Showing results by narrator "Chris Ciulla" in All Categories

It’s the middle of the night when Detective Chris Bailey is called to the side of a rural Tennessee highway. A young woman’s body is found sprawled on the shoulder of the winding country road, a glossy dark pool of blood around her head. The victim has been shot five times. She isn’t wearing a coat, though it’s late February. Her empty purse is discarded a few feet away, a single high-heeled pump obscenely alone in a pile of last year’s fallen leaves tinted with frost. Her other foot is bare.

A young girl’s life is torn apart when her parents are killed in the NATO bombing of Belgrade, Serbia, during the 1999 Kosovo War. An embittered Katarina Petrovic grows up with a hatred for Americans and becomes a willing candidate for special training by Russian agents. Alex Baker commanded an Air Force Office of Special Investigations unit until an incident forced him to resign his military commission. Still in his thirties, he finds a new career as the owner of a Manhattan-based travel agency specializing in tour packages.

Greed in the form of pink pills found in Springdale's medicine cabinets is poisoning its young people. It's 2001, and Big Pharma has found its new linchpin. A new class of synthetic drugs, known as "opiates", apparently frees people from pain while being safe and non-addictive. Sonny Fiorentino, a funeral director in Springdale, realizes his community is being poisoned. His life is permanently changed when a young opiate victim, Kelsey Jordan, unexpectedly awakens in his morgue. With a second chance at life, Kelsey and Sonny join forces to rid Springdale of this drug scourge.

Drawing upon his experiences as a diplomat, including his observations of Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli crafted The Prince to explore the nature of power. Through an unflinching portrayal of brutality, Machiavelli reflects on what it takes to be a successful ruler.

Refereeing homeowner association spats over acceptable mulch color was never part of Kylee Kane’s post-Coast Guard retirement plans. The irate combatants are trying the security consultant’s patience when gunfire erupts and a SWAT team swarms in. How did they arrive before any possible report of an active shooter? Two days later, Kylee discovers a ghost boat. Not a soul onboard. Among the missing are presidents of HOAs managed by her employer. Are the incidents linked?

Everyone wonders what it's really like in space, but very few of us have ever had the chance to experience it firsthand. This captivating collection brings together stories from dozens of international astronauts - men and women who've actually been there - who have returned with accounts of the sometimes weird, often funny, and awe-inspiring sensations and realities of being in space.

Its summer 1860, and former army Captain Nathan Chambers has returned home to Virginia to claim his inheritance: a large plantation with more than one hundred slaves. Nathan wants no part of slavery and intends to sell the farm and all its slaves. But even as he arrives home, enduring fearful and downcast stares from despondent black faces, he knows what he must do and the price he must pay for doing it.

After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is attempting to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA career, and she knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth.

A short story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science-fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Unearth your next great listen with Assemble Artifacts.

Far away in his palace at Phyrexes, a lich king returns to life with murder on his mind. His target? Samuel James Tolliver and anyone close to him. His method? Power to rival the gods, legions of undead warriors, and half a century's worth of wicked cunning and skill. Elsewhere the keepers of the System have taken notice of him and watch patiently with knives sharpened. Beyond them, an unknown power awakens and takes deadly offense at Sam's very existence.

Life was never easy for Marcus, even before his parents’ murder/suicide in a seedy trailer park in Florida. Now he’s landed in Vegas with his older brother, Mac, hoping to start over. But plans usually go sideways when Mac’s involved. He’s a mean brawler, and Marcus all too often ends up on the receiving end. Then Marcus meets Trina—a ray of hope in his sea of despair. He’s smitten. Trina, however, has a thing for bad boys, and Mac is as bad as they come.

The Chameleon, an Artificial Intelligence expert, can create a deepfake of almost anyone—living or dead. Even more frightening is the Chameleon’s ability to seek out disturbed souls and laser-focus their rage. A talent she employs to compel her subjects to commit violence on her behalf. Kylee Kane, a security consultant for Welch HOA Management, finds the Chameleon’s first victim, Andy Fyke, crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Kylee suspects the fall’s no accident and is tied to Andy’s campaign to prohibit rentals in his Hilton Head Island community.

Newspapers called him the “the man with the cast-iron toes,” “the best drop-kicker in wrestling,” and “one of the mat game's biggest box office attractions.” But Dr. John “Dropkick” Murphy's legacy extends far beyond the wrestling ring. Decades before the Betty Ford Center became a household name—and long before the band the Dropkick Murphys named themselves in his honor—the phrase going to Dropkick’s meant a person struggling with addiction needed help and would soon get some.

It’s early 1860, and war hero Captain Nathaniel Chambers, commander U.S. Army Fort Davis in the west Texas wilderness, has received shocking news–his father is dead. He must return home to Virginia and claim his inheritance before a maniacal neighbor can murder his widowed mother and seize the family plantation. But he’s torn by a terrible dilemma–to stay in the army and turn his back on his fortune, his mother and his beloved childhood home, or become the thing he despises; a slave master! Is there no other choice?

“Irishman dies from stubbornness, whiskey.” So began Christopher Clifford Connors’s obituary of a life that included hunting bears in Russia, inventing limo surfing, surviving a shipwreck, and training with Navy SEALs—for starters. At the end of 2016, Connors’s story captivated the world when the exploits of his sixty-seven years went viral.

When a neurotic statistics geek gets invited to his twenty-five-year high school reunion, he spends his life savings remaking his identity to wow his old classmates. Only one tiny problem: his new persona gets him mistaken for a drug kingpin and sends him running for his life with the very people who used to make it miserable.

They Came from Everett is an anthology featuring the stories of prominent citizens of Everett, Massachusetts from throughout its history. Learn about the lives of Everett's luminaries from the worlds of business, politics, desegregation, war, entertainment, and sports.

Sports is a religion. No, really. From pilgrimages and cathedrals, gods and fallen angels, holy wars and holy ghosts, organized sports has every aspect of an organized faith. In fact, it might be even better: all it takes to believe is to stand and cheer. Nobody knows this better than the preeminent sports documentarian Gotham Chopra, who just so happens to be the son of world-renowned spiritualist Deepak Chopra. While his father taught him to find faith through prayer, Gotham felt pulled towards the Boston Garden and Larry Bird instead.

There has been a breakout in the prison known as Oblivion, and now the worst of the worst have been turned loose on an unsuspecting world. Desperate to contain the crisis, the right hand of the king has called the disgraced Starbreakers back into service. After all, they were the ones who put most of these villains away in the first place. As the Starbreakers scatter to face friends and foes of the past, it's a fight for peace in the kingdom they call home, and a fight to protect the legacy they left behind. It's also exactly the opportunity their enemies have been waiting for.

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.