Alan Black has 9 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Larry Goes to Space.
Metal Boxes: Trapped Outside
Summary
Perry Stone hasn't gotten over his fear of being outside and he still hasn't settled into life in the Empire's Navy. After months of legal wrangling over his last assignment, he has been given a new assignment. He was looking forward to getting a new posting on a spaceship or a station. The problem is that his new job is on a planet. Worse, once there, the base is overrun by the enemy aliens and now Stone is trapped outside on a hostile planet, injured, and hunted by aliens bent of killing him.
©2015 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black
Metal Boxes
Summary
Coming of age can be hard for anyone. But for Blackmon Perry Stone it is life threatening. At 15, he barely manages to graduate from the empire's cadet training by a talent for unusual problem solving. He has trouble settling into navy life, but life becomes harder when he uncovers a ring of thieves aboard the huge ship. Life becomes difficult when they killed him. Stone is ejected into hyperspace in an escape pod without hyperspace engines. Fully expecting to die, he reconfigures the sub-light engine to escape the inescapable. To his surprise it works, but only well enough to do little more than crash on an uncharted planet. It will surprise him if he can make the engine work again, but not as much as it will surprise everyone else if he can come back from the dead.
©2010 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black
Larry Goes to Space
Summary
Larry enjoyed raising cattle on his Kansas farm, until the aliens arrived. He couldn't help himself; he was going for a ride with aliens from outer space! The aliens wouldn't tell him where he was going, how long he would be gone, or if he was ever coming back, but a space trip sounded like more fun than beer and burgers at Benny's Been There and Done That Bar and Grill. He had to go. Larry's ride into deep space wasn't just a Sunday jaunt. This space-faring species was in danger of being wiped off the galactic map. They offered Larry a ride because his assistance was vital to their survival, but they were xenophobic to the point of barely tolerating Larry in the same room. He was willing to help, but what could he do? Could he live long enough to save himself? What skills did Larry have to save an alien species threatened with annihilation? Every time he asked them for information, they stonewalled him.
©2015 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black
Metal Boxes - At the Edge
Summary
Ensign Stone's goals were to make his way in the Empire's navy, make his family proud of him, and make love to his fiancée. No matter which way he turned, someone was conspiring against him. Disgraced and humiliated, he is court-martialed, discharged, and abandoned. Accepting what he thinks is a lowly busy-work position on a beat up old family business space freighter travelling at the edge of human space, he hopes to earn back the trust and respect he lost. The Empire's political powers and his family have different goals. Stone faces humanity's enemies in a do-or-die operation.
©2016 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black
Chewing Rocks
Summary
Chastity Snowden Whyte just wanted to mine for rocks, metal, and ice in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Rock mining in space was all she knew. It was all she was good at doing. She was comfortable living alone as the captain of her mining ship, the Sedona. Normally she managed with only infrequent trips to the planetoid Ceres for resupply. She didn't want to have to make extra trips back to base because of equipment failure. She didn't want to become a mining tutor for a group of newcomers from Earth. And she certainly didn't want to get entangled in corporate conspiracies, piracy, kidnapping, murder, and worst of all...politics.
©2009, 2013 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black
Titanium Texicans
Summary
Sixteen-year-old Tasso Menzies just finished burying his grandfather next to his mother and grandmother on the family farm when he receives an order from his estranged uncle to come to Capital City. He doesn't want to leave the only home he's ever known. He doesn't want to be apprenticed on a space freighter crewed by Texas cowboys of Mexican descent. He certainly doesn't want to be gone for so long that his home and inheritance are stolen. While trying to fit in and still get home he learns what it is like to live in space, what a cheerleader is, how spicy a taco can be, and that Texicans like a good fight as much as he does.
©2014 Alan L. Black (P)2015 Alan L. Black
Steel Walls and Dirt Drops
Summary
The new commander of the 1392nd Allied Protective Expeditionary Services is Hamisha Ann McPherson, and this is her first command of anything larger than a squad. She is a larger-than-life combat veteran and a bonafide war hero. She knows combat. She also knows that combat is one thing, and that command is a warthog of a different and dubious color. Misha wonders if she has the necessary skills to turn this group of slackers, petty criminals, and losers into an effective fighting unit in the short time she has left before being tossed out the back end of a spacecraft to fight in ground-chewing warfare. APES are supposed to be an armored infantry fighting force. However, this unit's last commander retired in the saddle, leaving his unit to unravel and fend for themselves. Their assigned space forces transport captain is less than no help at all. The war with the Binders is heating up and there are secrets swirling around mixed with gossip about the last big battle against the aliens. Some secrets could mean life or death for the ground pounders who wear metal armor in dirt side warfare. Combat is on the horizon, and even the veteran APES doubt they will be ready for what is coming. All Misha can do is crack a few heads, kick some backsides, and see what happens. Her APES might live through the next battle if she is successful. If not....
©2014 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black
Empty Space
Summary
York August Sixteen was abandoned as a baby, abused and molested as a child, and beaten and harassed as a teen and had his rightful place in the Republic's Space Navy stolen from him. Fighting back against huge government systems was useless. Dispensing justice on an individual, case-by-case basis was more to his liking, yet even that was taken away when he was stationed on a lonely communication space station. York's life would change when he decided to seek justice for people even less fortunate than him.
©2015 Alan Black (P)2015 Podium Publishing
Rusty Hinges
Summary
Stone's fist, secure in the combat suit and hidden by camouflage, impacted the Hyrocanian mouth before it closed around the baby. Stone grabbed the helpless piglet with his free hand and tossed it to a startled female. The piglet, the last of her kind on the delivery shuttle, grabbed the baby and ran. Stone twisted his fist, trying his best to break every tooth in the Hyrocanian's mouth. Hyrocanians have four sets teeth, two for chewing vertically, and two for chewing horizontally. Suddenly, his fist broke free from the shattered teeth. Opening his fist, he felt something soft and squishy at the back of the alien's throat. He closed his fingers around it and yanked.
©2016 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black