Showing results by narrator "Gary Telles" in All Categories

“The Hermit’s Story,” a short story by Rick Bass, brings listeners to a remote mountainous place where two couples are having Thanksgiving dinner together. Up in the mountains, things are always quiet. In the valley below, one can usually find the hustle and bustle of a town—but not this Thanksgiving. The power is out, and a deep, dark peace holds the land.

Published in Rock and Ice Magazine in 1986, this essay, co-written by John Long and Dwight Brooks, tells the story of a hair-raising caving adventure in Papua New Guinea.

Journalist Frederic Dannen reports on the questionable close relationship between a mobster/informant and an F.B.I. agent during a bloody Colombo crime family battle.

"The Only Blasphemy" is an essay from mountaineer legend John Long chronicling his solo ascent at Joshua Tree National Park's Half Dome with climber extraordinaire and childhood friend John Bachar.

Daniel Zalewski's essay "Once In The Jungle" chronicles American Tobias Schneebaum, a painter turned adventurer who hitchhiked to Peru, walked into the Amazon jungle and came to live with an isolated native Indian tribe, the Arakmbut people, for seven months in 1956, and his defining moment of participating in cannibalism.

In "The Green Arch," mountaineer and author John Long offers vivid descriptions of ascending the west face of Tahquitz Rock—a granite, 8,846-foot-tall rock formation located on the high western slope of the San Jacinto mountain range in Southern California—as a teenager with his childhood climbing friends.

The Spec Ops Squad is a group of elite soldiers from every alien race in the Alliance of Light. They’re supposed to be the best of the best: It’s been tough to forge them into a team: they didn’t have much in common at the beginning. But commanding officer Sergeant Bart “Dragon” Drak has done a good job, and the Squad has achieved some important victories - at a heavy cost. Now they’re facing their toughest test yet.

The Spec Ops Squad is a team of elite soldiers from every alien race in the Alliance of Light. They’re supposed to be the best of the best, handling all the toughest missions - but these elite soldiers don’t have a whole lot in common. It’s fallen to Sergeant Bart "Dragon" Dark to forge them into a seamless fighting machine. It hasn’t been easy, but they’ve accomplished some big things: They scored a major victory over the Ilion Federation, and importantly, they proved that they can function as a team.

As members of the Alliance of Light, humans have committed to the battle against the Ilion Federation, and they’re doing their part. But the Alliance’s army is fragmented, and to unify their forces, the army’s leaders must do the unthinkable: They form the First Combined Regiment, made up of soldiers from every alien race in the Alliance. The Spec Ops Squad is supposed to be the best of the best, an elite group within the First Combined Regiment to take care of the dirtiest jobs.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910), better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations.

"Cannibalism In The Cars" is a short story by Mark Twain that satirizes the political system of the US. The story is about a group of men trapped in a train during a snow storm. After a week, the men know they must resort to cannibalism for survival. They hold ineffective elections, and are so formal that they even follow parliamentary procedure.

Most people associate storms and other big weather with death - with the kind of force that makes each of us wonder about life, time, and the nature of our surroundings. The stories in Storm have more to say than that. Deep Blue offers compelling tales of shipwrecks and salvage, submarine adventure and free diving, nautical survival and cannibalism.

Nathan Stone was a living legend in the West as a lawman, as an outlaw, as a gambler, as a wanderer through the wildest towns and terrain. He blazed a vengeance trail, giving no quarter and asking for none. Fearlessly, he played his cards and used his Colt .45s as best he could in games of chance, skill, and savagery, for stakes of life or death.

The year is 1884. A 10-year-old British boy has come to visit his uncle’s Wyoming spread, just as the vicious Yellow Kerchief Gang has the ranch under siege. Outgunned and outmatched, a British rancher is willing to pay $5000 for help. That is more than enough money to bring Matt Jenson into the fray. A huge, bloody gunfight, fueled by betrayal, erupts at the Powder River. But Matt has to shoot carefully. The Yellow Kerchief Gang has a hostage — the British lad named Winnie.

Joe Pepper is a Texas badman with quite a past. In fact, there isn't much that Joe hasn't done in his 40 years of living on both sides of the Texas law - except face the hangman. Now, convicted of murder, Joe is about to get that privilege. But before he goes, Joe has a few things he wants to say - and a few stories that he wants to set straight.

In "Pecos Crossing", two young cowboys, Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, have been cheated of six months’ hard-earned pay by their rancher boss, Larramore and intend to get what is due to them. In "Shotgun", Two Forks, Texas, rancher Blair Bishop must contend with a mean customer named Macy Modock, who Bishop sent to prison 10 years past. Modock is out of the hoosegow and has returned to Two Forks determined to get even with the man who sent him up the river.

A Rocky Mountain winter has left Breck reeling from the carnage unleashed by bloodthirsty trapper Judd Carnahan - and readying a quest for vengeance as ruthless as their prey. It gets even deadlier when Carnahan lays siege to a trading post on the Yellowstone River. He’s left the owner dead and kidnapped a pretty hostage who can turn a nice profit once he puts her to work. Following his trail takes Breck clean to Santa Fe, where Carnahan’s set up a brothel bursting with hardened beauties, a saloon for cutthroats and thieves....

Emerging relatively unscathed from the apocalyptic rebirth of North America, Canada hides a trove of Cold War-era secret government installations known as Diefenbunkers, filled with caches of weapons, wags, and food. Ryan Cawdor and his companions agree to ride sec for a convoy headed west across the remnants of the old Trans-Canada Highway to retrieve the ultimate prize: four portable nuclear reactors. It's enough power to light up a ville for years, a bright beacon for a new tomorrow. But they have death on their trail.

Navy SEAL unit Mobile 4 does not exist. The US military does not acknowledge them. The White House has never heard of them. And no one who has ever seen them in action has lived to tell about them...Lt. Robert Getts heads a combat team of hard-edged raw recruits from the best of the armed services that will launch a search-and-destroy mission that will pit his SEAL team against the most remorseless killer the world has ever seen....

Miles beneath the ocean's surface, a decaying redoubt barely protects Ryan and his companions from a watery death. Battling vicious assaults from cyborgs programmed by artificial intelligence to kill them, they're desperate to escape this underwater trap. But above the waves, a new threat awaits: a massive predark super ship banished to the seas of Deathlands. Decades of madness have led to civil war between the citizens of the upper and lower decks. Now pawns in a bloody game, Ryan and the other survivors must destroy the ship or face their certain end at sea.