Showing results by narrator "Neil Hellegers" in All Categories

New Babylon is the capital of the mighty Second Empire. Dirigibles drift over the city, steam trains race down its tracks, and the factory chimneys never stop billowing smoke, even for a moment. The hegemony of science is unquestioned, and yet magic hasn't disappeared from the world. It remains dissolved in the blood of those who are called Illustrious. Hardline reductionists find that hard to accept, but it is not in their power to change the longstanding status quo.

As the barriers between worlds start to crumble, a superhero must battle his greatest enemy yet… After a summer spent protecting the vulnerable from natural disasters, Ted Finley couldn’t be happier to return home for his senior year of high school. While he dreams of fighting back-to-back with his protector, Erica LaPlante, a new and powerful enemy threatens to end their mission for good… As if that weren’t enough, Ted and the gang must face down a cunning presidential candidate, a disgruntled gatekeeper between realms, and two familiar villains if they want to keep a deadly army at bay. If they fail, the people they know and love will find themselves on a planet-wide battlefield… The Candidate is the third novel in The Viral Superhero Series, a saga of heroes, villains, and high school. If you like action-packed fight scenes, witty banter, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then you’ll love Bryan Cohen & Casey Lane’s epic third installment.

Newly-empowered superhero Ted Finley wishes he could spend all his time fighting crime. But between recruitment offers from the federal government and the growing Go Home Alien movement, Ted’s being pulled in a million directions at once. Fortunately for him, he’s got a protector and dream girl in the form of Erica LaPlante. If only she wasn’t keeping secrets from him.

Ted Finley is your average suburban nerd, but when a group of thugs threaten to kill innocent people, something incredible happens. After he's gifted with superhuman abilities during a seemingly random brunch, Ted quickly transforms from a nobody into a viral video sensation.

In this world, steam and electricity are the favored sources of power. Science has taken the place of religion, while magic is unknown by all but peculiar outcasts. But the border between reality and the underworld here is extremely thin. Thankfully, the adepts of scientific knowledge have found success holding back the onslaught of infernal creatures. Electricity is stronger than magic, but even it is not all-powerful. A former detective constable for the New Babylon Criminal Investigative Police, Leopold Orso is illustrious.

Saddled with both a new pupil and a bar to run, Dorian has to pick his battles carefully if he is to find his soul. When the Dark Choir bargains with Dorian in exchange for his loyalty, the power they offer may be too valuable to refuse...for a new menace threatens the hermetic order in America. Members of the Presidium are being outed in the press, and the formidable cabal's response is swift and brutal. But Dorian has no time to hide from the Presidium's fury, as the new Deputy Mayor taps him to investigate a string of occult crimes.

A regular life isn't in the cards for Dorian Lake, but with his charm-crafting business invigorated and the prospect of a serious relationship within his grasp, life is closer to normal than Dorian could ever expect. In the heat of the Baltimore mayoral campaign, Dorian has managed to balance his arrangements with Deputy Mayor Julian Bright with his search to find his lost soul. Dorian soon learns of a Netherworker, the head of a dangerous West Coast cabal, who might be able to find and return his soul.

Once, this world was dominated by the fallen, but humanity cast off their tyrannical rule and created a mighty empire with colonies spread out across the globe. The power of the metropolis is stronger than ever before, but its past is dark and its future cloudy. Old secrets are capable of destroying in one moment what took years to create. After all, nothing can save it from treason, not armadas of battleships nor bomb-laden dirigibles.

In this world, science took the place of magic. Meanwhile, the transition from the era of steam to the epoch of Sublime Electricity is already underway. But magic hasn't simply disappeared without a trace. It still exists, concealed in the blood of the illustrious. Detective constable Leopold Orso of the metropolitan police counts himself among their number. He was bestowed a talent that allows him to bring others' fears to life. Leopold didn't go looking for trouble.

When he was young, Jimmy met a boy in a playground. As the years passed, Jimmy grew older...but the boy did not. Set in a haunted playground, The Red Boy explores the boundaries between parents and children, women and men, and the living and the dead.

Black magic gets a bad rap. Trust me. When people see me, they don't see Cisco Suarez, they see a rogue. A shadow charmer. A black magic outlaw. Maybe they're right. Maybe everything I touch withers and dies. But that doesn't give the SWAT team a right to come in with guns blazing.

For many years, the protagonist and his uncle, Dr. Elihu Whipple, have nurtured a dark fascination with an ancient, abandoned house on Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. Whipple has made extensive records tracking the mysterious yet apparently coincidental sickness, madness, and death of many who have lived in the house over its 150-year existence.

Taken together, the works of H. P. Lovecraft create a terrific world of elder gods, ancient aliens, and cosmic horror. This new original collection of Lovecraft's earliest stories lays the foundation for that world and prefigures many of his later infamous tales.

Princess Alaris found her home in the middle realm, after the actions of her father caused her to flee Volonia. But it was time for her to come home. So they sent him - the Warrior of Volonia.

What happens when a bunch of 30-year-old degenerates survive an apocalyptic zombie outbreak? They get into even more trouble in the aftermath. Duh. That's right, Charlie Campbell and several of his loser friends have escaped a nightmare Chicago fraught with zombies and an occupying army, only to find the wild-lands beyond aren't any safer.

Even in the 21st century, the popular image of a scientist is a reclusive genius in a lab coat, mixing formulas or working out equations inaccessible to all but the initiated few. The idea that scientists are somehow smarter than the rest of us is a common yet dangerous misconception, getting us off the hook for not knowing or caring how the world works.

The supposed collapse of Roman civilization is still lamented more than 1,500 years later - and intertwined with this idea is the notion that a fledgling religion, Christianity, went from a persecuted fringe movement to an irresistible force that toppled the empire. The intolerant zeal of Christians, wrote Edward Gibbon, swept Rome's old gods away, and with them the structures that sustained Roman society. Not so, argues Douglas Boin.

Vidu, a used-car dealer and d-bag extraordinaire, had been aimlessly wandering the streets of Chicago with only one thing on his mind… and that was before he got turned into a zombie. Just when you thought you had seen the last of him, now you can find out what happened to Vidu after he left his friends behind during the pandemonium of Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse… One Beer at a Time. Humor, action, zombies, hangovers, gratuitous insults, and more Vidu!

Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, is raised from the dead by the hand of a child. His kingdom stolen by the evil dragon, Gorond, Chaelus's only hope to reclaim his throne rests with the child knight who saved him, the heretical order to which the child belongs, and the truth about Chaelus which they alone protect.

In 1929, Raymond Geist went to Berlin as a consul, and he handled visas for emigrants to the US. Geist expedited the exit of Albert Einstein just before Hitler came to power. Once the Nazis began to oppress Jews and others, Geist's role became vitally important. It was Geist who extricated Sigmund Freud from Vienna and Geist who understood the scale and urgency of the humanitarian crisis. Even while hiding his homosexual relationship with a German, Geist fearlessly challenged the Nazi police state whenever it abused Americans in Germany or threatened US interests.