Showing results by narrator "David Pickering" in All Categories

The redemption of the Erimocan Manaar had been incomplete. They had sought vindication, from any connections they had to the Reaping, through the eradication of the evil that they had failed to contain. But the true redemption of the Erimocans would never exist without a return to balance. The Immersion at the Windbeck County Fair was only the beginning of a struggle for that balance.

An heiress who is terrified of glass, a failed actor facing a gunman on a rooftop, a dentist up a tree, first love, honeymoon romance at the tomb of the Aga Khan, the surprising secrets of a very old lady....

Six chilling and original stories inspired by the realities of life and death on the Western Front and beyond, building to a truly poignant and revelatory climax.

Six original tales of terror to chill the blood and delight the soul. A man finds himself terrified of going upstairs. Disturbing events take place after a stranger checks into a lonely hotel. Two schoolboys learn about an unexpected horror of the battlefields of World War I. An old lady daren't go into her own garden because of what she fears is waiting for her. A birdwatcher sees something that opens the door on a chilling tragedy that is not yet over. A couple set off on a round-the-world cruise unaware that it will also prove to be their last.

When the wild Sanjeror Rastag killed her family, Maldara swore revenge. She tracks him to the Xordom of Teargarden, a mysterious city where Murks and humans live together surrounded by untrustworthy merchants and evil Sanjerors.

Celina had never meant to fall in love–certainly with a Gaelorian. As soon as she had given her heart to Gorvan, he had shattered it upon the wall of her tavern for all to see. Love was for fools, she realized, and she had become the grand jester in a court of misery. Cynical and guarded, she held her secrets close. But when the crazed monk Rogart arrived–cursed with dreams of what was to come--she realized she had been discovered. The demons of Nolagarg were close, and once they found her, she would be a slave to them once more.

As soon as Gorvan became ruler of the desolate backwater town of Teargarden, a host of new refugees flooded in—every one of them desperate, hungry, and their own unique brand of trouble.

Welcome to Teargarden, a town bereft of law and order. It's controlled by two individuals–the devious innkeeper Therolim, and the mysterious yet beautiful Celina. Their rivalry was about to tear the town part, but all that would change with the arrival of the Archon. Archons were supposedly celestial saviors, sworn to protect the citizens of Agarath from demons, but Celina knew better. In order to protect herself and the rest of the town, she would need to devise a way to kill an angel.

From the best-selling author of A Drive Through Time comes a time travel novella with a hint of fantasy. A down-on-his-luck historian, William, meets an enigmatic woman at a coffee shop in London. Her fascinating stories spark the beginning of an adventure that leads him to the banks of the Nile river. But his past catches up with him, and William is left to die alone in the Sahara desert. What happens next will have you wonder and second-guess yourself until the end. If you liked the Inception movie, surely you'll enjoy this book.

It is difficult to say when the Immersion happened. There is little doubt as to where it began. It was in a village. Despite an impoverished life, the village held a community rich in the love of life and each other. Some would say these conditions are the essence of an Immersion. Mik and his friends are at that age when the future looks infinite in all its possibilities. Life in the Village has never seemed so good. This year they attend the county fair as adults. But there is a world outside that cares little for the country people and their yearly celebrations of life together.

Peregrine, bastard son of King Paladrine, thought he had trouble when he was transformed by a sorcerer into a falcon. In fact, his real troubles began when the prepubescent princess Ruby changed him back into...well, almost a prince. A bastard. Whereupon he found himself dragged off by a dyspeptic dragon, smooched by a sphinx, wooed by the weefolk, and finally appointed Sub-Imperial-sub-Legate, which is still not quite a prince, but somewhat more elegant than a bastard.

Peregrine was the bastard son of the King of Sapodilla, the last Pagan kingdom in the world to resist Christianity. Accompanied by his page and the rather time-worn sorcerer, Appledore, the prince sallies forth into the Dark Ages to find his fortune. What he finds instead is: dragons, whores, Huns, Roman legions, emperors, and a most fantastic collection of mysteries and adventures.

Jerrod Northi-rogue, pirate and a citizen of Pemath, was desperate enough to want to go through the transformation. It cost 100,000 units for the Craftsmen to endow him with the Seven Signs - a rather steep price even for him. But he would pay it somehow, for since the attack of the deadly leeris, he feared that the cost of missing this opportunity to find a refuge in the land of Tarnis would be even higher.

Rond and his crew had been left to die slowly on an unknown planet. As they moved warily through the alien forest they heard the eerie rhythms coming toward them. Then they saw the grotesque figures. A bizarre army of screaming women! Masked, brandishing gleaming swords, rattling their terrible death drums, howling with the fury of some primitive blood lust - and they were attacking! As the scarlet waves of growling women approached, Rond and his men began to run - back into the dark forest of looming horror...

The Maze is a pathway between worlds and times. Its Masters know the secret but decline to interfere. Its Guardians at different levels prevent invasion of one world by the inhabitants of another. But the alien hive-creatures called Chulpex mean to find their way past the Guardians to colonize a new world, and one ordinary, untrained Earthman is catapulted into wild adventure in his determination to stop them.

Jon-Joras had come to Earth simply to oversee arrangements for a dragon hunt to amuse the king. These hunts were as much pageantry as sport - the dragons, brought to Earth centuries before as pets of an alien race, were powerful but slow-witted....

Earth was old, her riches gone. Her children too had left her, all but a few who lived peacefully off the land. And then came the Kar-Chee, to crack Earth open and suck out what remained of her richness, threatening the twilight of the old planet with an evil beyond anything that had gone before. With them they brought their servants, beasts so cruel and horrible that men could recall their like only from ancestral nightmares, and named them "dragons"....

The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy is a collection of historical mystery fantasy short stories by Avram Davidson, featuring his scholarly detective character Doctor Eszterhazy and set in an imaginary European country. It never got better than this - short stories set in the "triune monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania" in the decades before the World Wars.

The Monkey Prince was a god of awesome power and curiosity who somersaulted through the dimensions of time to reach the harsh, snow-peaked Earthland of Dza. There he searched for the secret of Chos, key to perfect knowledge and compassion. And there he met the demoness Drolma, who took his heart in an instant and claimed it for all eternity. Their passionate union spawned generations of mortals destined to follow in their exalted quest: To search for Chos, and to forever wage battle with the Black Shen, master of monsters, black magic, and nightmares.

Edgar Allan Poe reminds us that our dark choices lead to darker fates. His tormented life was immortalized in his ability to capture anguish, fear, and death with his poetry and short stories. This anthology seeks to honor our beloved dark father with 13 short stories and poems re-imagined from some of his original works. Welcome to the Crossroads.