Showing results by narrator "Gabriel Rayner" in All Categories

As an Ender, it is my place to protect the royal family at all costs. Despite being the best Ender our world has ever beheld, I have failed time and again as the personal sacrifices continue to mount. Lark has been banished to the desert by her father who is blind to the manipulation he has again fallen prey to. To bring about justice, I must seek out and destroy the one who intentionally wields her powers to bring pain to my people.

The five members of an elite commando group nicknamed “the Stone Wolves” once raged against Creterakian rule. Now, four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living. But a friend from the past won’t let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. Hopscotch, RedWire, the Killer, Lulz and Recoil will soon wish their pasts could stay dead.

My people use the power of the earth to sustain life and defy our enemies. I should be at my father's side as a royal princess. But as a half-breed, bastard child, that isn't going to happen. In a world of lava and fire, I am about to face my hardest trial yet. Not one of strength, or power, but intrigue and manipulation. However, my tolerance level for anyone outside of my family is at an all-time low, and the queen who rules the Pit expects complete obedience.

Roots, once suffocating under cement, tear through the streets of London to throttle buildings. Vegetable homunculi hold up banks with automatic weapons. There is a green and blooming world beyond our own, fighting back against the human pollutant. We will launch a rescue mission to this Otherworld. But it is cruel and unknowable, and should we become tangled in its vines, more than cities will fall.

In the title story, "Dark Nocturne", D is hired to unlock the secret of a siren's song that is drawing men in their twenties to their deaths in the hills outside Anise Village. In "Notes on Imagined Autumn", D finds himself caught between two lovers during a ritualistic sacrifice in the village of Shirley's Door, but if D can't stop the sacrifice will all in the village be doomed? And in "Legend of the War Demons", two living weapons, genetically engineered creatures who are the last remnants of a war waged hundreds of years in the past, find that battle is not so easily forgotten.

My name is Peta, and I am a familiar. To stand at the side of an Elemental as their familiar is a gift given to few familiars. Yet here I stand with my thirteenth—Larkspur, child of the earth. I do not want this charge, for all my previous have ended in deaths I could not prevent. I am not sure my heart can take another loss of one bonded with me. Larkspur’s strength and heart call to me as only one other Elemental's had, and I cannot deny the need to protect her, and to shield her from all pain.

The world watches the sky with trepidation. The insanity of Xenocide knew no bounds, and all will soon suffer the effects he had planned for a millennium. Though none know what is to come, they all know it isn’t going to be easy to survive. The Master has a plan, one that can give the world at large a way to escape the onrushing desolation. It may be on the bleeding edge of morality and what he needs might prove too difficult to secure, but The Master asks for trust. Cal and Dale both have their role to play as the world hurtles toward destruction.

He’s back. Despite absolutely no requests at all, Sir Apropos of Nothing - he who was spawned from the violent assault of a tavern wench by a group of drunken knights - has returned. This time his voyages take him to the land of Rogypt, a surprisingly ancient realm where the tragic people known as the Shews labor endlessly in building pyramids for their masters. When Apropos inadvertently interferes with he who is destined to be their savior, no less than a deity reaches down and points his fickle finger upon him, informing him it is now his responsibility to liberate the people.

Fergus is back on Earth at last, trying to figure out how to live a normal life. However, it seems the universe has other plans for him. When his cousin sends him off to help out a friend, Fergus accidently stumbles across a piece of an ancient alien artifact that some very powerful people seem to think means the entire solar system is in danger. And since he's the one who found it, they’re certain it’s also his problem to deal with.

The woods surrounding Lake Huron are filled with danger and bounty alike. Pirates frequent the waters, cold-hearted cannibals and stickies wander the woods, and the mystical Sea Hag and her Hag-Sworn keep an eye on it all. A local moonshiner has offered to escort the companions through the forest to the nearby Martkplatz where they can resupply at the ville’s annual trade festival. However, the companions get more than they bargained for when forces converge on Marktplatz and kick off the festival with a bang.

Meet Lara Dominguez—a troubled Creighton cops reporter obsessed with the city's debonair vigilante—The Black Ghost. With the help of a mysterious cyber-informant named LONE, Lara's inched closer to uncovering the Ghost's identity. But as she searched for the breakthrough story she desperately needs, Lara will have to navigate the corruption of her city, the uncertainties of virtue, and her own personal demons. Will she have the strength to be part of the solution—or will she become the problem?

As a professional finder, Fergus Ferguson is hired to locate missing objects and steal them back. But it is rarely so simple, especially after his latest job in Cernee. He’s been recovering from that experience in the company of friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, experts at crafting top-of-the-line AI spaceships. The Shipmakers have convinced Fergus to finally deal with unfinished business he's been avoiding for half his life: Earth. Fergus hasn’t been back to his homeworld since he was fifteen, when he stole his cousin’s motorcycle and ran away.

U.S. Marshal Will Tanner is a man of the law, not a gun for hire. Except when a friend’s in danger and needs the Tanner brand of help that comes out the barrel of a gun.

When an act of mercy ends in betrayal, the companions are attacked, and three of their crew abducted. Led by Ryan, the remaining members set out on a deadly rescue mission. Standing in their way—a forest overrun by barbaric cultists and mutated beasts. Alien animals hide behind every tree. Strange creatures creep through the canopy. An apex predator watches, ceaselessly, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

n the darkest days of the Civil War, Neville Goldsmith set the world on fire. As Captain for the Union Army, he marched with General Sherman through Georgia, setting homes and cities ablaze with sadistic glee. For Goldsmith, starting fires was a lifelong obsession. And when the war ended, he set his sights on the great American West—to burn it all to the ground. Years later, Luke Jensen learns about a series of fires wreaking havoc from the Dakota Territory to Kansas.

As sleepy as Buffalo Peak's been, legendary marshal, Elwood "Firestick" McQueen, and his deputies "Beartooth" Skinner and "Moosejaw" Hendricks never expected a couple of drifters to wake it up—by kidnapping two lovely ladies in town. Hardly the sharpest quills on a cactus, these dim drifters call it courtin'. Firestick doesn't see it that way. Now the woman snatchers are heading for West Texas with their reluctant brides-to-be—and unwittingly plunging trackers Firestick and Moosejaw headlong into a rescue.

The bear seems harmless—at first. Just a lost and confused grizzly poking around Big Rock. Then the killings begin. A horse wrangler is mangled. A rancher mauled. Then a bartender in the heart of town is found clawed to a bloody pulp. Now every man in Big Rock is taking up arms to hunt down the beast before it strikes again—which worries the local sheriff. He’s afraid this amateur hunting party could turn into a mass funeral real fast. So he asks Smoke Jensen to help keep everyone calm and contain the panic. Unfortunately, it’s too late. The panic is out of control. And the hunt is on.

Settling the American West required true grit, fortitude, and when necessary, shedding blood. It also required men like Preacher and MacCallister to enforce peace in a land where the law was scarce—and justice was delivered from the barrel of a gun. Wagon trains carrying immigrants along the Oregon Trail are falling prey to outlaws. Most families surrender their valuables and goods peacefully, but anybody brave enough to resist gets a bullet. The gang’s latest victim was a wagon master who sought to protect his charges only to die in the dust

A kill-crazy butcher is loose in the Arizona territory and only one man is bold enough to end the mayhem. Luke Jensen joins a posse of misfits and greenhorns on a murderous manhunt that’s doomed from the start—and there’s no turning back. Someone is terrorizing the Arizona border. Burning down ranches. Butchering travelers. Blazing a trail of bloodthirsty raids and robbing the railroads blind. His name is Melichus.

For Smoke and his daughter Denny, life on the Sugarloaf Ranch is more valuable than all the gold in the world. Which works out fine, since all the gold mines in Big Rock were squeezed dry years ago. Even so, that won’t stop a pair of businessmen from the East from trying to squeeze out a little more. One of them has developed a newfangled method for extracting gold—something called “hydraulics”—and they’ve bought up all the old mines to do it. Smoke isn’t sure what to think of. Especially when they hire a small army of gunfighters to protect their mines from sabotage.