Head On (Narrated by Wil Wheaton)
Summary
"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Cannell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty - most of them in someone else's body." (USA Today) John Scalzi returns with Head On, the stand-alone follow-up to the New York Times best-selling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports. Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps", robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real, and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field. Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are called in to uncover the truth - and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.
©2018 John Scalzi (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
From a Buick 8
Summary
The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in Shed B out back of the barracks ever since 1979, when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with an abandoned Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous. Curt's avid curiosity took the lead, and they investigated as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years, the troop absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work, the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still-life painting that breathes - inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from. In the fall of 2001, a few months after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18-year-old boy, Ned, starts coming by the barracks. Sandy Dearborn, Sergeant Commanding, knows it's the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family. One day he looks in the window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers... From a Buick 8 is an audiobook about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.
©2002 Stephen King, All Rights Reserved (P)2002 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved
The George Bernard Shaw Collection
Summary
Eight of George Bernard Shaw's most memorable plays in one splendid collection: Mrs. Warrenâs Profession: Shaw pits a clever heroine against a memorable gallery of rogues in this superbly intelligent and still shocking comedy, which was banned for eight years from the English stage after its London debut. Performed by Shirley Knight, et al. Arms and the Man: The beautiful, headstrong Raina awaits her fiancéâs return from battle â but instead meets a soldier who seeks asylum in her bedroom. Performed by Anne Heche, et al. Candida: Shawâs warm and witty play challenged conventional wisdom about relationships between the sexes, as a beautiful wife must choose between the two men who love her. Performed by JoBeth Williams, et al. The Devilâs Disciple: A young hero who disdains heroism makes the ultimate sacrifice for honor and country during the American Revolution. Performed by Richard Dreyfuss, et al. Major Barbara: This sparkling comedy traverses family relations, religion, ethics and politics - as only Shaw, the master dramatist, can! Performed by Kate Burton, Roger Rees, et al. The Doctorâs Dilemma: A well-respected physician is forced to choose whom he shall save: a bumbling friend or the neâer-do-well husband of the woman he loves. Performed by Martin Jarvis, Paxton Whitehead, et al. Misalliance: A self-made millionaire and his family invite their future in-law for a visit to their estate. In this delightfully clever play, issues of gender, class, politics, and family are all targets for Shawâs keen wit. Performed by Roger Rees, Eric Stoltz, et al. Pygmalion: Shawâs beloved play about an irascible speech professor who decides to mold a Cockney flower girl into the darling of high society. Performed by Shannon Cochran, et al.
©2010 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2010 L.A. Theatre Works
The Living Dead
Summary
âA horror landmark and a work of gory genius.â (Joe Hill, New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman) New York Times best-selling author Daniel Kraus completes George A. Romero's brand-new masterpiece of zombie horror, the massive novel left unfinished at Romero's death! George A. Romero invented the modern zombie with Night of the Living Dead, creating a monster that has become a key part of pop culture. Romero often felt hemmed in by the constraints of film-making. To tell the story of the rise of the zombies and the fall of humanity the way it should be told, Romero turned to fiction. Unfortunately, when he died, the story was incomplete. Enter Daniel Kraus, co-author, with Guillermo del Toro, of the New York Times best seller The Shape of Water (based on the Academy Award-winning movie) and Trollhunters (which became an Emmy Award-winning series), and author of The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (an Entertainment Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year). A lifelong Romero fan, Kraus was honored to be asked, by Romero's widow, to complete The Living Dead.  Set in the present day, The Living Dead is an entirely new tale, the story of the zombie plague as George A. Romero wanted to tell it. It begins with one body. A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who wonât stay dead. It spreads quickly. In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead. We think we know how this story ends. We. Are. Wrong.
©2020 George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
The Graduate
Summary
An American classic adapted for the stage, starring Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson and Matthew Rhys as Benjamin Braddock. A fresh-faced college grad returns home, diploma in hand, to seek an answer to that age old question: âNow what?â Lacking any clear career path, he falls prey to the original âcougarâ, the predatory Mrs. Robinson, wife of his father's business partner. But itâs Mrs. Robinsonâs daughter who captures his heart. Includes and interview with the star of The Graduate, screen legend Kathleen Turner. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson; Matthew Rhys as Benjamin Braddock; Bruce Davison as Mr. Braddock; John Getz as Mr. Robinson; Jamison Jones as Hotel Clerk and others; Devon Sorvari as Elaine Robinson; Linda Purl as Mrs. Braddock and others. Adapted for the stage by Terry Johnson, based on the novel by Charles Webb and the screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Directed by John Rubinstein. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, in December 2010.
©2011 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2011 L.A. Theatre Works
Cakewalk
Summary
Broadway legend Elaine Stritch stars as author Lillian Hellman in Peter Feiblemanâs beguiling account of Hellmanâs tumultuous relationship across several decades with a man 25 years her junior, played by Oscar nominee Bruce Davison. Accompanied by the original music of Carly Simon. Includes a conversation with Hellman scholar Deborah Martinson, author of Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in February 2000. Directed by Rosalind Ayres Producing Director Susan Albert Loewenberg Samantha Bennett as Esther Bruce Bruce Davison as Cuff Claudette Nevins as Womenâs Voices Raphael Sbarge as Menâs Voices Elaine Stritch as Lilly Radio Producer: Raymond Guarna Foley Artist/Stage Manager: John Lovick
©2009 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2009 L.A. Theatre Works
The Physicists
Summary
Johann Mobius, the worldâs greatest physicist, is locked away in a madhouse along with two other scientists. Why? Because he is haunted by recurring visions of King Solomon, and the other two are convinced they are Einstein and Newton. But are these three actually mad? Or are they playing a murdererous game with the world at stake? This darkly comic satire probes the cost of sanity among men of science and whether it is the mad who are the truly sane. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Anne Gee Byrd, Matthew Patrick Davis, Bruce Davison, John de Lancie, Matt Gaydos, Harry Groener, Christopher Guilmet, Melinda Page Hamilton, Gregory Itzin, Roma Maffia and Missy Yager. The Physicists is part of L.A. Theatre Worksâ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.
©2010 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2010 L.A. Theatre Works