Showing results by narrator "Raphael Corkhill" in All Categories

Shy Prince Edmund will be a great king one day: it has been Seen again and again. With rare magic giving him dominion over the nation’s plants and weather, Edmund feels a great deal of pressure to live up to his nation’s many expectations, including making a perfect diplomatic alliance through marriage. That is, until he meets Lord Aubrey Ainsley.

Meet Otto and Cecil. Two brothers who grew up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoyed watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather…and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. Downton Abbey, this is not. However, it’s not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow.

Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Eastern Europe. Some generals are unnerved by the Führer’s grandiose plan, but these dissenters are silenced one by one, setting in motion events that will culminate in the most calamitous war in history.

In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, characters question the fleetingness of youth and art, reckon with the consequences of the everyday, and find solace in the absurd, the beautiful, and the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognizable and delightfully other. All together, these sixteen stories have much to say about the meaning—and transitory nature—of our lives. And they are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most insightful and imaginative writers working today.

September 1940. As Nazi forces sweep across Europe, the wealth of nations vanishes into the desert. The gold reserves of France, Belgium, and Poland—a treasure so vast it could determine the outcome of World War II—have been hidden in the badlands of French West Africa.

“Faced with the political disaster, I had to become France.” This was how Charles de Gaulle answered the call of history. One of the few French battlefield leaders to have distinguished himself in May 1940, he had become the undersecretary of state for national defense. But when the government rejected his calls to fight on and prepared to capitulate to Hitler, he escaped to London. There he instigated a resistance calling on “all the French who want to remain free to listen to me and follow me” in the legendary radio address of June 22.

On a diplomatic mission, Brax and his rider, Carmen the assassin, encounter a ghostly vision of the Nameless Goddess. She's a part leopard, part crocodile deity, who warns them she is coming to conquer their world. Brax, in his usual snarky way, makes fun of her hairy legs and, after she vanishes, dismisses this threat. But things soon get a lot worse... When the duo arrives at the capital of the Akkad empire, they discover the emperor has been horrifically murdered by what looks to be an astral servant of that goddess, and his young nephew ascends to the throne.

For the first time in this ancient bloodstained story, the tournament is breaking. The boundaries between the city of Ilvernath and the arena have fallen. Reporters swarm the historic battlegrounds. A dead boy now lives again. And a new champion has entered the fray, one who seeks to break the curse for good...no matter how many lives are sacrificed in the process. As the curse teeters closer and closer to collapse, the surviving champions each face a choice: dismantle the tournament piece by piece, or fight to the death as this story always intended.

Attica was born to slay monsters. As a Vanguard of the Shadowborn, he grew up hunting the radiant horrors—terrifying light beasts known as Flashwraiths—that stalk the Spiralrealm. Armed with a living Shade, he prowled the gloom between tiers, culling the unnatural to protect his people. But when the Settlement falls to a devastating Flashwraith assault, Attica is cast into the abyss he once defended against. His sole opportunity for redemption is via a doomed mission. He must retrieve the shattered Crown of Shadows and destroy the prophesied Child of Light.

Fleeing to the Highlands after her father’s murder, fiery Morrigan Drummond has a score to settle with Sir Rupert Burney, the English spymaster responsible for his death. Trained to fight alongside the other rebels determined to break Britain’s hold on Scotland, she swears to avenge her father’s death - until a chance encounter with a barrister as proud and principled as she is presents her with a hard choice...and a bittersweet temptation.

Kamal Agha is a patriot. A Special Investigator for the secret police, Kamal is part of the battle against increasing political turmoil throughout the continent. But the Caliphate's iron fist spares no one, and Kamal's own family has attracted the regime's ever-watchful eye. Into his troubled life comes a mysterious stranger, Ayman Rasheed, found near the banks of the River Seine, naked and covered in tattoos. Tattoos which hint at an enormous secret - one which has changed the history of the world beyond recognition.

Perched on the North Sea, this port town—by turns legendary and mythological—is a place where Highland rebels and English authorities clash in a mortal struggle for survival and dominance. Among the fray is a lovely young widow who possesses rare and special gifts. A true beauty and trained physician, Isabella has inspired longing and mystery—and fury—in a great many men. Hunted by both the British government and Scottish rebels, she came to the Highlands in search of survival.

An American cult figure, Paul Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. From “The Delicate Prey” to “Too Far from Home,” this definitive collection celebrates the Bowles’s masterful artistry in short fiction.

Maisie Murray’s sweet, docile exterior masks the courageous spirit of a firebrand determined to champion women’s suffrage with like-minded friends. But fighting for her principles has swept her directly into harm’s way - and into the arms of a man she cannot resist. A trained officer with the Royal Highland Regiment, Niall Campbell has spent his life serving the Crown. Battle-weary and searching for peace, he nothing to do with trouble - until he meets Maisie.

Injured and shaken, Ryan Connors and The Nameless are trapped at a former NSA listening station in the Aleutian Islands. To escape, they must put aside their distrust and launch an operation needed to halt OPIS from completing what they started - unrestricted dominion. In Oregon, Zanzi Connors and Director Lisa Omstead have reunited to search for the one person who could provide the answers they seek, Doctor Josie Lahm, the scientist responsible for creating the technology that has caused so much suffering. But the enemy will do anything to protect their asset.

A World War I soldier writes a love note to his pregnant wife, puts it in a bottle and drops it in the English Channel. Decades later a fisherman finds it and delivers the message to the daughter the soldier never got to meet. Although this heart-warming tale is fiction, it is based on real-life events.

For the first time in this ancient, bloodstained story, the tournament is breaking. The boundaries between the city of Ilvernath and the arena have fallen. Reporters swarm the historic battlegrounds. A dead boy now lives again. And a new champion has entered the fray, one who seeks to break the curse for good...no matter how many lives are sacrificed in the process. As the curse teeters closer and closer to collapse, the surviving champions each face a choice: dismantle the tournament piece by piece, or fight to the death as this story was always intended.

The Nameless are no more. Former agent Sofia Ortiz must put aside her grief and form a new team - Arclight. After discovering damning intel, General Munroe dispatches them on a recon mission to Hong Kong, in the heart of enemy territory. Zanzi Connors, despondent over the mystery of her missing parents and burdened by guilt, hesitantly agrees to join. With the clock ticking and choices limited, Arclight begins a desperate fight to fulfill their oath of being the beacon in a world of darkness.

Seven months after the Hemorrhage virus swept across the world, Jack, his wife, Dee, his friend Boss, and the Renegades, a ragtag collection of civilian and military personnel, have been sent on two missions. Jack likes the first: recon. The second is insane: reenter the laboratory they barely escaped from a few months back and retrieve a logbook, a logbook that could provide the cure to end the madness.

The year is 1925. A labyrinth of roads and rails spirals out from the bones of a nearly forgotten settlement. Londinium. Once the far-flung edge of the vast Roman Empire, it is now the seat of a greater one. Few have given more for the Empire than Colonel Hadrian Russell. Robbed of his four sons by the Great War, he now holds court as the acting president of the Britannia, a prestigious soldiers-only club in London. But when the Colonel is shot and thrown out the club’s front window, it seems the shadows of the Great War may extend further than previously thought.