Showing results by narrator "P.J. Ochlan" in All Categories

Infused with details from letters and diary entries, the narrative twists forward and backward through time, revealing a lost world of fake identities, underground antiques networks, and a husband who wasn't what he seemed. Originally from Belgium, young Armand de Potter went to New York without a penny in his pocket. With cunning ambition he quickly made a name for himself as both a worldwide travel guide and a trusted--if illegal--antiques dealer.

When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf Coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working-class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes. At the center of it all is Gus Lindquist, a pill-addicted, one-armed treasure hunter obsessed with finding the lost treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte.

For Max Schreiber, World War II was an idyll. It is the return home to Connecticut that feels like entering a combat zone. Ridiculed by his wife and daughter, bored by his legal practice, Schreiber spends his evenings drinking and eating alone, hoping that when he goes to sleep he will dream of France and Micheline, the beautiful young woman who may have broken his heart but at least made him feel alive.

When work-a-day corporate stiff John Cade makes a delivery to a prodigiously eccentric client, his world spins out of control. Hunted by otherworldly creatures in a wild chase, he hurtles through an abruptly unfamiliar Los Angeles as the boundaries of reality bend and blur. Will Cade hold on to his sanity or be driven off the edge by forces beyond his comprehension? The answer can only be found in the Seventh Lane.

John Eakins returns to Greece, seemingly to pursue Byron scholarship. But his deeper concern is to find out the truth about the murder of an American newspaperman named Alexander Webb, killed during the Greek Communist rebellion seventeen years before. Eakins had been implicated in that murder. Now, his search takes him from Athens to the primitive village of Kala, where he finds Paul Stephanou, a blind man also implicated in the Webb murder.

Story One: Bumbling Caper on the Swiss Alps. "Watson! Watson!" I shouted in dismay, thinking I was close to the surface. Alas, I could not find my way out of the snow, packed thick and heavy all around me. My legs were pinned in place, and I could scarcely breathe with each passing moment.

Eight years after the war with the Alotans, Jake, Teddy, Gris, and Dru are the only survivors of Tom Callahan's squad.

They're gathering for their annual reunion - but this year a new face wants to join in: an Alotan going by the name of...Tom Callahan.

In 1899 Jeremy, a young engineer, leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across East Africa. In charge of hundreds of Indian laborers, he soon finds himself the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men in almost nightly attacks on their camp. Plagued by fear, wracked with malaria and alienated by a secret he can tell no one, he takes increasing solace in the company of the African who helps him hunt.

Just after World War II, a young orphan living in Naples comes under the protection of Don Gaetano, the superintendent of an apartment building. He is a generous man and is very attached to the boy, telling him about the war and the liberation of the city by the Neapolitans. He teaches him to play cards, shows him how to do odd jobs for the tenants, and even initiates him into the world of sex by sending him one evening to a widow who lives in the building. But Don Gaetano possesses another gift as well: he knows how to read people’s thoughts.

Driven by curiosity, wanderlust, and health crises, David Downie and his wife set out from Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees. Starting on the Rue Saint-Jacques then trekking 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain, their eccentric route takes 72 days on Roman roads and pilgrimage paths - a 1,100-year-old network of trails leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater. It is best known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela - "The Way" for short. The object of any pilgrimage is an inward journey manifested in a long, reflective walk. For Downie, the inward journey met the outer one: a combination of self-discovery and physical regeneration.

The lush and beautiful forest planet of Bellerophon is home to a cacophony of noises, but its resident psychics are known as the Silent. Previously they could travel to the Dream, a telepathic plane of existence where they could twist the laws of reality. But that time is over... One madman's lust for power tore the Dream asunder. Now only a handful of the Silent can enter it. Kendi Weaver is one of them.

The telepathic communications net, known as "The Dream," has been shattered. And the majority of the Silent who used it are unable to reenter. But Kendi Weaver has more pressing concerns: finding the family that slavers tore from him more than a decade before....

Before Kendi learned to use his talent of navigating the plane of mental existence known as the Dream, he had to escape his physical existence as a slave.

Award-winning author James Alan Gardner evokes a sense of wonder that is synonymous with great speculative fiction. Now, in his first short-story collection, he brings together the numerous tales that have made his reputation, ranging from the everyday experience to the cosmic, from peanut butter sandwiches to space drives. There are stories of wonder, imagination, humanity, and the unknown and tales that remind us of the importance of possibility.

Virtually everyone would agree that Leonardo da Vinci was the most important artist of the High Renaissance. It was Leonardo who singlehandedly created the defining features of Western art: a realism based on subtle shading; depth using atmospheric effects; and dramatic contrasts between light and dark.

After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Christian colleges in the US seized the opportunity to begin strategic faculty and student exchanges with universities inside the Soviet Union. They could not have foreseen the doors that would open next. During a 1990 visit to Russia, John Bernbaum and his colleagues received a surprising invitation from a Russian government official: come help build a faith-based university in Moscow. Thus, after 70 years of fierce religious persecution under communism, the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) was born.

Corcoran takes some time off as Eureka County Deputy Sheriff to visit an old family friend and stumbles into a land fraud scheme. It gets mighty dangerous as a conspiracy develops, one layer at a time, and bodies begin to pile up. A rancher leaves his foreman in charge in order to get medical help for his daughter and the foreman claims the man abandoned his homestead claim. Corcoran being Corcoran, he meets a charming young lady whose father is an Oregon County Sheriff. He seriously contemplates giving up his badge and settling down.

Terrence Corcoran, recovering from injuries he received breaking up a cattle-rustling gang, stumbles onto a grisly scene high in the Monitor Range of central Nevada. That discovery nets him a charming teenage girl from a ranch in the valley, an old army scout who has never lost his abilities, and some wild rides through the Nevada desert in pursuit of Humboldt Charley and a gang of murderers, bank robbers, and kidnappers. Town marshals protect criminal elements, three county sheriffs become involved, and Corcoran discovers at least one more person from his past.

Southern Afghanistan, 2005. NATO forces are battling the Taliban across Kandahar Province. In a terrifying twist, the rebels unearth a tactical nuclear bomb lost in the final days of the Soviet occupation. The years buried in the sand have damaged it, so the Taliban seeks the help of al Qaeda to secure replacement parts through its contacts in Saudi Arabia, the Opium Cartel, and the Russian Mafia. Doing so, however, inadvertently alerts the Americans, the Russians, and the Israelis.

Although it's a smelly task for those who have to constantly bathe him, Roy's happiness centers on his very favorite thing - dirt - and from sunrise to sunset, he burrows in it, rolls in it, and digs up buried treasures. There's terror in every terrier, and when Roy runs into the house after being sprayed by a skunk, he faces the dreaded bathtub.