Showing results by narrator "John Pirhalla" in All Categories

“The perfect cocktail of well-plotted, good-hearted, murderous fun."" —Nina Simon, bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night THEY'D KILL TO BE WIDOWS. Three best friends turn to murder to collect on their husbands’ life insurance policies… But the husbands have a plan of their...

Axel Font, once the champion metal sorcerer of the underground arena, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life as an airship engineer. But with the constables coming knocking on his door and claiming he's under investigation for the murder of a member of the Senate, privatized paramilitary start trying to shoot him, and someone starts making appearances as his old masked identity, he's not likely to get the chance.

Mollie stands at a precipice, facing three Herculean challenges. First: Recruit a starship captain who’s daring, relentless, and possesses balls of steel. Second: Commandeer the newly minted Caldurian warship, Crysteon. Third: In the midst of chaos, locate her missing father. Enter Captain Matt Briggs. Does he come with baggage? Sure. More than a little attitude? Maybe. Does he want to help the beautiful, headstrong resistance leader—not so much. But time’s running out—Earth’s fate hangs in the balance.

So, there I was…just minding my own business and having a drink at a local watering hole, when this strange woman approaches me, begging for help. I’ve never seen this woman in my life. I have no idea who she is. If she’s to be believed, she doesn’t know who she is, either. Nor does she know where she came from, or exactly why it is she needs my help. She sure as heck knows who I am, though. She knows that I’m the Blade Mage.

After an unstoppable ascent through the Tower of Champions, Xavier has cemented his place as the True Progenitor of Earth by attaining the top leaderboard records on floor after floor. Now he finds himself on the fifth floor, defending Queen Alastea and her castle from the infinite waves of the Endless Horde. They say the Endless Horde can't be stopped—but Xavier has always been bad at listening.

Harald Darrowdelve has squandered every gift life gave him—until he entered the dungeon beneath Flutic and received a demon's dark blessing. Weak, privileged, and directionless no more, Harald now commands powers forged in darkness. But each new ability and hard-won level drags him deeper into the ruthless politics of noble houses, shadowy rivals, and the celestial war burning beneath the city's streets.

The rebellion has begun, but Jace Hawthorne and the crew of the Revenant quickly learn that freedom carries a steep price. To keep Rising Dawn alive, they must race to recover the Eldra’kaarn’s lost technology—before their enemies seize it first. Every lead plunges them deeper into a shadow war of traitors, spies, smugglers, and alien factions vying to exploit humanity’s desperate fight for survival. Trust is scarce, and betrayal festers within Rising Dawn. Jace must rely only on his closest allies or risk watching the rebellion collapse from within.

Forced into a difficult choice, Sam steps onto the Path of Stars, the ancient trail through the galaxy that will lead him to the history of the Astral Titans. Hundreds or even thousands of years may pass before he can see his family again. Fortunately, time on Aster Fall moves more slowly due to the presence of the Nexus, but he worries for all the things he's left undone.

A definitive collection of new and selected stories by a master of the form “Comparisons might be drawn to writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami to Margaret Atwood and J. D. Salinger. All of Lethem’s stories are enlivened by his wit and provocative wordplay.”...

When Carson Flint traded his Commonwealth military badge for the quiet life, he thought he'd left his battles behind. Two years of running a saloon called the Bulwark, a volatile hub for refugees, smugglers, and the occasional war-weary soldier, was the peace he'd been looking for. He's never had it easier, or been so bored. But when a fugitive Commonwealth operative arrives with dangerous secrets and a war criminal on his tail, Carson's sanctuary quickly becomes a target.

Death is the one, true constant in the Shift. This is something Troias has learned in his journey to become Baron of Wisconsin, and most of that death has come from his hands. He's battled monsters spawned from legends and nightmares and slaughtered powerful guardians of energy-rich Vortices. Now, though, he faces a new sort of enemy: his fellow man.

As a Titan of a human being, Dii Van Damme embodies this idea. Having mastered the fundamentals of his Stolen Cosmic Power, his expanding arsenal now enables him to transition seamlessly from defense to offense. If enemies from other Realms attack him where he lives, then he can do the same.

Edward Ashton's Antimatter Blues is the thrilling follow up to Mickey7 in which an expendable heads out to explore new terrain for human habitation. Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still...

The island of Tarawa, a tiny spit of sand out in the middle of the Pacific, teemed with five hundred pillboxes filled with artillery pieces and highly motivated Japanese soldiers. Their commanding officer encouraged his troops, saying, “It would take one million men one hundred years” to conquer Tarawa. They were convinced that the Americans would be slaughtered before they ever got ashore.

Gloria Burtzlaff feared for her life one day back in April of 1991 when her abusive husband, Larry, drunk and violent, slapped her, hit her, and began pelting her with glasses. After he tried to drown her in a tub, she got the family shotgun and confronted him in his underwear. “Larry, I’m going to kill you,” she declared. Defense lawyers would later claim he lifted a glass as if to say, “Have at it, sister.” Have at It, Sister is a true-crime tale about Gloria, a South Dakota woman who shot her abusive husband and was put on trial in a precedent-setting case.

A young woman’s night-time escapade goes eerily wrong. A man is forced to relive the horrible accident that tore his family apart over and over again. An underground thrill through ancient catacombs proves disastrously horrific. A young boy is haunted by the scarecrow in the fields behind his home. And a woman is revisited by the ghost of a psychotic killer in the most dreadful of ways. Scare Street brings you some of the best short horror stories by authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Eric Whittle, Sara Clancy, and A. I. Nasser, all in one book.

Gabriel, an ex-soldier-turned-project-manager with anger issues, is sent to a small town in New Mexico and charged with keeping a failed government experiment secret and stable. There he meets Tam, an oddly philosophical scientist, but as they settle into a bantering friendship, things go catastrophically wrong.

When Sean Wyatt and his longtime friend, Tommy Schultz, try to help a troubled Japanese woman, they find themselves right in the thick of a power struggle between some of the most dangerous gangsters in the world. Now Sean and company must race across Japan, unravel clues that were left decades before, and discover the true location of a blade made by the greatest sword maker of all time: Honjo Masamune.

Venture into the shadows of Anger, New Hampshire, where a teenager with a unique ability fights a war hidden from the naked eye. This anthology features Jimmy Hsu’s chilling encounters with entities beyond the grasp of ordinary men. Join Jimmy as he races against time to save his friend from a vengeful spirit, comes face to face with the horrors of a haunted pet cemetery, and confronts the undead in an abandoned neighborhood.

Beaten, bloodied, and barely alive, the survivors of Black River’s cursed families have been cut off from their bloodlines for violating old traditions. But they continue their battle to end the evil of the Bell Witch and release the town from her reign of terror. Pursued by the witch’s minions, the group takes shelter in the Leviathan, an abandoned opera house built a century ago. Its corridors exude supernatural power, and they soon discover that the haunted old building was designed for a very special purpose...to trap the Bell Witch within its walls.