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

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 has some rare free time, so he agrees to help Jason with a case of a missing college student with a wealthy father who's desperate to bring her home safely. As often happens when Stone is involved, though, the girl's disappearance soon proves to be only the tip of a much larger and more dangerous iceberg, ultimately leading them to a malevolent megachurch with a lot more than salvation on its agenda.

The portals are closed. The Evil have lost their pathway between their home and ours. No longer does humanity need to worry about extradimensional bodysnatchers with a thirst for pain and terror pouring through to wreak destruction on Earth. So that means Stone, Jason, and Verity can rest for a while, right? Yeah, maybe not. The problem is, while there might not be any new Evil coming through, a whole lot of very powerful, very angry Evil are still stuck on our side.

Alastair Stone has just had a bombshell dropped on him about Aldwyn’s latest plans—but that particular problem will have to take a back seat to a more pressing one. Verity has disappeared. She never returned home following a weekend visit with her half-siblings in central California, and no one has any idea where she is.

When Trevor Harrison founded New Argana, he envisioned it as a place magical and nonmagical people could call home without fear of the powerful and sadistic Talented. An arcane shield protected them from the deadly magic of the Calanarian Wastes and allowed them to live in peace.

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.

Still coming to terms with recent events, Alastair Stone is shocked when someone from his past—someone he still feels guilty he couldn’t save—resurfaces in his life with a desperate claim that he’s the only one who can help her. She may be right. He’d thought the Evil—extra-dimensional beings with a taste for human fear, misery, and rage—had settled down. But now it appears they’ve got a new plan—and a new leader.

Alastair Stone knew it was only a matter of time. The demon called The Unspeakable is safely locked away, but nearly a dozen more of its kind remain behind, gathering strength like malevolent, ticking time bombs.

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.

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.

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.

Alastair Stone is intrigued when he’s asked to look into a bizarre series of murders united by intricate and unsettling symbols carved into the victims’ bodies. As the deaths pile up and the killer seems able both to travel and commit his crimes without a trace, Stone learns the murders aren’t only linked—they’re parts of a malevolent, massively powerful ritual with an ancient demonic artifact at its root.

Alastair Stone has already paid off two of the three favors he owes his ancestor Aldwyn. He expects the third to be big, but he has no idea how big. Aldwyn reveals he has another scion—a man the dragon has sensed, but never been able to locate.

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.

Alastair Stone has successfully finished the first of the three tasks he’s oathbound to complete for his powerful dragon ancestor. To his shock and surprise, the second turns out to be something he already wants to do: kill an old enemy who shouldn’t even be alive. Except Stone has no idea how to find his target, and the deadline he’s been given makes success by no means certain. Complicating matters, a new ally has a consulting job for him: figure out why somebody in the Changeling community is kidnapping young and seemingly unconnected children all over California.

A whole new world. When Alastair Stone chooses to remain in captivity to save his son, he has no idea how much his life is about to change. While he does manage to break free from his bizarre prison, his newfound freedom doesn’t come without a price. Everything around him is different - the world, his friends, what he thinks he knows about what he left behind. And despite all the power he commands, he can’t do a thing to fix any of it. Worse, he’s still bound by an oath he made to his captor - and that contract is now coming due.

The Sixth World doesn’t give people much time to grow up. Whoever you are, wherever you live, there’s going to come a time when the world is going to throw you some serious curveballs. And, if all you can do is bitch and moan about how you’re not ready for what’s coming your way, you’re not going to last long. Get strong, grow up, figure out how to survive. One of those tests is about to hit Lena. She doesn’t have much to help her, except for some new powers she does not understand. Using them, and some unexpected allies, is the only way she will live out the day.

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.

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.