Showing results by narrator "Cris Dukehart" in All Categories

When I first landed a bartending job at the local guild, I didn't know a thing about magic. These days, I'm practically an expert on the different magical classes, but there's one nobody ever talks about: Demonica. Turns out they have a good reason for that. My guild is strictly hellion-free, because who wants to risk life and limb to control the biggest bullies on the mythic playground? Well, some people do, and now a demon has been loosed in the city. My three best friends are determined to slay it, but even badass combat mages are critically out-magicked.

A dragon, a fae, and a pixie walk into a bookstore… Sounds like a joke, right? For me, it's just an ordinary day on the job. At least, it has been ever since my aunt disappeared and left me with her store, her cat, and a whole lot of unanswered questions. My whole life, I've been told to stay hidden. Pretend I'm human. Sell books, drink tea, and never betray the truth of what I am. But it turns out my aunt had secrets, and a lot of those secrets seem to involve me ending up dead. To survive, I'm going to have to reckon with my past, even if it means placing my trust in a total stranger.

As a guild bartender, I can handle pretty much anything - mages, sorcerers, witches, the occasional demon. But show me anything family-related and I'd rather run for the hills. It doesn't even have to be my family. So I have no idea why I thought spending the holidays with Aaron's mom and pop was a good idea. Meeting his famous parents is already terrifying enough, but I've got a bigger problem. Students of his family's renowned mage academy are being attacked on the grounds - and somehow no one has seen a single assailant?

Liz Danger has returned home after fifteen years to deliver a giant teddy bear for her mother’s birthday (color: Guilt Red) when a cop with a great ass picks her up for speeding, fixes the missing lug nuts on her back wheel, pulls her out of a ditch, doesn’t give her a ticket, and helps her avoid her family. This is a man with real potential. The rest of the day goes downhill, starting with her finding out that the only man she’s ever loved is getting married to Lavender Blue, the most beautiful woman in southern Ohio. Really, the best thing in her day is that cop with the lug nuts.

Emmett Hudson is just trying to play college football at Clearview Falls University while keeping all the balls from spinning his life apart. He thought he had everything under control until the coach threatened to bench him if he didn't get his grades up with the help of a tutor. Lucy Parker isn't into football players, except the one she's crushed on since high school. But he's the star quarterback and doesn't even know she exists.

When true-crime writer Olivia Cruz disappears with no signs of foul play, her new boyfriend, Lincoln Sharp, suspects the worst. He knows she didn’t leave willingly and turns to attorney Morgan Dane and PI Lance Kruger to find her before it’s too late. As they dig through Olivia’s life, they are shocked to discover a connection between her current book research on two cold murder cases and the suicide of one of Morgan’s prospective clients.

I'm bound to a demon. For my entire life, I avoided magic at all costs. Now, I'm responsible for a demon who wields magic more powerful than the toughest mage or sorcerer. Demons are evil. That's what my textbooks say. That's what I see. He's ruthless, he's temperamental, he's cold. But he protects me without fail. I wonder if he's hiding a heart behind his hostility. My demon is a monster.

Haley Powell wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the night before. When she sees a man lying in the backyard, stabbed to death, she has only one terrified thought: What have I done? Agreeing to take the case as a favor to her PI friend Lincoln Sharp, Morgan must scale a mountain of damning circumstantial and forensic evidence to prove her client innocent.

My greatest enemy has always been myself. Over the past few weeks, I've painstakingly put my broken pieces back together, from the dark mysteries of my past to the heartrending conflict of my present. But just when I finally start to feel whole again, everything around me falls apart.

I promised to avenge my parents. But their killer is still on the loose, and he's stolen more than my parents' lives. Now, as he draws closer to his mysterious goals, he's poised to destroy what little I have left. I promised to translate an ancient grimoire. But it holds the secrets of my family - and the secret history of demon summoning. I fear its answers as much as I need them. Who was the foremother of Demonica...and who am I? 

Melena Sanders faced her fair share of danger with insurgents and terrorists when she served in the U.S. Army, but now she is about to go up against a new threat. Her best friend, Aniya, has disappeared while on a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska - a supernatural haven. Most humans have no idea darker races lurk amongst them. Mel knows better. If she wants to get her friend back, she's going to have to go in alone - but not unarmed. Melena has a few special skills the Army didn't provide, but the odds are still against her.

After corporate attorney Hannah Barrett tries - and fails - to stop a kidnapping in Vegas, she can’t shake the haunting image of the terrified young girl she couldn’t save. She tells herself that a visit to her hometown in Scarlet Falls could be a welcome distraction. But soon, Hannah realizes the kidnappers have all the info they need to track her every move. And when chilling e-mails about the victim appear in her inbox, it’s frighteningly clear what happened in Vegas has followed her home.

Somebody is killing the women of Rocky Start, which probably seems fair since they’re all retired assassins. Well, not all. There’s Rose Malone who’s trying to start her life over with herself at the center this time, once she stops her daughter, Poppy, from taking their secondhand shop online since Rose is still hiding out from the cops (nineteen years and still not in jail). She’d also like to have her lover back from the Appalachian Trail, but first, there’s this attempted assassination she has to foil.

After the devastating loss of her husband in Iraq, Morgan Dane returns to Scarlet Falls, seeking the comfort of her hometown. Now, surrounded by family, she’s finally found peace and a promising career opportunity - until her babysitter is killed and her neighbor asks her to defend his son, Nick, who stands accused of the murder.

When a retired sheriff’s deputy is shot to death in his home, his troubled teenage stepson, Evan, becomes the prime suspect. Even more incriminating, the boy disappeared from the scene of the crime. Desperate to find her son, Evan’s mother begs PI Lance Kruger for help. She knows her son is innocent. Kruger and defense attorney Morgan Dane want to believe that too, but the evidence against the boy is damning. Just as the trail goes cold, another deputy vanishes.

What makes stepmothering so hard? And why are we, as people and a culture, so hard on stepmothers? How can we make it easier? Stepmonster is a truly unique and groundbreaking book for women with stepchildren, men with kids who repartner, adult stepchildren, and anyone who cares about them. It is a comprehensive, cross-cultural, research-based reconsideration of stepfamily dynamics - from the perspective of the stepmother.

Rose Malone’s landlord and employer, Ozzie Oswald, just died, and now she has no idea if she has a job or if she and her daughter, Poppy, have a place to live, and that’s on top of the arrest warrant that’s been out for her for nineteen years. Then a stranger shows up claiming to be Ozzie’s son and tries to throw her out, so she swings a reproduction of the Maltese Falcon at him, and just as she’s about to finish him off in a rage, somebody grabs him and throws him into the street.

Private investigator Lance Kruger was just a boy when his father vanished twenty-three years ago. Since then he's lived under the weight of that disappearance - until his father's car is finally dredged up from the bottom of Grey Lake. It should be a time for closure, except for the skeleton found in the trunk. A missing person case gone cold has become one of murder, and Lance and attorney Morgan Dane must face the deadly past that's risen to the surface.

Rose Malone is doing all right except that her daughter is struggling with PTSD, her lover is leaving her for the Appalachian Trail, and there’s a rumor that there’s a million bucks in the building she inherited which has inspired every money-hungry man in her weird little town to bring her cheap flowers and offer to search the place for her.

Broke, almost homeless, and recently fired. Those are my official reasons for answering a wanted ad for a skeevy-looking bartender gig. It went downhill the moment they asked me to do a trial shift instead of an interview - to see if I'd mesh with their "special" clientele. I think that part went great. Their customers were complete dickheads, and I was an asshole right back. That's the definition of fitting in, right? I expected to get thrown out on my ass. Instead, they...offered me the job?