Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

It was 1939, and a close-knit South African family found themselves in need of a new home. Peter van der Westhuizen, a husband and father of seven who spent most of his days on the road as a truck driver, did his best to provide for them. Then he found Opsaal. It’s an Afrikaans word that means "saddle up", but it was also a place: a farm, to be exact - a lonesome speck of nothing on the edge of a dirt track nowhere near a main road in the South African wilderness, somewhere in the Adelaide district.

Sheriff Peggy-Ann Muller suddenly found herself hip-deep in strange events - even stranger than usual...and skinheads, too - did she mention the skinheads? Something had stirred in the darkness on the remote, usually idyllic Terran colony of Deanna - something Nazi...and it only seemed to be getting worse! Nobody could say when it started or how, but something had changed. Without being noticed, hate had come to Deanna and made a nest there...and a terrible plot was about to hatch! The quirky residents of the third-rate colony faced a challenge unlike any they had seen before.

Returning from an evening in Mars City spent visiting relatives he didn’t know he had, Timaset Skooch arrived at the local space port to find his new acquisition stolen. A few minutes later, the crew of his slightly run-down loderunner "Celeste", returned from a nearby pub, blind drunk, puzzled, and now unemployed as well. Ever since he’d decided to quit being a PI and to try his hand at running cargo instead, things had just blown up in Skooch’s face one day at a time (Florpavian Flamebirds tended to do that occasionally).

Deanna was just another third-rate colony in the Terran Empire - and it was pretty much as boring a lump of rock as could be expected. That is, until Gary Beck, a.k.a. Beck the Badfeller, ran over an obsidian crow with his jeep on the highway to San Fedora and didn’t have a spare tire. Things pretty much went down hill from there.

Life's never simple for private inspector, Cybil Lewis. Her investigation for her latest client runs into a snag: dead bodies all over The District with his DNA. Is it a malfunction in the system or something far more sinister?

Action! Adventure! Time Travel! Each day shapes the days that follow...The Time Saving Agency liked having fresh agents on the job, who had a clear mind and steady hand. After all, time travel wasn’t for the faint of heart. The pay was good enough, but as Johnathan Scrooby decided long ago - even if he didn’t get paid for it, the thrill alone was payment enough! Then again, the TSA realized they couldn’t afford to have disgruntled employees with the power of God at their fingertips, so the pay was very, very good indeed!

John Brown was fiercely committed to the militant abolitionist cause, a crusade that culminated in Brown’s raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and his subsequent execution. Less well known is his devotion to his family, and they to him. Two of Brown’s sons were killed at Harpers Ferry, but the commitment of his wife and daughters often goes unacknowledged. As detailed by Laughlin-Schultz, Brown’s second wife and his daughters were in many ways the most ordinary of women. However, they also lived extraordinary lives.

After that disappointing and sudden end to what had been a promising career, Mei rewarded herself with a long, relaxing vacation in the outback to celebrate her gender reassignment and her new start in life. The first stop on her journey turned out to be a little backwater planet called Deanna....

Faith, an anomaly to the human race, must defend herself, her world, and her universe from certain doom after accidentally injuring a monster she runs into at her high school graduation. Her adventures lead her and a Watcher known as The Man, to the planet Quii, a city-planet outside her own universe that potentially holds a key to stopping the end of planet Earth. On Quii, secrets come out, and they learn truths about the mysterious Rymuth Elves, the planet's only inhabitants.

Kiya, a Portland hair stylist in her early 20s, becomes unexpectedly pregnant and determined to keep the baby as she struggles to recover from her brother's suicide. Peter, the baby’s father, wants to break away from Kiya and find love - somewhere else. Maddie, Peter’s mother, fights her own loneliness as she cares for Alex, incapacitated in a nursing home. Evie, Maddie’s mother, appears as a young woman in the 1950s, searching to heal herself both emotionally and physically.

Roble’s quest requires that he journey deep into the Woodnog Swamps to confront the god Lez’minx. Through trickery and temptation, Roble accepted Lez’minx’s gift of two magical rings, and soon learns of the deceitful enchantment, but not until after he finds the rings permanently attached to his fingers. Roble plans to meet the god and demand the spell binding him to Lez’minx be broken forever. But no one should ever order a god to do anything.

Though shadowed in whiskey-making and timber-pirating, The Indigo Scarf is a paean to devotion, testing the lengths a woman will go to save her man from a burning vengeance as he confronts the privations of a wild frontier while his former owner schemes his return. On a broader scale, the story is a testament to the perseverance and vision of pioneer women who devoted themselves to planting in their offspring the seeds of hope for liberty which may only be realized by descendants they would never know.

During the Battle of Hoffnung, Boldair discovers his father’s secret betrayal and is declared Nagdor’s new king by the Northern Dwarven Alliance. Boldair and three of his fellow Dwarves begin their journey to Nagdor for his coronation. Due to possible threats on his life in opposition to his taking the throne, he decides to take a longer route home by detouring through the autonomous, majestic city lost to legend and hidden deep beneath the Frosted Peaks.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692: Arabella Edwards, a mysterious beauty, is found hanging from the Salem gallows, yet the courts had nothing to do with her death. It is up to Hetty Henry, a wealthy widow past 25 years of age, to help with the inquiries. The first thing Hetty notices is an expensive lacy shift hidden beneath the plain clothes of the victim. The second thing she notices is what should be there but isn't: a hood to cover her hair, a travel cloak, a chain of household keys.... Hetty Harris and Increase Cotton, a local minister, are determined to solve her murder.

In this 13th Justice Security story, Lieutenant Michelle (Mickey) Rooney of the Chicago Police Department returns, along with Detective Sam Tanner and ex-cop Manny Salazar. This time, two of them have a price on their heads, along with Joey Justice of Justice Security. The bounty has been placed on them by insane Mexican drug cartel leader Esteban Fernandez. Fernandez has hired Lido Bouvier, a wild Cajun assassin, to eliminate all three.

Cali Barrows has had it with love. After wasting three years with the man she thought was the love of her life, she finds out that he’s been sleeping with his boss. Brokenhearted and bored, Cali’s life had become a string of TV dinners and tawdry romance novels. She wondered where her life was going until she follows a mysterious stranger through the red door and enters a world that few would ever know had existed.

Who poisoned Laurens De Noyes with a deadly dose of brandy so that the drunken Dutchman dropped dead on Boston Common? Widowed businesswoman Hetty Henry teams up with young Boston minister Increase "Creasy" Cotton to investigate colonial Albany for suspects. Could it be the wife who keeps her own name and her cool at news of her husband's death? Could it be his father-in-law who detested his philandering son-in-law?

Inspired by the classic Led Zeppelin song, and the 12th Justice Security story, Black Dog takes place very soon after the events of Hell's Bells. The story opens with Jessica Queen, Percival "King Louie" Washington, and Dexter Beck dealing with recurring nightmares. The dreams are so bad that all three consult with Dr. Caleb Mitchell, the Justice Security staff psychiatrist.

Matt Green’s successful capitalist lifestyle is shattered when a trusted property management company mismanages his portfolio, leaving him with vacant rental properties, civil litigation, mounting debts, and the threat of criminal charges for harassment. He meets an enigmatic and alluring woman Angelique Augusto on an internet dating site. After two passionate weeks, Angelique begins to show a terrifying side, demanding to know Matt’s whereabouts every hour of every day.

It’s November in Chicago. Still healing from an encounter with the Corn Flakes Killer, Lieutenant Michelle “Mickey” Rooney and her partner, Sam Tanner, head out into the snowy night to investigate four seemingly unrelated drug killings. They appear to be run-of-the-mill drug deals gone bad...until witnesses at one of the crime scenes report that they saw the shooting. And they have overheard the name of the killer: Esteban Fernandez.