Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

Who poisoned Laurens De Noyes with a deadly dose of brandy so that the drunken Dutchman dropped dead on Boston Common? Widowed businesswoman Hetty Henry teams up with young Boston minister Increase "Creasy" Cotton to investigate colonial Albany for suspects. Could it be the wife who keeps her own name and her cool at news of her husband's death? Could it be his father-in-law who detested his philandering son-in-law?

Faith, an anomaly to the human race, must defend herself, her world, and her universe from certain doom after accidentally injuring a monster she runs into at her high school graduation. Her adventures lead her and a Watcher known as The Man, to the planet Quii, a city-planet outside her own universe that potentially holds a key to stopping the end of planet Earth. On Quii, secrets come out, and they learn truths about the mysterious Rymuth Elves, the planet's only inhabitants.

Kersey is afraid. After years of hiding away from Mydian, a vengeful god, she has been pushed to her limit - to her threshold of anger and resentment. A powerful vampire with the uncanny ability to control the dead, Kersey is a force to be reckoned with. But Mydian is not dissuaded. From the ashes of death, he sends Dyne back to the world of the living - to Mystyria to hunt her down. In the shackles of a human body, she will struggle against all odds - mortal inadequacies, rivalry, jealousy, and deceit.

Magic and madness don't always run hand in hand, but there's a reason they call it the Touch. Delaney Green is one of them that don't burn, not that no one ain't never tried. After her mama tried and failed to murder her for pulling on the future like it was a piece of string, Del has spent her whole life in a mental institution for her own safety. And everyone else's. No one wants to see what might happen if she goes cracked. When a dozen young women turn up burned to a crisp, local folks are quick to point the FBI straight at Del.

Over a century ago, The Brothers Grimm compiled an iconic collection of stories. Over forty years ago, American cinema was infected by the walking dead. A few years ago, classic literature fell to that same infection. Now, it is time for the logical, but simultaneously unlikely, fusion of the often mistakenly labeled Grimm's Fairy Tales to fall prey to the gaping maw of undeath. Volume One of Gruesomely Grimm Zombie Tales offers up the first twenty-five stories with a liberal dose of blood, gore, and zombies.

Abused as a child, Janice Williams became a cop to make a difference. When a vigilante starts killing child abusers, she is tasked with capturing the killer. But the vigilante knows her every move. When Janice uncovers the identity of the vigilante, she is faced with the dilemma to do her job to uphold the law or help this person escape a nation-wide manhunt.

She never wanted to be a faerie princess. Deor Smithfield just wanted to find her dad, get him to acknowledge her so the magic in her blood wouldn’t run wild and kill her, then go home to her career and forget about her faerie side forever. Well, two out of three might not be so bad, right? But when your father is the King of the Winter Court, and you’re the real heir to the throne, things go from strange to complicated really fast.

Deor Smithfield had it all figured out. She had a great education, a new job teaching at a good university, and a plan to move across the country to start her new life. Then her body betrayed her, and she seemed to be falling prey to the same wasting sickness that killed her mother. When medical science failed her in spectacular fashion, Deor's grandmother told her that her long-lost father was more than just another deadbeat dad - he was a faerie, and she's a Changeling, half-human, half-fae.

Deanna, a small backwater Terran colony generally known as an idyllic tourist-magnet (if watching birds blow up if they flew too high were your kind of thing) had just hit a speed-bump on the highway of Life called the Deannan Un-civil War.

It was 1939, and a close-knit South African family found themselves in need of a new home. Peter van der Westhuizen, a husband and father of seven who spent most of his days on the road as a truck driver, did his best to provide for them. Then he found Opsaal. It’s an Afrikaans word that means "saddle up", but it was also a place: a farm, to be exact - a lonesome speck of nothing on the edge of a dirt track nowhere near a main road in the South African wilderness, somewhere in the Adelaide district.

Returning from an evening in Mars City spent visiting relatives he didn’t know he had, Timaset Skooch arrived at the local space port to find his new acquisition stolen. A few minutes later, the crew of his slightly run-down loderunner "Celeste", returned from a nearby pub, blind drunk, puzzled, and now unemployed as well. Ever since he’d decided to quit being a PI and to try his hand at running cargo instead, things had just blown up in Skooch’s face one day at a time (Florpavian Flamebirds tended to do that occasionally).

Deanna was just another third-rate colony in the Terran Empire - and it was pretty much as boring a lump of rock as could be expected. That is, until Gary Beck, a.k.a. Beck the Badfeller, ran over an obsidian crow with his jeep on the highway to San Fedora and didn’t have a spare tire. Things pretty much went down hill from there.

Canadian vigilante Laura Amour takes her crusade against child exportation to France to take on an international human trafficking organization. What she exposes goes far beyond anything she has ever expected to deal with. Against her is a powerful statesman with vast resources and one of the world's most active anti-terrorist police forces. She must partner up with a rogue anti-terrorist police officer and a teen prostitute or thousands might die.

In the ruins of the collapsed United States, private inspector, Cybil Lewis and her inspector-in-training, Jane, fill a need. When Jane insists they look into her cousin's disappearance, Cybil agrees and is catapulted into a world of lies and deceit. As they investigate, they move far into the reaches of the divided states and deep into the upper crest of political turmoil. Caught up in the malestrom of betrayal and corruption, Cybil and Jane unearth long buried secrets and survive attempts on their lives.

The abandoned house in the country. You've passed by it. In a state of decay, its walls have witnessed the triumphs and tragedies of generations. There's nothing left but memories forgotten. If you believe that, you haven't been inside. Kayla buys a house in the Flint Hills town of Sycamore Falls, Kansas. The property includes a dilapidated old house out back.

Do you want to live forever? Ever since Jacob Benjamin touched his dead grandmother's cheek while she lay in her coffin, he has had a fascination with death. The mystery of the grave and what lies beyond it became a lifetime quest for the young man. His Master's Degree thesis project explores the decades-abandoned Waxley Mortuary, sitting in ruins. His research partners join him on a journey through life and legacy, but Jacob discovers there is still activity inside the dilapidated walls of Waxley. Jacob realizes that there is one figure standing between him and his legacy, salvation, and redemption: The Mortician.

This collection of stories from some of the brightest fantasy writers in the world run the gamut from steampunk to horror, from steamy romance to weird western, from Victorian thriller to contemporary bondage. But they all feature one thing in common - the corset. From vampire comedy to steampunk action to BDSM, Cinched is certain to free your mind. What else will follow?

One of America's first civil rights activists was a former slave named Sojourner Truth. Truth was born into slavery around the year 1797, and would wait thirty years to win her freedom. Her 1850 autobiography brought attention to the evils of slavery, and her work during the Civil War, her speeches highlighting injustice, and her efforts to ensure greater equality for all Americans inspired those who would follow.

After that disappointing and sudden end to what had been a promising career, Mei rewarded herself with a long, relaxing vacation in the outback to celebrate her gender reassignment and her new start in life. The first stop on her journey turned out to be a little backwater planet called Deanna....

In November 1912, popular and pretty 18-year-old Ella Barham was raped, murdered, and dismembered in broad daylight near her home in rural Boone County, Arkansas. The brutal crime sent shock waves through the Ozarks and made national news. Authorities swiftly charged a neighbor, Odus Davidson, with the crime. Locals were determined that he be convicted. This examination of the murder of Ella Barham and the trial of her alleged killer opens a window into the meaning of community and due process during a time when politicians and judges sought to professionalize justice.