Showing results by narrator "Scott Miller" in All Categories

"Shadows of History: A Century of Secret Influence" by Marty Francom is an ambitious and intriguing blend of historical fiction and speculative thriller. The novel follows Edward Blackwood, a young writer in 1930s London who becomes embroiled in the clandestine activities of the St. Francis de Sales Club, a secret society dedicated to shaping world events from the shadows. The narrative spans the tumultuous 20th century, from the eve of World War II to the dawn of the digital age.

Everyone loves running into and reconnecting with an old friend. Someone you have lost touch with for any number of reasons over the years. It can stir up a cocktail of euphoric emotions through feelings of nostalgia, amusement, hope and love. That is exactly how Emma Goodwin felt when she ran into her high school best friend Charlie Claymore after they found one another randomly after a decade of not seeing or speaking in a small coffee shop in Seattle.

When you are only about 90 degrees from absolute zero, it is not hot, despite the fact that the sun is shining down on you 24 hours a day. The answer to this riddle is that you are on Uranus, in the arctic circle, where the sun is a bright star almost directly overhead. And what are you doing on Uranus? You need the money. Nils Borgmann, however, was sweating. And the reason was that the heating unit on his space suit, like the heating units on almost all space suits, was not functioning properly.

Like the tanning of a leathered corpse, the inaugural release of Grimoire seeks to stretch the fleshy bounds of dark fiction and horror. Included within these unhallowed book are tales of medieval horror and cacophony, Lovecraftian delights and wretched Kaiju, accursed djinn and pestilential priests, all brought together for the very first time in one horrific collection. Engaging and provocative, these tales of the damned stalk the graveyards at night, crawl up from the empty and wet places of this world, and haunt the dreams of all who hear them.

The Cowans have arrived in Texas to homestead. After their dangerous trek west, they want to settle, free from worry and danger. With the help of his son, Wes, the McLeod brothers, and Pony Boy, Bruce is ready to raise his cabin.

Midstadt used to be a monarchy. Until it wasn’t. Now, 100 years after the blood of the last king flowed from the steps of Parliament Square, another rotting empire has the jewel of the Ragged Sea in its sights. It means to bring them into its fold, to swallow up the fledgling republic before the fires of its industries can sweep across the world. While anarchists wage battle with monarchists beneath the streets, and war brews in the South, Sergeant James Delwar and the officers of the Meridian Watch begin an investigation that will take them to the heights of the old aristocracy.

Greg was sure the kids had no right being in control of a planet; after all what had they learned about life? Still, what had he learned? The old ship wheezed and clattered into the landing slot. Greg was an expert pilot, but skill was no substitute for outdated equipment. He unstrapped the safety webbing and eased himself out of the cabin, cluttered with its worn and scarred electronic gadgetry. With the handcrank, he opened the airlock. Rusting metal screamed as the panel slid back into the hull.

Personnel Incorporated bragged that they could supply a man for any job. Maxwell doubted this, needing a space pilot for the first Lunar trip. Now, if he had just asked for a lunatic....

Alice saw the Beachcomber as a glorious hunk of man; Maxwell saw him as a super being from the future. Tragically, he was both.... Maxwell and the girl started their weekend on Thursday, in Venice. Friday, they went to Paris, Saturday to Nice, and on Sunday, they were bored. Alice pouted at him across the breakfast table. "Vernon, let's go someplace else," she said. She leaned forward across the table and put up one long white hand to keep her honey-colored hair out of her eyes. "You don't know what I mean. I mean, let's go to some other planet."

Henig was sent to obtain a soil sample of the planet. It was a routine assignment, but not necessarily the only method for discovering an—Export Commodity. Three of the hairless bipeds stood in front of the frame building talking. Concealed by the brush beyond the road, Henig studied them carefully. The pale, white-skinned animals had a culture of sorts—their language, their buildings, their wheeled vehicles testified to that—but an animal society was very different from the rational civilization Henig knew.

Gentle Marene was next when the black space cruiser called for its youth-levy. If only Zurk would spark to life - Zurk, this huge, part-human war machine of tubular steel muscles and blank, mechanical mind. There was both agony and defeat etched deeply into Guyard's lean face as he stood there in the center of the hidden attic laboratory. His fists were clinched tightly at his sides and his hollow eyes were staring tensely and with supplication at the steel monstrosity before him. "Zurk, you must save her!" he pleaded. "You must save Marene!" Zurk, the man of steel, made no move.

Tad, like other young men, looked to the spaceways for adventure. But, George Barlow, like other fathers, knew that disaster would end his Wanderlust. Somehow, George Barlow had sensed that something was wrong the moment his son drove into the barnyard that evening. He had been waiting impatiently for Tad's return all afternoon; the men needed those tractor bolts before they could do the mowing. But, George had felt the uneasiness, quite suddenly, deep in his chest when he heard the boy's three-wheeler chugging up the rutted country road from town.

The base diner was hot and stuffy that night as Scotty Johnson sat with Mitch and Jack and the other boys, sipping his last cup of coffee before Zero Hour rolled around. Mitch and Jack had succeeded in sneaking him out of town before the reporters had guessed what was happening. Now, they sat in silence, sipping their coffee, glancing at him from time to time as though to make sure he were still there. It annoyed Scotty. This was the time to laugh, and joke, and bull away as if nothing was going to happen at all.

After Fort Dodge, wagon master Bruce Cowan had hoped the journey to Wagon Mound would get easier. That lasted but a few days. It horrified the settlers when they came across the burning remains of a smaller wagon train. Not one survivor. Bandits attacked this time, not Indians. Every day brings a fresh crisis. Trent and Pat, the McLeod brothers, with their gun-fighting skills, provide Bruce and the wagon train protection and much-needed guidance. Sometime even that isn't enough when they face Mother Nature at her most destructive.

Writing stories was hard work - unless Fred had a typewriter like "Reggie" that could write by itself! Nonsense? Fred agreed until he met the plagiarist from Rigel IV. I bought the typewriter in a pawn shop on Third Avenue. The pawn shop proprietor was a balding old man with a walrus mustache. "How much?" I asked him. "Five dollars," he said casually.

He stared with fascination at a heap of newspapers spread out on the corner stand. He could guess the purpose of these layers of white sheets covered with black or red symbols, but he could not yet interpret them, and he had no idea whether anyone had seen or reported his ship. It was almost certain that someone had observed a shooting star, but the chances were very much against any observation having been made of the star’s slow, dark drift to Earth.

If there had ever been a time when Ollie Keith hadn't been hungry, it was so far in the past that he couldn't remember it. He was hungry now as he walked through the alley, his eyes shifting lusterlessly from one heap of rubbish to the next. He was hungry through and through, all 140 pounds of him, the flesh distributed so gauntly over his tall frame that, in spots, it seemed about to wear through, as his clothes had. That it hadn't done so in 42 years sometimes struck Ollie as in the nature of a miracle.

Half of Jupiter's great disk and most of the other moons were below the horizon when the man stepped out of the plane and changed her life. As far as Carol Marsh was concerned, he was ordinary enough in appearance. And she wasn't ordinarily attracted to ordinary men. He was slightly over medium height, his features were not quite regular, and he had a deep tan over what had started out as a sunburn, so that she decided he had misjudged the strength of the sun on some planet with a thin atmosphere.

Harry spent three years in space, waiting to get home to Earth - and his family. They were waiting for him, too - that is, for his corpse. Captain Greene shook his shaggy head and studied Allerton with patient eyes. "You're making a mistake," he said. "You'll be back." The inside of the spaceship was quiet now, not with the silence of the tomb, but with the silence of barely inaudible echoes, as if Allerton might still be able to hear the crew clomping about the companionways on metal-shod feet if only he knew how to listen.

Homer was a shy Faderfield bachelor; his visitor was a beautiful Pleiades girl. At any rate, she was a girl, and Homer had a problem. The fly rod, the letter, and the small jar of paint were half of the problem Homer Hopkins had to solve. The other half rested in his complex mind. Fader's Fadeless Formulae had offered him a position, not a job, to take charge of its research department, at 10,000 a year, twice what he was paid at Faderfield Junior College to teach chemistry. All this was in the letter.