Showing results by author "R L King" in All Categories

Alastair Stone knew it would take a big sacrifice to end the Evil's hold over our world. He was ready to make that sacrifice - but he expected it to be his life. Never in his worst nightmares did he think it would be his magic. Despairing and grief-stricken at the loss of the abilities that defined his existence, he's on the fast track to self-destruction when a dear friend convinces him to take a desperate last chance. He heads to Las Vegas to find the only man who might be able to help him, but instead finds some old allies in dire need of his own help with a deadly threat.

It's been less than a month since Alastair Stone, Jason Thayer, and Jason's sister Verity discovered a monstrous conspiracy to take over our world one mind at a time. The battle in San Francisco struck a major blow - but it didn't eliminate the threat. Not even close.

Alastair Stone figures using tracking magic to help Jason Thayer and his new wife Amber find a missing child will be a good diversion. At least it will take his mind off a summer that, without Verity around, is shaping up to be a lot less eventful than he’d hoped. But when the boy’s kidnapper turns out to be a mage — one who’s using the public portal network to steal children for some mysterious purpose of his own — Stone, Jason, and Amber are thrown into a terrifying web of mystery, mad science, and deadly peril.

When his friend Jason Thayer disappears after heading to his home town to attend a wedding, the only clue Alastair Stone has to his whereabouts is a cryptic phone message about "something weird" Jason saw shortly before he vanished. Stone travels to the picturesque tourist town where Jason was last seen and is soon caught up in a horrific web of murder, malevolent magic, and a mysterious and ancient force that's resurfaced even more powerful than ever after a long dormancy.

Sometimes the biggest events begin with the smallest incidents. This time, it’s another one of Jason’s strange cases: a missing man a tracking spell can’t trace. It isn’t long before the man turns up. Except he’s…different. And he’s not the only one. A new magical affliction is creeping through the world, permanently altering people’s auras and changing their astral forms. As Alastair Stone and his friends struggle to understand it and trace its source, he soon finds he’s got another, far more personal, issue to deal with.

Kira Talon has a secret. Raised since childhood among the nonmagical “Dim” when her expected magical birthright didn’t materialize, she barely remembers her early time in the opulent floating city high above the war-torn sprawl below. Years later, she’s made a life for herself among the nonmagical, discovering an affinity with machines, making good friends, and venturing carefully into the dangerous, clandestine resistance against the magical overlords.

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times best-selling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: Ask some of the world's greatest writers-regardless of genre - to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The results are surprising and joyous.

Things are looking up for Alastair Stone. He's just moved into his new house, Jason's opening his investigation agency, and best of all, the university has finally hired a new professor for the occult studies department. Carefree days never last long for Stone, though. The smart, sexy new professor turns out to have secrets - dangerous secrets. When he agrees to help her track down a powerful, magical artifact, Stone is drawn into a deadly conspiracy involving a mysterious and reclusive clan, alchemical mayhem, and crimes even more horrific than either of them suspected.

Alastair Stone, determined to harness enigmatic mage Trevor Harrison’s potent power source, takes a desperate chance - he travels to the dimension where it originates, hoping to convince Harrison to teach him its secrets. He should have expected things wouldn’t go as planned. Stranded without his power in an exotic, unfamiliar world rich in magic and ruled by tyrannical practitioners, Stone knows his only chance of getting his magic back is to find Harrison - a man who has good reasons for not wanting to be found.

Alastair Stone needs a break. He’d gladly trade a big chunk of his newly-acquired fortune for a few uninterrupted weeks of rest, but that’s not going to happen. On top of dealing with his new magical status and a relationship heading in unexpected directions, he soon learns the bombshell revelations about his family aren’t even close to over yet. As if all that weren’t enough, an ancient and malevolent set of magical game pieces has resurfaced, leaving a trail of murder and mayhem in its wake.

Alastair Stone has barely begun to recover from the death of a friend when he’s rocked by yet another. It looks like natural causes, but a grief-stricken Stone isn’t convinced. As England’s magical community comes together to mourn the shocking loss, Verity meets a group of powerful female practitioners who offer to teach her potent new magical skills. Meanwhile, Stone’s shocks have only begun as new revelations come to light.

After 15-year-old Alastair Stone is caught performing magic at his prestigious boarding school, he can hardly believe his good fortune; not only isn't he punished, but his father arranges a trial apprenticeship - three years early - with one of the most powerful mages in all of Britain. He'll have a month to prove himself, or he'll be packed back off to school. But when Alastair arrives at his new master's vast, remote country house, he soon finds that his teacher's draconian style and exacting standards aren't the only challenges he'll have to face to pass his trial.

Alastair Stone and fellow professor Edwina Mortenson go together like punk rock and patchouli. So when an unwilling Stone is "volunteered" to participate in a paranormal TV reality show with her, neither of them is thrilled about it - even if the ghost town they’ll be filming in is supposedly the site of a powerful curse. As if dealing with Mortenson, the show’s overbearing producer, and its prima-donna star weren’t bad enough, Stone soon uncovers evidence that the town’s curse is very real - and it’s resurfacing again, more deadly than ever.

Alastair Stone isn't proud of the dark deeds of his family's past, but he thought they were just that: past. But when a routine renovation of his ancestral home releases a horde of angry spirits bent on vengeance against anyone of his blood, he soon learns that his family's horrific acts were even worse than he ever could have imagined. Driven from his home, Stone must rally his most trusted friends and allies to discover the truth and find a way to exorcise the relentless spirits.

When Alastair Stone investigates a tale of odd events at an abandoned Midwestern paper mill, he figures it's just another hoax. After all, he's seen hundreds of them in his career. He soon discovers this one isn't a hoax, though - and neither is the backwoods hunter who's suddenly developed healing abilities in Pennsylvania...Stone knows he has to get to the bottom of this supernatural mystery - no matter how many enemies he has to make in the process. And when he finally does learn the truth, it comes with the horrifying revelation that he might already have made a terrible mistake.

A father's sins. A son's wrath. An enemy's revenge. When a shadowy, sinister organization begins killing apprentices, Alastair Stone is determined to track down the people pulling its strings. But Stone’s life quickly spirals into chaos when a young man contacts him - claiming to be his son.

When mage Alastair Stone’s fiancée dumps him for loving magic too much and her not enough, he never sees it coming. Craving a change, Stone picks a big one: moving halfway around the world to teach occult studies at Stanford. He expects to pick up where he left off, resuming a quiet life of study and putting the past behind him. But when a gang of cannibalistic serial killers targets the area, he’s certain their origin is supernatural. Drawn into the case after stopping a murder, he soon encounters a bizarre secret society.

When Kolinsky asks Alastair Stone to investigate a curious anomaly near a familiar location, Stone is ready to find a connection between the two. What he's not ready to find is an old friend he thought was dead for eleven years. A friend who's got more than one shocking bombshell to drop on him - including an unexpected companion - before she goes on the run and disappears.

Alastair Stone had long thought the ability to interfere with arcane energy to be the holy grail of magical study. Until a piece of an item capable of doing just that turns up in a collection of mundane occult art, and someone nearly kills one of his colleagues while trying to steal it.

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....