Showing results by narrator "Aida Reluzco" in All Categories

In these tense, macabre stories, bodies fall from the sky, perfect nails conceal grisly secrets and violence pulses behind gleaming façades. From hellish visions to obsessive relationships, acclaimed author Agustina Bazterrica takes us to the dark heart of human desires and fears. Shocking, brutal, yet glinting with sharp humour, "Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird" is a breathtaking dive into human monstrousness from a master of contemporary horror.

Eden Alvaro is a licensed Vulture, picking through the aftermath of violence in demon-plagued LA, and fencing her finds to help support her family. But when a crooked cop reports her for a salvage she didn’t take, all hell breaks loose. Stripped of her license, Eden finds herself with a price on her head. When the mercenaries hunting her raid her home, brutalize her family, and abduct one of her sisters, Eden turns to the enigmatic Bishop - a man with a reputation for violence who, for the right price, can find just about anything or anyone.

As an orphaned girl, Harmony survived a strange war waged by an enemy called the Quondam. They crushed every technological advancement in the world, eviscerated the landscape, and killed millions. It can still be stopped. As prophesied, Harmony has a destiny to fulfill. Thirty years later, she is in a tenuous alliance with a cult of zealots who worship time itself. A master code breaker, she’s enlisted to obliterate the power of the Quondam and prevent a war that has already ended.

The island city-state of Singapore harbors unique customs and traditions largely unknown to the West. A booming economy and embrace of conformity overshadow its gambling dens, red-light districts, and a collective passion for ghostly and gory tales. Now, in Singapore Noir, some of its best contemporary authors delve into its seedy side.

Eva Stewart has been focusing on her bed and breakfast in the Florida Keys since a murder mystery turned her life upside down. When her morning walk takes her near the cemetery, she stumbles across another dead body. With the help of her murder mystery book club, she sets out to help the police solve another mystery, whether they want the help or not. Can she sort through mysterious guests, surprising revelations, and police force intent to keep her safe and away from the investigation?

The tax demons want their pound of flesh. Or 52,000 dollars. Unable to pay what she owes, Eden is forced to fight a never-ending stream of bounty hunters while she tries to clear her name and find the cop who set her up. But demons are not known for their patience, and the new mercenary hired to bring Eden in dead or alive has magical abilities of his own - magical abilities oddly similar to Eden’s. Desperate, she turns to a friend for help, but Detective Juke demands a favor in return - help to find the demon or mage responsible for a killing spree.

When Eli leaves the cramped Bulgarian apartment he shares with Elizabeth, his more organized and successful wife, he discovers that he now inhabits her body. Not only have he and his wife traded bodies, but Elizabeth, living as Eli, has disappeared without a trace. What follows is Eli’s search across Europe and to America for his missing wife—and a roving, no-holds-barred exploration of gender and embodied experience.

It’s been twelve years since the 2040 Quake rocked the Golden State, fracturing Los Angeles and the fortunes of millions. It’s been six years since tech billionaire Damon Yates founded his elite academy, giving Unfortunates from the wrong side of his hyperloop tracks a new future at Quest Campus, tucked away in the Santa Monica Mountains. But an endeavor that sought to bridge a divide only tore eighteen-year-old twin sisters apart.

A serial kidnapper is preying upon women. He abducts them and then locks them in one of the cages dangling from the ceiling in a soundproofed basement. There, he sits quietly and just watches them, returning night after night, hoping he'll be in the room at the moment his beautiful captives finally starve to death.

Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her deceased brother’s bones have been stolen, and the love of her life returns from Ecuador for a one-night visit. A cash-strapped couple hustles in Miami, to life-altering ends.

The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by those who exist on the fringe of our society and want more than what life has dealt them: A haunted veteran turned career criminal is on the run. An injured fighter turned bouncer seeks vengeance for his lost love. An assassin on his last job finds himself questioning his life choices and breaks all the rules to understand his final victim.

Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling-bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling. She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love. Seven months out of college, she’s desperately trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after the Wall Street job she had waiting for her post-graduation dissolves in the wake of the Great Recession.

A monster is holding me hostage inside a chateau. The world is plagued by creatures called the Dread. And he’s their king. I’ve tried to run. I’ve tried to hide. But there’s no escaping him. He wants to turn me into one of the creatures. Unless...I find a way to break the curse. A curse that has turned him into the monster that he is. He wasn’t supposed to destroy cities. He’s one of the Celestials meant to save humanity. As I uncover the truth and break his curse, I wonder if I’ve lost myself in the process. Can I still escape him?

In this “unforgettable adventure, and one you don’t want to miss” (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author), painter Remedios Varo and her lover, poet Benjamin Peret escape the Nazis by fleeing Paris and arriving at a safe house for artists on the Rivieria. Along with Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and others, the two anxiously wait for exit papers. As the months pass, Remedios begins to sense that the others don’t see her as a fellow artist; they have cast her in the stifling role of a surrealist ideal: the beautiful innocent.

Eva Stewart has taken up a new hobby: photography. What better place to take pictures than the Great White Heron Refuge? While capturing the local wildlife on film, she stumbles across a dead body. Of course, the murder-mystery book club jumps on the case. Can Eva and the book club find another killer, or have they finally gotten in over their heads?

America Redux explores the themes that create our shared sense of American identity and interrogates the myths we've been telling ourselves for centuries. With iconic American catchphrases as chapter titles, these twenty-one stories illuminate the astonishing, unexpected, sometimes darker sides of history that reverberate in our society to this very day—from the role of celebrity in immigration policy to the influence of one small group of white women on education to the effects of "progress" on housing and the environment, to the inspiring force of collective action and mutual aid.

The Burke siblings are damn good at what they do. And what they do? Well that isn’t any good at all. As wet work operators for the Order of Magic, the Burkes pay a high price to use their magic. For years, they threw themselves into the Order’s dirty work, cleaning up messes that the Nine liked to pretend didn’t exist. But all that has changed. Someone in Black Ops has decided that the Burke siblings are a liability. And when the Order’s most accomplished killer comes after them, it doesn’t take an elementalist to figure out they’ve been burned.

Beatriz Herrera is a fierce woman who will take you down with her quick wit and keen intellect. And after the results of the 2016 election worked hard to erase her identity as a queer biracial woman, she’d be right to. Especially if you come for her sweet BFF cousin, Hero. Beatriz would do anything for her, a loyalty that lands Beatriz precisely where she doesn’t want to be: spending a week at the ridiculous Cape Cod mansion of stupid-hot playboy Ben Montgomery. The same Ben Montgomery she definitely shouldn’t have hooked up with that one time… The things we do for family.

When Malena Sevilla's tidy, carefully planned world collapses following her father’s mysterious suicide, she finds a letter - signed with an “A” - that reveals that her mother, whom she thought dead, is very much alive in San Isidro, a quaint town tucked in the Andes Mountains. Intent on meeting her, Malena arrives at Alameda Street and meets four sisters who couldn’t be more different from one another, but who share one thing in common: all of their names begin with an A.

Nevada Duncan is the heir to the Duncan and Zuniga crime family fortunes, but before he can take the mantle of power, he has to be educated about the family business. So, with the encouragement of his father and grandfather, he enrolls in his father's alma mater, Chi's Finishing School. Chi's is the world's most elite school for the children of underworld figures.