Showing results by narrator "Nick Podehl" in All Categories

Eighteen-year-old Benjamin Nefer seems to have it all: great looks, incredible football skills, and smooth moves that have won - and broken - the hearts of countless girls at his high school. But his hellish home life has left him feeling empty inside, unable to experience real feelings. He thinks he's fine being this way forever... until he meets a beautiful and witty 17-year-old girl named Charlotte "Charlie" Austin.

It was a bitterly cold day when Arthur T. Owens grabbed a brick and hurled it at the trash picker. Arthur had his reasons, and the brick hit the Junk Man in the arm, not the head. But none of that matters to the judge - he is ready to send Arthur to juvie for the foreseeable future. Amazingly, it's the Junk Man himself who offers an alternative: 120 hours of community service...working for him.

For the past seven years, Kellan Caufield Thorne has been caught up in a celestial power play of epic proportions. The final act began in an Atlanta alley by forever removing the scales from Kellan’s eyes to reveal a world of Creation, Destruction, gods, angels, demons, and Mantles. Now the last scene begins to unfold as God’s unchecked hand on the world must traverse a perilous and narrow path if he has any hope of saving our universe from Perditor, the very incarnation of destruction.

Kellan Thorne labors beneath the burden of Chaos he accepted in order to both save Shannon and destroy the previous Sentinel of Chaos. Now he is trapped in the brutal life of a slave and gladiator within Claudius’ Rome. Meanwhile, in 2020, Shannon McLeod Thorne struggles with both the loss of her husband and the responsibilities of being Creation’s new Sentinel of Order. However, like many times before, strange events conspire to cast light in dark places.

Merlin’s final words haunt the Sentinel’s dreams. Kellan’s eidetic memory replays them with perfect clarity each night since he breached the guff and withdrew three human souls. Now, more than a year later, both he and his Soulborn wife are visited by an entity who channeled Universal power to enter our world from another. This Emissary of Destruction provides the young Sentinel with a gift of unimaginable power and a dire warning. This combination sets Kellan on a journey which takes him to the land of Fae. There he must gain support from the Fairy King and Queen.

Kiernan Dunne abandoned his family ties to help Kate fight the Cyrists, and he's never regretted that for one moment. But he doesn't understand why Kate can't remember that night in 1893 Chicago, when she turned back to face the killer chasing them through the smoky corridors of the World's Fair Hotel. Kate placed the CHRONOS key around his neck and made his eight-year-old self promise to wear it always, and that's a promise Kiernan has never broken.

Danny Marin thinks the comic-book super-hero Shrinkman is the coolest! Shrinkman can shrink to the size of a bug and go places most ordinary people can’t. But when Danny suddenly starts to shrink, he finds that being small isn’t really so super. In fact, it’s terrifying. First, he’s nearly torn to pieces by his own dog. Then he’s in a fight to the death with a grasshopper! Danny had better find a way to get BIG again - or he will be a little bit gone!

Infinite Worlds is the most popular VRMMORPG on the market. Its maps are so vast, developer Hard Rock Data utilizes a network of highly advanced artificial intelligences to control it. But it’s not without problems. That’s why Game Masters like Jeff Driscoll have jobs. The downside? He’s not allowed to play the game. Something about conflicts of interest and favoritism. His very boring and tedious job is to help players deal with the occasional bug that slips through the cracks and ensure they enjoy their time playing enough to give a five-star rating.

As assistant buyer for the world's second-largest Christmas store, Kelsey Parker feels like a holiday harlot. She's contractually obligated to promote the yuletide season. All. Year. Long. And it's taking a toll on her spirit. But when her clueless, self-absorbed boyfriend goes on their long-anticipated romantic vacation - without her! - Kelsey is beyond disappointed to find herself tromping through the Bell Harbor snow instead of lounging on a tropical beach.

Chloe has one plan for the future, and one plan only: the road. She's made a promise to herself: don't let anyone in, and don't let anyone love her. She's learned the hard way what happens if she breaks her rules. So she's focused on being invisible and waiting until she can set out on the road--her dream of freedom, at least for a little while.

Two girls and three boys, all with strikingly different looks and talents, meet at the Atwood school as young children. Together, they become an inseparable group - known to outsiders as "The Big Five" - and lean on one another through all the bumps and bends of childhood and adolescence. But when the tight-knit group graduates and scatters to different colleges, their lives diverge dramatically, and some of the friends are lost forever....

A Secret Service operative and dedicated survivalist, Special Agent Del Roosevelt had a plan for every world-ending scenario and regularly trained for them all. He was even ready for a date with the hottest woman in his office next Friday. At least he hoped so. But all that training, all those rations, all that prepping? Useless for the apocalypse that actually played out. Del wakes up half-buried in a giant trash pile, missing his thumbs. And, um, covered in red fur. He's stuck in a world of fuzzy monsters, senseless violence, and cult-like crusaders.

Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender--a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid--after all, they're smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he's yearned for within reach...

Bill is a dedicated young lawyer working at his family’s prestigious New York firm, who leaves everything he trained for to follow his dream and become a minister in rural Wyoming. Jenny, his wife, is a stylist whose heart and soul are invested in fashion. She leaves the milieu and life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever. Fast forward 38 years. Robert is a hardworking independent book publisher in Manhattan, who has given up all personal life to build his struggling business. He is looking for one big hit novel to publish. Lillibet is a young Amish woman....

Being a teenager is difficult even under idyllic circumstances. But when bad things happen, the challenges of being a teenager can be overwhelming, leading to self-destructive behavior, eating disorders, substance abuse, and other challenges. In addition, many teens are faced with illness, car accidents, loss of loved ones, divorces, or other upheavals. This audiobook includes 101 of our best stories about the toughest teenage times - and how to overcome them.

In the near future, to escape the crush and clutter of a packed and polluted Earth, the world’s elite flock to Atopia, an enormous corporate-owned artificial island in the Pacific Ocean. It is there that Dr. Patricia Killiam rushes to perfect the ultimate in virtual reality: a program to save the ravaged Earth from mankind’s insatiable appetite for natural resources.

Master grifter Billy Cunningham has built a lucrative career conning a long list of Las Vegas casinos. In fact, he's never walked into one he couldn't rip off. Now he's scheming a "super con" with a gang of high-profile cheats - a one-time-only scam that could rake in a cool multi-million-dollar payday.

Coop is cooking up another sure-misfire scheme (big surprise), and this time the comedy plays out from Sean’s point of view. What’s the new master plan? Making a cheapo horror movie guaranteed to make Coop, Sean, and Matt filthy rich! It’s a terrible idea, and Sean knows it. But he actually is desperate for cash - and for a way to wipe that big fat L off his girlfriend-less forehead. But when he agrees to write a script about the attack of zombie-vampire humanzees, he has no idea just how powerful a chick magnet this movie will be. Suddenly Sean is juggling not one but three interested ladies.

The next prophesied Calamity was one of Civil War. Even without the presence of seditious groups such as the Order of Extinction and the Followers of Calamities undermining the unity of the world, the many disparate Kingdoms were barely cooperative at best. Meanwhile, Sungchul becomes increasingly exposed to the legends of the ancient dungeons hidden away by the Lesser Gods, which held the key to immortality. With the many factions hell-bent on power, it seems all but inevitable that these long-forgotten Dungeons of the Gods return to the forefront of the world.

With more than 10 stories from exciting new voices and a few veterans of the universe, the second anthology highlights the lives and struggles of humanity's best and worst years after system advent.