Showing results by narrator "Charlie David" in All Categories

Shaw and North are together. Finally. After eight years of knowing each other and loving each other and slipping past each other, they’ve finally told each other how they feel. Borealis Investigations is growing, and they have a major prospective client on the line. Everything is finally moving the way it should. Until the night Shaw receives a phone call telling him that Detective Jadon Reck, his former boyfriend, has been attacked.

My worst nightmare and your greatest fear became a reality: You don’t remember me. You don’t remember the accident or the weeks afterward. You don’t remember my bed as your safe place, or when, against all odds, you fell for me. You remember me only as the casual acquaintance you saw as you grabbed your daily coffee. Three sugars, two creamers. Perhaps an acquaintance is all I’ll ever be to you now. Maybe I can shoulder the heartbreak and the loss of you, if it means you’ll be happy. Unless...you remember me when.

My academic career has been both successful and orderly so far, which was pleasantly predictable given that I mapped out a plan for it while still in middle school and have followed that plan ever since. Well, except for this year, my last one before graduation from Preston College. I really have no explanation for why I enrolled in Professor Grayson’s Mythology of Mating Rituals class.

Shaw Aldrich and his best friend, boyfriend, and partner, North McKinney, are doing great, thanks. The aftermath of their search for the Slasher has finally settled down. Their private investigation agency is thriving. And after years of missed opportunities, they’re finally together. Sure, work might be taking up every spare minute, and their time together as a couple might have evaporated - but that’s normal, right?

Reclusive comic book artist Trip Spector spends his life doodling super-square, straitlaced superheroes, hiding from his fans, and crushing on his unattainable boss until he meets the dork of his dreams. Silas Goolsby is a rowdy FX makeup creator with a loveless love life and a secret streak of geek who yearns for unlikely rescues and a truly creative partnership. Against their better judgment, they fall victim to chemistry, and what starts as infatuation quickly grows tender and terrifying.

When Vale Moonwing returns to Darkwood Forest, he discovers that her old friend, the wizard Yaztromo, has vanished...himself?

Neil Dalton's foundation is already cracking. Grief, guilt, and PTSD have ruled his life since a terrible crime tore his world apart last year, and he's dreading a holiday visit with the family he simultaneously needs and resents. Then someone from his past shows up and rattles that shaky foundation right out from under him.

“These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest editor Hugh Howey in his introduction. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 promises a treasure trove of audacious characters, daring worldbuilding, and twisted realties. A sibling duo of supernatural hitmen. A traveling spellbreaker and his trusty alligator mount. Superheroes registering for work. Sentient spaceships with an AI-human interface grow up together with their human pilots.

I wasn’t always a goddess, you see. My only real power was my beauty – you’ll have heard. It’s legendary. But that was never going to be enough for me. It took a web of lies to convince the gods of Olympus I was one of them. But I did. I was that good. Zeus gave me a title and riches and loved me. And all he wanted in return was for me to love him back. But of course, Zeus was a tyrant. (Not entirely surprising when you’re ninety per cent insecurities and ten per cent raw power.) I couldn’t live at someone’s mercy. Really, I had no choice. I had to take on the mightiest Olympian of all.

Chip Arnold is a well-liked football coach at a small liberal arts college, but his personal life is in a bit of a rut. He goes out drinking with his colleagues, gets along well with his players, and dates all the prettiest women in town - he has the life most straight men dream of. But lately none of the women he dates seem to be igniting any passion in him. Then he meets the new school chaplain, Foster Lewis. Romantic attraction to another man is new and terrifying, and Chip just can't put his finger on why he's drawn to Foster, but it's stronger than anything he's felt for anyone in his life.

Regarded as the strongest wolf shifter in generations, Alpha Zev Hassick is surprised and confused by his attraction to his best friend. His very human, very male best friend. A male shifter has to mate with a female shifter to keep his humanity, so shifters can't be gay. Yet, everything inside Zev tells him Jonah is his true mate. Zev and Jonah know they're destined for each other, but they must overcome traditions ingrained over generations and long-buried secrets to fulfill their destiny.

Even if it’s not politically correct to say so anymore, everyone still knows that alphas and omegas are ruled by their biology. Sure, it’s the 21st century now and most people have given up believing in archaic ideas like fated mates, but just take a look at college drop out rates and you’ll see that some things haven’t changed at all. Alphas still dominate, omegas still submit, and horny college kids in heat let their hormones dictate poor choices every day. Not me and my roommates, though. Not if I have anything to say about it.

A sensitive wolf shifter and a vicious vampire challenge history, greed, and the very fabric of their beings in order to stay together until forever comes. Plagued by pain and weakness all his life, Ethan Abbatt is a wolf shifter who can't shift. Hoping to find an honorable death by joining his packmates in a vampire attack, Ethan instead learns two things: draining his blood releases his pain and his wolf, and he has a true mate: a vampire named Miguel.

Judah has hit rock bottom. He’s broke, he’s homeless, and he’s about to outwear his welcome with his friends. Plus, he's shoved so deep into the closet, he's one step away from Narnia. His last chance is entering The Right Note TV contest in the hopes of winning. What he doesn’t count on is losing…his heart.

In the beginning, Detective Andrew Carmichael and paramedic Nick Swain barely escaped Nick's delusional stalker with their lives. Now, months later, the physical scars haven't quite healed, and neither have the emotional ones. Lingering guilt and resentment threaten to tear their relationship apart, but Andrew isn't ready to give up. He's nearly lost Nick once, and he's not giving him up this time without a fight.

Sometimes dreams come true, whether you’re ready for them or not. Shane was only 14 when found a photo of a boy his age and became obsessed with it. Now, 13 years later, he has a chance encounter with a man who bears a striking resemblance. Already in a happy relationship, Shane must keep his fantasies in check while attempting to solve the mystery, but little does he realize just how many connections they share. The Boy at the Bottom of the Fountain is a heartwarming short story about love in its many forms, be they real or imagined.

Chase never had many friends, but at college, he meets and forms close ties with straight jock Tyler Davidson—a connection he fears he’ll lose if he tells Tyler he’s gay. Keeping his sexuality secret becomes harder for Chase as he joins Tyler and his family at their idyllic lake house for the summer. It grows more and more difficult for Chase to avoid Tyler’s attempts to set him up with girls, and he’s tired of making excuses. Chase is ready to embrace the man he is, but he’s afraid of what it will cost him.

Music. Topher Manning rarely thinks about anything else, but his day job as a mechanic doesn't exactly mesh with his rock-star ambitions. Unless he can find a way to unlock all the songs in his head, his band will soon be on the fast track to obscurity. Then the South by Southwest music festival and a broken-down car drop New York critic Stanton Porter into his life. Stanton offers Topher a ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert, where a hesitant kiss and phantom vibrations from Topher’s cell phone kick off a love story that promises to transcend ordinary possibility.

Ben Walsh is well on his way to becoming one of Manhattan's top litigators, with a gorgeous boyfriend and friends on the A-list. His life is perfect until he gets a phone call that brings it all crashing down: a car accident takes his parents, and now he must return to Austin to raise three teenage brothers he barely knows.

Nightclub owner Marcus Feldman never met a man he didn’t love, at least for the night. Although his best friends have all found love, Marcus shuns their advice to commit to one man and settle down. His past has taught him monogamy and marriage is for fools, and Marcus is anything but a fool. Tyler Reiss’s dream of dancing professionally is unexpectedly cut short and replaced by a different kind of love. He trades in his ballet slippers for go go boots, and spends his nights dancing at the hottest gay club in the city.