A Rob Hunter Reader ~ Audiobook Downloads

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be heard...
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read more	The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie Download (m4b audiobook version—it’s free) Ginny Levitan and her husband, Jim, are inspecting a possible retirement home at the outset of Rob Hunter’s “The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie.” With the aid of real estate agent Barbara Casmirczak—“Call me Babs”—they buy the odd dwelling and soon discover they have an ant infestation. Later, Ginny discovers that Jim is having an affair with busty Babs. What raises this above the typical tale of marital discord is the alternating sections told from the ants’ POV. While the snappy dialogue between the humans is quite clever, the early sections dealing with the ants are outstanding. Which leads to my only real complaint. Having set up this round-robin style of twin narratives, the author dispenses with the ants’ POV a little ways into the story. I can understand the need to do so, but as Ginny becomes the cuckolded wife, I found myself missing the finely depicted ant world of The Lady Mother of the Long Walkers, which felt like a well-crafted world of high fantasy. A small grumble on my part as they do appear again, of course. —Marshall Payne, in The Fix-online, October 14, 2007 Insects are nothing new to horror fiction, but Hunter elevates this tale above the standard fare with engaging characters, keen POV shifts, and a quirkiness of style that makes the outcome most satisfying. While the dénouement was inevitable, it left me with a devious grin on my face. Impressive. —Marshall Payne, in The Fix-online, October 14, 2007 “My sister, is she dead? Go and give her a poke, would you?” The great white presence that was the Lady Mother of the Long Walkers indicated the row of captive queens on their dais beneath her, deferentially lower. ― Song of the Rice Barge Coolie “...exceptionally well written.” (The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie) —Linda Landrigan, Editor Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
read more	The Queen’s Head Download (m4b audiobook version—it’s free) “Things were good. The times of the ancestors were stable and prosperous taken all in all. The folk were well-fed and knew who and where they were. There was no disruption of the social fabric.” The storyteller nodded and smiled as though to himself. He plucked a dolorous chord from his lyre. “‘There are strange things done ’neath Califoux’s sun...’ A human song. They styled themselves merchant princes come to seed the stars with a gospel of wealth without work: a thing they called ‘growth.’ I have heard them at it myself. They said they were only seeking a place to land and trade...” The children sensed a wondrous secret about to be divulged. “And pay their taxes... Heh-heh-heh. The Queen and her Tetrarch in His wisdom allowed them to land their starships.” The storyteller rocked back and forth on his heels, pleased, and waited to be asked for more. —The Queen’s Head The eyes—languorous, not corpse eyes—invited him to join her in her silence; their lashes were tipped with iridescent moondrops. Her drooping whiskers were dusted with gold. There was an immediate aching sense of loss. He had met his love, tragically dead. A rubber sheet was produced and rolled out to cover the desktop, papers and all. Leet wiped his nose on his sleeve and dumped the head out on the table. Its momentum carried it toward Pingold. He turned away at the whir of a hand-held power saw. “Looks real doesn’t she?” —The Queen’s Head They sat, policeman and Queen: she, a head atop a fluted sandstone pilaster, a radiant face, he, a soul thrown out of heaven, beyond loss. He leaned forward to close the gap between them. At a table spread with oiled silk slick and shiny they drank brandy poured by the wife of this house of high dormers—fruit brandy from a lead flask crystallized by moisture and age and air. The Queen lifted and poured, a thin amber stream. The Inspector did not ask how she could speak, sit with him and without hands manipulate the flask. “Have we known each other thus?” asked one, their voices and their thoughts indistinguishable one from the other. “Yes, we have. We deaden our minds so our souls may flow together. We here await the silent strike of a flight of arrows,” said the Queen’s head. —The Queen’s Head
read more	The Return of the Orange Virgin download Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (m4b audiobook version—runtime 9 ¾ hours) Lechery, debauchery, total annihilation―the usual stuff as two prime movers contend for power. Not power to do anything in particular―threaten, coerce, destroy: illuminate a city, tighten the skeins of a siege engine, or wind up the bowels of a child’s clockwork toy―just power to have around. Just in case. Just the familiar, reassuring bulge of potential, there to quiet unease was not much to ask. But who to ask? —The Return of the Orange Virgin “It’s like living in New Zealand. You know, a place that is nice, really great, where you get letters from relatives but nobody ever comes back from. Like dying but with regular mail service.” —The Return of the Orange Virgin There was a rain of gears―springs and artificial fur flew past, considerably more than could have reasonably been inside the mechanical rat. The narrator blew across the barrel of his smoking pistol, making the sound of a tugboat whistle. He replaced the gun under his monk’s robe, rearranged its folds and sat with hands folded. —The Return of the Orange Virgin “Ten thousand years and this is the best I can do? And the tale has yet to begin,” said the Orange Virgin. “I do wish I had been more careful. Now it has the force of law and we are stuck with it.” —The Return of the Orange Virgin
read more	The Runaway Bungalow Download (m4b audiobook version—it’s free) Oswaldo Patricio Meléndez O’Rourke y Nuñez arrived with a backpack of laundry and a Mach-10 machine pistol. The path from the rocky beach where he had scrambled ashore became a set of steps, then a gravel road, then a short street clustered with the mercantile establishments that decorate small town life. Oswaldo noticed that yellow lines had been painted to assist an inexperienced parker. Hoping to be inconspicuous he paused to rest beside a vehicle that might look as though he and it belonged together. He watched as a woman attacked the doors of the supermarket across the street, strange behavior for even an American. She seemed to be trapped inside. Oswaldo slipped from the harness of his backpack and let it fall. There was a metallic clunk as it hit the pavement. From the dropped backpack came a muffled protest. “Ouch!” One sock and most of a very soiled sweater stuck out where a zipper had jammed. “Uh, Santo—that is you?” “Sí, niño. And you are having an epiphany, a spiritual experience—these happen all the time ” “Not to me, Santo.” —The Runaway Bungalow “Arrgh! See me neck, lad?” The mark of the hangman was stamped on Theophrastus Bigelow's throat. “They give me a good twist, they did.” Bigelow succumbed to gales of laughter. “I didn't die from the drop; I swung and strangled, me laddy-buck. Whadda ye think o' that?” The Pirate's great black beard, curly and perfumed, he wore tucked into the waistband of a deep-cuffed, red velvet coat. Whatever young Randy thought did not matter to the pirate. He seemed to think Randy was expecting him. “I think it's rather nice that you didn't die all at once,” Randy said. —The Runaway Bungalow

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