Showing results by narrator "Michael Brown" in All Categories

All Oz Carnavon ever wanted was to become a master mage. Except, to do so requires the natural gifts or wealth necessary to secure an appointment to one of the prestigious magical academies in the Core City at the center of the seven realms. Oz had neither. He was born without magical talent, serving in the elemental plane of fire, a nightmarish hellscape of treacherous lava and vicious monsters, where life is cheap, and escape is rare. But Carnavons never give up.

Being a warrior in a garden is pretty good, but being a necromancer is better. For obvious reasons Sylver preferred warzones to gardens, but aside from the guns, sunlight, and other oddities, there wasn't much to complain about. Not to mention he already had a new ally, a new class, a ton of levels, didn't make all that many enemies, and most importantly, at the end of this he was going to finally find Edmund.

After a lifelong dream of flight takes him into military service, Ensign Harry Hartmann reports for duty at Pearl Harbor. He’s a “nugget,” a dive bomber pilot about to start his first deployment aboard the USS Enterprise.

A recipe gone awry because you lack one important ingredient and you need to make this cake for someone you love for their birthday, which happens to be the next day. Low-stakes? Nah.

When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.

A disgraced ex-cop, framed by a crooked politician, abandoned by his family, he’s forced into the life of a bounty hunter just to survive. Tracking down a traitor who stole military grade weapons to sell on the black market, Masterson finds out things aren’t as simple as the wanted poster made them seem. Because Delia Beckett isn’t a traitor, simply a patsy, and the forces manipulating her may be the same ones responsible for Masterson’s fall from grace.

How do you imprison the world’s most powerful supervillains and make sure they can’t escape? The Trench, a supermax prison at the bottom of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean—toss them in and throw away the key. “Inescapable” doesn’t even begin to describe this place. Even if I could get past the power dampeners and multiple layers of security, where am I going to go? Oh yeah, did I mention I am now the Trench’s newest inmate because I refused to give up being a masked crimefighter?

The Book of Queer Prophets contains modern-day epistles from some of our most important thinkers, writers and activists: Jeanette Winterson tackles religious dogma, Amrou Al-Kadhi writes about trying to make it as a Muslim drag queen in London, John Bell writes about his decision to come out later in life, Tamsin Omond remembers getting married in the middle of a protest and Kate Bottley explains her journey to becoming an LGBT ally.

Forced out of the Marshals and into the life of a freelance bounty hunter, Grant Masterson skirts the edges of the law, hunting down the ones responsible for framing him. When his latest hunt leads him to a conspiracy of cyborg cultists, renegade AI and genetically engineered psychics, Masterson may have to choose between his own survival...and his quest for retribution.

Kadish escaped the Revenant Program, but not the Red Man. The Dead Man made it to Los Angeles, a city fallen into chaos after an EMP wrecked the entire West Coast. It’s easy to hide where the rule of law is a memory. Living off odd jobs in cartel country was manageable, where it not for the Red Man. While Kadish was free of direct orders through the brain spike called the Imperative, the Red Man lingered. The Red Man demands violence and Kadish has no choice but to feed malfunctioning program what it wants or risk losing all control.

The Marines called it Starvation Island. The Imperial Japanese Army called it the Island of Death. The battle for Guadalcanal, which began in August 1942 and took six months to complete, saw the 1st Marine Division effectively cut off and under constant siege with few supplies. Marked by hunger, disease, massed nighttime bayonet charges by the enemy, and constant shelling and bombing, the campaign proved a turning point in the war.

War threatens to engulf everything he’s fought for, struggled to build, forcing him into a deadly game of alliances and betrayals. As enemy forces close in, Alaric—a battle-tested warrior and shrewd leader of his earldom—must rally his loyal companions and harness every ounce of his skill to face a storm of foes and a destiny he cannot escape.

The Dead Man risked everything to rid himself of the malfunctioning cybernetic implant corrupting his mind. He failed. The Red Man will win out. The beast within grows stronger until only it remains…then a nigh-un-killable monster will be loosed on the world.

On the battlefields of the future, death is not the end for a soldier. The Revenant Program collects badly wounded soldiers broken by war and converts them into unthinking, unfeeling cyborg weapons. Their bodies are immune to pain, their minds impervious to fear and doubt. All controlled by a neural implant called the Imperative. They are the ideal force for any mission too deadly or too difficult for normal men. A force that answers to the darkest corners of the military.

After Grant Riven and his fellow Hallowed saved Dios from the Mute threat, Grant retired with more money that he could possibly spend. He never planned to go to war again...until he learned Cloud Nine Engineering was still mutating innocent people in hopes of creating more like him. Taking down a huge corporation that controls every lever of power in Dios seems impossible, yet with his allies determined to try, Grant has no choice but to do all he can to keep them safe...even if he believes they’ve lost the war before it starts.

In the newly revised third edition of Demise of the Dollar: From the Bailouts to the Pandemic and Beyond, Addison Wiggin delivers yet another timely and insightful account of the devaluation of the American dollar. Fully updated to consider the events of the last ten years—including the COVID-19 pandemic—the book contains nuanced discussions of historic inflation, interest rates and the Federal Reserve, the impact the Euro has had since its introduction, the rise of China prior to the pandemic, cryptocurrencies, and the United States' consumer debt addiction.

Seventh-grader Viv never looks forward to picture day. It’s just another day where she wears a boring braid and no one notices her. (Her two best friends, Milo and Al, don’t count, of course.) But enough is enough. This year, she’s taking matters into her own hands. Literally. Viv grabs a pair of scissors, her phone for live-streaming, and, well, bye-bye braid. Suddenly Viv is an over-night influencer at Brinkley Middle School. Everyone wants her help planning their next big moment—from haircuts, to dance proposals, activist rallies and mathlete championships.

Grant Masterson has spent his whole life putting criminals behind bars, but after shattering every law to save the life of the woman he loves, he finds himself in the harshest prison in the galaxy, surrounded by hardened killers. He needs all his wits and skills just to survive...and when the sentient AI known as The Oracle, the head of the criminal network called Nautilus, infiltrates the prison and puts a price on his head, even the best bounty hunter in the galaxy may not be tough enough to live through it.

Sera Varse thought she left the worst behind, but new dangers await. Stranded on a distant planet, Sera navigates treacherous terrain and confronts formidable foes while uncovering secrets of Quantum. Her quest to find her brother becomes a mission to secure humanity’s future. Trouble continues back home, where Gloria’s nephew Riddan Morell attempts to regain his family’s honor, Federation PI Touma Kudo pursues justice against a man who wronged him years ago who proves to be connected to the recent trouble, and Montez Lycanis fights to earn a new life for his Crimson Wolves.

In the violent aftermath of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, a photojournalist arrives to learn the fate of the Witch Doctors, a fabled Army occult warfare unit. Holly believes her father, reported missing in action, ran this mysterious outfit that sought to weaponize black magic to win the War on Terror.