Showing results by narrator "Aiello" in All Categories

At age 26 Dave Cicirelli found himself at a crossroads. While his friends on Facebook appeared to have lives of nonstop accomplishments, his early adulthood felt disappointingly routine. So one October morning, Dave announced on Facebook that he was dropping everything and heading west. Many thought him brave - or crazy.

In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city - the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between. Lehane's own contribution - the longest story in the volume - is set in his beloved home neighborhood of Dorchester and showcases his phenomenal ability to grip the heart, soul, and throat of the reader.

Beneath the glitter of Mardi Gras lies the sleaze of Bourbon Street; under the celestial sounds of JazzFest, the nightmare screams of a city once at war within its neighborhoods, but after Hurricane Katrina, seemingly at war with nature and the rest of the country as well. New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation.

The most civilized and 'decent' among us find that we are complicit with the most brutal murderers. We enter into literally unspeakable alliances - of which we dare not speak except through the obliquities and indirections of fiction, poetry, and visual art of the sort gathered here in New Jersey Noir.

Beloved stage and screen actor Danny Aiello’s big-hearted memoir reveals a man of passion, integrity, and guts - and lays bare one of the most unlikely success stories ever told. Danny Aiello admits that he backed into his acting career by mistake. That’s easy to see when you begin at the beginning: Raised by his loving and fiercely resilient mother in the tenements of Manhattan and the South Bronx, and forever haunted by the death of his infant brother, Danny struggled early on to define who he was and who he could be.

Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.

Nils Hansen, Commissioner of Security Forces, must venture into the forbidding environs of Northworld, where previous explorations have mysteriously vanished.

The Consensus ruled twelve hundred worlds - but not Northworld. Three fleets had been dispatched to probe the enigma of Northworld. None returned. Now, Commissioner Nils Hansen must face the challenge of this distant planet - a gateway to nine alternate worlds. There, he will confront a world at war, a world of androids, a world of sentient machines - all unique, all lethal. But deadliest of all are the men who would be gods.

In Northworld, a world of eight warring planes where weaponry is supreme, gods and men battle for control of the Matrix, a high-tech bridge through space and time, and participant Nils Hansen faces a difficult challenge.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

Waves of destruction have been unleashed from four sites of ancient forest, and scientists are unable to explain the instability in Earth’s mantle, nor the forces sweeping across the planet’s surface, changing everything.

In the penultimate book of the second series of Deadlocked, the High Rollers struggle to find their way after an enormous loss. They fell into the trap of a madman and the horde is closing in even as the town burns around them. Meanwhile, Hero is dealing with his contraction of what is known as the Tempest Strain, a virus capable of infecting any mammal. He knows that if the virus gets out, it could threaten every species on the planet, and he's ready to make the ultimate sacrifice if he has to.

Twenty years have passed since the zombie apocalypse devastated the world. A single man is on a quest for revenge in search of the people responsible for the outbreak of the zombie virus. His journey leads him to a discovery in the western United States that will irrevocably change his goal. Meanwhile, a new world is revealed that is under the strict control of the same people that were responsible for the plague. Two innocent prisoners of this regime must escape and learn the truth about the world they never knew existed.

The High Rollers are falling apart. Billy is leading them into war against the wishes of Laura, who is intent on living in peace. Unbeknownst to them, one among them holds the cure that could save all mankind, and there are two powerful enemies that want it. Everything has been leading up to this, and the members of this fragile family are going to have to go through hell if they're going to survive. No one is safe as the end draws near.

For weeks, the town’s museum director has fought the undead and has believed that he was Clayfield’s sole survivor. But when odd things begin to happen, it becomes clear that other healthy people are around. A friend shows up unexpectedly full of trouble and secrets, and they are not alone. Another group of survivors brings even more secrets and conflict. And then there’s Bruce, the new guy in Clayfield. Bruce likes the zombie apocalypse just fine. He gets to be the person he could not be before the outbreak.

A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: Basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story - and gets in the game.

On a cold February day in the small town of Clayfield, Kentucky, an unsuspecting and unprepared museum director finds himself in the middle of hell on earth. A pandemic is spreading around the globe, and it’s turning most of the residents of Clayfield into murderous zombies. Having no safe haven to which he can flee, the director decides to stick it out near his hometown and wait for the government to send help. But the disease and those infected are not his only concerns....

Rebelling against her fashion-drug designer father, freelance journalist and troubled clone Wynne Cage covers a data-heist that places her in the rank of a thief. To make matters more complicated, Wynne must also confront the forces of a world with unlimited bio-technological advantages.

A mysterious new contagion is decimating the population. It starts in the lungs, like the flu, then moves to the bones, where it weakens and breaks them, eventually killing the host. The disease's origin, methods of propagation and means of contraction are all unknown. There is no vaccine, and none is expected, as the virus is protean and elusive. If it remains unchecked and mutates into a more virulent form, it will become an extinction level event.

The virus spread quicker than anyone could have imagined. Within days, over half the world's population became infected. Now a small band of survivors, led by high school teacher Mike Allard, must learn to live in a world ravaged by the deadly victims of the Tilian Virus. Weaving together two separate time frames, The Tilian Cure is a tale of humankind's most dire hour. Faced with imminent elimination, humanity's last glimmers struggle to break through the darkness of a pandemic the world has never before experienced.