Showing results by narrator "Will Watt" in All Categories

Laid-off teacher Olivia Crawford feels lost without the everyday, personal interactions with her students. Attracted by the salary and the potential for a career change, she considers an offer to become a beta player for a new Jane Austen virtual world within the VR universe of Allworld Online. Swallowing her fear, she accepts the position…and the invasive neural implant that will give her access to the virtual realm.

It starts with an article from Jason's crank file. Some campers have discovered an unconscious "space alien" in the wilds of Colorado. Every mention of the story quickly vanishes from the internet - but not before Alastair Stone gets a look at the single, blurry photo. The "space alien" looks tantalizingly familiar....

Now that the litRPG world of the Citadel has chewed Adam up and spat him out, he’s right back at his original Save Point. Are things better? Maybe. Maybe not. For one thing, he's still got brain cancer. For another, he’s in trouble for breaking the rules last time. As punishment, he’ll have to mentor the Colony - an outnumbered race of misfit mushrooms on the losing side of a battle for their home planet.

It was meant to be a simple few days away: Verity heading off for a much-needed girls’ weekend in New York City. But then comes her desperate call to Alastair Stone: A terrifying disaster has occurred, killing dozens of people - including a dear friend. When Stone joins her to investigate, they quickly discover that magic is behind the catastrophe. Even worse, it’s magic that isn’t even supposed to exist. As a long-simmering disagreement explodes into a rift between Stone and a grief-stricken Verity, Stone learns that things are even worse than he feared.

Alastair Stone needs a vacation. He’s literally stepping through the portal to his home in England, when an old friend calls with a horrific tale of a grisly multiple murders committed by teenagers just back from a school camping trip. It doesn’t take long to convince Stone that the supernatural is involved. Goodbye peaceful vacation, hello magical investigation.

For Alastair Stone, problems rarely come one at a time. He’s busy helping an old friend with a case of blackmail, when he’s contacted about a mysterious wave of minor crimes in the Oakland area - one that might involve magic. He asks Verity to look into it. When tragedy strikes, and the petty crime spree leads to a friend's disastrous near-death, Stone hurries home to investigate the situation himself. What he finds suggests terrifying new connections to a problem he thought he’d already dealt with.

Newly-graduated Jake has a money problem, a job problem, and a girlfriend problem too. But his best friend has the perfect plan to fix all three. It draws upon all they’ve learnt in their Economics degree: International trade. Supply and Demand. The only potential issue? What they're trading isn't exactly legal. Which is why Jake's about to be arrested with enough dope to put him in prison for the next twenty years. But by now, this is only his second biggest worry. Can they somehow escape? How exactly did they get there? And what’s really on Jake’s mind..?

Firefighter Alex Oliver lost everything that mattered. In the blink of an eye, the life he'd built burned to the ground. Now, he's starting over. Returning home to Golden Beach, he's determined to pick up the pieces and put himself back together. But love isn't an option. He had that once upon a time, and all he got was a broken heart.

Miss Claire Ashford knows exactly what she wants out of life - to marry for love. When she finds herself alone in the woods with none other than notorious rake Ian Michael Caldwell, Viscount Knightly, her chances of a proper match are ruined. He is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of her reputation, but she is determined not to marry anyone out of obligation.

Things were looking up for Graham Peterson in both his career and his love life at the end of the last book, The Diary of a Hapless Father: Months 0-3, but things were never going to stay sweet in Graham's garden for long. With his proposal to Alison refused and at risk of losing his new job before he even starts, 2013 isn't off to a good start at all. One of the only things keeping poor old Graham going is knowing that the first three terrifying months of his son Charlie's life are behind him.

Vienna. A city of history and culture, where Mozart, Freud, and Beethoven once walked the streets. For American university student Jake Meyer, it is a chance to recover from a family tragedy he left behind. Surrounded by the baroque palaces and charming squares of the city, he hopes to pull his life back together.

When wizard Addison Rhydderch goes out on a New Year's Eve date, he doesn't expect to end the night saving Manhattan from the undead. Afterward, he's tasked with the duties of Regent - protector of the fragile balance between the mundane and supernatural realms. The job is easier said than done, even with the aid of Saraia, a half-dryad who's as sultry as she is compassionate and strong.

Juan Narvaez is a young boy living in the dying town of Alborde. Once famous for its great olive trees, Alborde has lost its prosperity and population as the people who cultivate the land move from place to place across the country as migrant workers to supplement their meager incomes. The children of the migrant workers, Juan's young friends, are forced to go with their parents, losing out on the opportunity for proper education and thus a future different from their parents. Juan realizes things have to change.

Not only is Graham Peterson unlucky in his choice of careers, he's also been terrible with women throughout his adult life. That changes when he meets Alison on a work night out. Unfortunately for Graham, however, things change so drastically that within a month of dating Alison, he gets the news that he's about to become a father for the first time.

I'm not a philosophical kind of bloke, but I know something about luck. A childhood on the wrong side of advantage will teach you that. It's all a matter of chance. It's both your circumstances and the chances you take. So I've always been a gambler and a ladies man - they love me and I love them. Now I've found one like no other - an American, Allison Wright. When I met her, the fates were on my side, but too soon I learned the odds were against me.

With all the angst and fear of a new father, Graham needs to pull his socks up if he's going to become the father he always dreamed he would be. With all the pitfalls and worries of a new father charted, this book is for all those who have been through early parenthood, or just want to know how a man deals with all those things internally.

Fourteen year-old Daniel Harwick's powerless days bullied at Ekhart Academy are about to end. Traumatically catapulted into a beautiful but terrifying world within, Daniel finds himself on the run from Pirates, Dragons, Shapeshifters, Spider-Elves, Griffins, Krakens, Cyborgs and even "Death" himself. Reluctantly, Daniel joins with a strange band of ragtag warriors questing for the legendary Wielder who alone can defeat the spread of the Necrom Void across the Living Land.

Hope Close: a leafy, tranquil backwater in the heart of the English countryside. But when Andy Meyer moves in, it soon becomes clear that picture-perfect homes can hide less-than-perfect lives. Fresh from rehab and with no interest in meeting his neighbours, Andy erects forbidding gates to keep the ghosts of his past - and any prying eyes - at bay. Next door, in the grandest house, Layla is unhappily married to a much older man and desperately misses her young son, who has been banished to boarding school.

Late in the twenty-first century, drought and wildfires prompt an exodus from southern Europe. When twelve-year-old Caleb is separated from his mother during their trek north, he soon falls prey to traffickers. Enslaved in an enclave outside Manchester, the resourceful and determined Caleb never loses hope of bettering himself. After Caleb is befriended by a fellow victim of trafficking, another road opens. Hiding in the woodlands by day, guided by the stars at night, he begins a new journey - to escape to a better life, to meet someone he can trust, and to find his family.

“The Gimmicks is a gorgeous epic that astounds with its scope and beauty. With empathy and humor, McCormick unravels the ties between brotherhood and betrayal, love and abandonment, and the fictions we create to live with the pain of the past. This novel will blow you away.”—Brit Bennett...