by Dirk Maggs. First broadcast on the BBC World Service, September 2004. What you are about to hear is an adaptation of the stage play, which premiered in London's WeView Details>
Introduction: The Little Sisters of Eluria (Stephen King's The Dark Tower - Graphic Novel series #7) Near death from an attack by Slow Mutants, Roland Deschain is taken in by a group of Sisters who specialize in anything but the healing arts. These hideous, corpse-like creatures known as the Little Sisters of Eluria have murder on their twisted minds. And in his current, wounded condition, there's almost nothing the last gunslinger can do to prevent their tender mercies from taking hold. It's tView Details>