Showing results by author "Steve Vernon" in All Categories

“I hate cats more than any on the planet,” Grandpa always told us. “A dog you can take hunting and a moose you can shoot, but a cat only gets in the way and barfs on your carpet in the nighttime, most usually in the very spot that you step on first thing in the morning with your bare feet - and then you are left walking around the whole day long smelling of cat-barfed-on-footprints.”

Just imagine you walk into a cheesy old greasy-spoon diner, the kind that ought to hand out antacid along with a napkin, knife, and fork. You ask the waitress for eggs and bacon, and she brings you a plate with live chicken on it. I mean, feathers and beak and the whole bonanza. Just think about a mix of Kafka and O'Henry and you are somewhere close to the mark.

Texas Jack Page, on the eve of his 48th birthday, emptied his last seven cartons of books, placing them volume by volume across his front door - a one-man human cask of Amontillado interring himself inside a shining silver Airstream trailer sized aluminum tomb of tomes.

It started out as a simple drive down a country road. Oh sure, Hillman was thinking about suicide. Oh sure, the dead woman is in his back seat was goading him on. What was the point? Why bother living? Who am I? It turns out Coyote has something to say about that. Coyote...and a troll.

Love is one of those four letter words that some people like to throw around - but sometimes love can be one of the meanest and nastiest games in town. Here are six of the strangest love stories you have ever heard. Find love and memories in the bag of a mysterious 18 wheeler in "Do-Overs and Detours - Somewhere North of Bigfoot". Find out just how bitter love can truly taste in "Hard Soup". Find out why the sea is so darned salty in "The Woman Who Lost Her Tooth While Laughing at the Sea".

Bobby Kaye's life story started and ended with an email, and then the monkey dung hit the fan. We're talking blue plague monkeys, tulwar-swinging cab drivers, a ride-on-mower caravan of unbridled mass consumption, and a moon-infatuated, eight-legged story-telling spider god going toe-to-toe-to-toe-to-toe with the merciless, scud-spear wielding Nigerian spam genie - Prince Wanna-Wanna-Wanna!

Tommy has come home from the city to visit his dad for one last time. He is determined to get to the bottom of all of the secrets that his dad has kept for hidden behind a smokescreen of storytelling and charm. It turns out that some secrets are best left untold.

A short story involving a Celtic water spirit (the kelpie), an assassin, a librarian, a ghost, and a Santa-mugging street gang - a wild weird paranormal romance shoot-em-up story - written for listeners who hate to listen to romance.

So how does a kelpie, an ex-assassin high school librarian, Santa Claus, the Flying Dutchman, and the Krampus wind up going toe-to-toe with a Martian Expeditionary Force in a highly unidentifiable flying gravy bowl? Why don't you grab this audiobook and hear for yourself?

Love is one of those four-letter words that people like to throw around, but sometimes love can be one of the meanest and nastiest games in town. If you have ever had your heart broken - then this audiobook is for you. If you enjoy the taste of strong meat - then this audiobook is for you. If you've got a sense of weird that is honed as sharp as a cutthroat's knife - then this audiobook is for you. Here are three of the strangest love stories you have ever read.

Burt was certain that if he hadn't hit King Kong with Darth Vader's head, he would not have fallen into that Citadel Hill time-traveling toilet. He wouldn't have met and been shot by the one-armed ghost, and he would not have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong freaking time. A Blurt in Time is a YA time-travel horror story that grown-ups will want to hear when the kids aren't looking.

So what happens when Bigfoot, the Trickster Coyote, the ghost of Sam Steele and the long-lost spirit of The Prophet, brother to the mighty Tecumseh and reincarnated in the form of a giant pink flying Winnebago go toe-to-toe with dark supernatural forces in a cross-Canada battle ranging from Cape Breton to Labrador to Thunder Bay? I'm not saying that it is going to be pretty...

Meet Bass Clayton, a bounty killer turned professional drunkard. Silver Grimes is the man who inadvertently turned Bass Clayton into a drunk; after Bass accidentally shot Silver's arm off with an eight gauge shotgun. Sally Jezebel has a secret that she is keeping from both of them. Their lives are going to turn when Newt Gallagher comes riding into Willy Jake's bar on top of Pritcher Targate's prize sow. What you have got to ask yourself is just how far one man will go for revenge?

It happened just yesterday or perhaps the day before. The bombs were dropped. No one knew why. Whatever the reason, due diligence was undoubtedly done and all aspects were carefully considered. Certainly the motion was passed around the Senate a time or two. After all, an election was coming. Every vestige of civilization was blown away, save for a few stubborn traces barnacled along the grim fringes of existence. Like say, maybe the Maritimes....

Water is a liar. If you tell a story with water it cannot be trusted and it will wash away in the first hard rain or in the tears of a long good cry. And stories told in blood and stone stick longer by far. Listen. Finbar Tanner is telling a story to his son, Isaac. It is a story of love, desire, and sacrifice. It is a story of blood and water and stones. It is a story of the deeper currents that flow within a man's heart. It is a story of the sea.

Hammurabi Road is a dark redneck-noir novella of retribution, backwoods justice, and getting closer to a black bear than was ever dreamed possible. We start off with the eternal triangle - four men ride out in a pick-up truck; three in front and one duct-taped and bound in the back. It is a clear-cut case of Northern Ontario railroad vengeance, served up as cold as a frozen hunting knife. Fans of the movie and television series Fargo are going to love Hammurabi Road.

Olan Walker was first out of the slat truck and he could have slid through one of the slats. That man was nothing but lank. He was as lean as a dog in Lent. He was as lean as hunger poured thinner than a spoon full of prison soup. He looked like he ate nothing but wind and shadow all his life. If there was a king and queen of skinny; a duke of raw bone, an earl of gaunt, and a prince of scrawny - well Olan Walker was the lord high ruler of them all.

A short and eerie true ghost story that tells of the love a maritime father had for his only daughter, set in the halls of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

It happened in early September, the time of year when the city does its damndest to remember what heat was, just one more time before winter rocks on in ...

Will has got a secret. He keeps that secret hidden in the field out back behind his house. Sam and Artie will do just whatever Will tells them to do because they know what Will's secret is, and they will do anything to make sure that Will doesn't lose his temper on them.