Showing results by narrator "Nicole Poole" in All Categories

Scholarship student Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor and Princess Mercedes de Arango have graduated from the High Ground and become officers in the Orden de la Estrella. Stung by Mercedes' choice of Beauregard “Boho” Cullen as her consort, Tracy is glad they are posted on battleships light years apart but soon finds that without her protection, he is nothing but a target. Meanwhile, Mercedes' posting has its own challenges, not least her unfaithful husband.

Fourteen years have passed since he was framed for theft to cover up an imperial atrocity, and disgraced military officer Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor has built a new life for himself. Living under an assumed name as the captain of a small trading vessel crewed primarily by aliens, he and his crew engage in both legal and illegal deals just under the radar of the Solar League authorities.   

An unnamed woman checks into a guesthouse in a mysterious district known only as the Subdivision. The guesthouse's owners, Clara and the Judge, are welcoming and helpful, if oddly preoccupied by the perpetually baffling jigsaw puzzle in the living room. With little more than a hand-drawn map and vague memories of her troubled past, the narrator ventures out in search of a job, an apartment, and a fresh start in life.

Lost in Montana.

When Rachel Everly dumps her cheating boyfriend, he dumps her in a one-horse Montana town with only her suitcase and beloved camera. Then a deep, whisky-rough voice offers her a way out… Rescued by the rancher. Shane Merritt plans to sell his parents' ranch. Originally he merely hires Rachel as his photographer, but slowly he begins to see the woman who's putting the home back into his homestead in a whole new light.

Claire Keller would do anything to have a child. Unable to conceive, she's overjoyed when she and her husband bond with the five-year-old girl they adopt. But Claire's hopes for a perfect family shatter when her daughter stands before her covered in blood and prophesying death.... As the child exhibits more strange supernatural abilities, the frightened Kellers find themselves caught up in a dark plot. Hunted by a shadowy organization hell-bent on claiming the girl, the family is forced on the run. 

Abbey Mei Otis's short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, and more. Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the 12 stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.

When the hunter is your mate, being prey is anything but terrifying Coyote shifter Tate Allen has been watching. Learning his mate every possible way before he moves in. Protecting her through the night, always from afar. He’ll be the one to teach her about her gifts. He’ll be there when she...

The Solar League, humanity's empire, has existed since mankind reached for the stars. While the humans considered it the pinnacle of human achievement, for the subjugated alien races it seemed only to endorse humanity's worst impulses. But the worst of humanity pales in comparison to an alien onslaught that is on the verge of bringing mankind down into death and subjugation.

With Creed battling the darkness inside him and an injury the only person who can save him is his true mate—Amelia. But their trust is fragile, while their enemies are strong. It's a passionate, intense battle of good and evil, nowhere near over.

Since the age of 12, McKenzie Arnold has spent every summer at Albany Beach, Delaware, with her best friends, Aurora, Janine, and Lilly. The seaside house teems with 30 years of memories - some wonderful, others painful - and secrets never divulged beyond its walls. This summer may be the last they spend together, as Janine contemplates selling her family cottage.

Police Chief Josie Gray is living every cop's worst nightmare: a murder suspect who she knows personally. Even worse, it's her longtime boyfriend, Dillon Reese. Dillon's secretary has been murdered, and now Dillon's disappeared. Josie has no choice but to relinquish the investigation, giving up control of a case that matters more than any other. As suspicions split the department, Josie struggles with her choices on the night she last saw Dillon.

Foster kid Briar Givhans grew up on the wrong side of the Charleston society tracks. She has no idea who her parents are or where she came from. She showed up as a toddler on the door step of a fire station with a note stuck to her back with just her name and age on it. No one ever claimed her. Now she's an adult and has long since given up on figuring out her true identity. And then Hell's Belles comes knocking on her door.

From USA Today bestselling author Meg Donohue comes a mystery, a love story, and a mother-daughter tale about two women on a precarious journey to uncover their true selves. Passionate and funny, radio personality Gail Gideon is a true original. Nine years ago when Gail’s husband announced...

Christine Snow, a Chicago therapist, wakes one morning to find her live-in lover gone. At first Chris thinks that Taylor has left in a funk because they fought the night before over a minor flirtation. But too many clues point to another explanation: Either Taylor has left for Morocco and a mysterious woman there, or she has come to harm. Running the emotional gamut from anger to alarm, Christine anxiously tracks the course of Taylor's disappearance, only to discover that her trust in her lover may have been misplaced.

Twins Emma and Briar have immersed themselves in the paranormal underbelly of Charleston, South Carolina, a world filled with magic, mystery, ghosts, and more. When the forces of dark magic are brought to bear against them and their sister Belles, they’ll need help from shifters and a shaman to reach a final confrontation at Angel Oak. Along the way, one Belle finds love, while another is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice. 

The residents of the small town of Artemis are suspicious when a community called The Drummers moves into a local abandoned church. Their leader, Gideon, claims their aim is simple: to live peacefully off the grid without government interference. But when local power substations are sabotaged and the whole of West Texas loses electricity, all fingers point to them. Forced to intervene, Police Chief Josie Gray and her team try to enter the church only for gunshots to be exchanged. Inside the church, one young girl is killed, with Gideon claiming Josie's stray bullet hit her.

As any fan of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic rereader of books. In 2008, then-new science fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her rereading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor. Now this volume presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series.

Nobody in the family talks about Ellen's grandmother Lola, who was swallowed up by the circus and emerged as a woman who tamed tigers and got away scot-free for killing her husband. When Ellen's husband Wayne beats her nearly to death, she runs to the only place she knows where a woman can completely disappear - the same Big Top that once sheltered her grandmother. Though the circus moves from one town to the next, Wayne tracks it, and Ellen, relentlessly.