Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

Stuart Flane, Captain of the starship Mercury, and lately the butt-end of innumerable jokes doing the rounds at Space Fleet H.Q., is called upon once more—kicking and screaming—to investigate all manner of preternatural fuckery.

Charting the frontier of unknown space was a guaranteed humdrum, routine mission—which in the case of the starship Mercury, may or may not have been a subtle way to punish Captain Stuart Flane for recently losing 90 percent of his crew without a satisfactory explanation. It was hard to tell sometimes, when it came to discerning Admiral Tawney's motives. The Old Man was like that—but at least he seemed to have a sense of humor.

Priceless artifacts looted from Chicago museums with no evidence left behind except a unique calling card that Caroline Collins recognizes. Tupper Jones fears a confrontation with his partner—can he convince her to take the string of robberies seriously, or will the FBI force him to choose between his lucrative contract and his irreverent partner?

The last thing Captain Stuart Flane expected while working to solve the enigma of the Kilgary was a day-long running battle with the undead! Their troubles didn’t end there though, because the Mercury, their only ride home, was also in trouble!

Troubled times had come to the small Terran Colony planet of Deanna–and having amusing names for its sun (Ramalama) and two moons (Ding and Dong) hadn't made this quaint little world immune to bad things…. After the shock assassination of a visiting member of the imperial family, and with the three largest cities on Deanna overrun by fascist troops, the local government goes into hiding.

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.

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.

The city of Kairouan in Tunisia, 1020. Hela has powers too strong for a child - both to feel the pain of those around her and to heal them. But when she is given a mysterious cup by a slave woman, its powers overtake her life, forcing her into a vow she cannot hope to keep. Trapped by her vow, Hela loses one chance after another to love and be loved. Meanwhile, in her household, a child is growing into a woman who will become famous throughout the Muslim world.

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.

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.

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?

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.