Showing results by narrator "David Walker" in All Categories

"Work Sets You Free" by David Barnett is an original short story featuring the protagonist of the forthcoming novel Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. Gideon is a young fisherman in Yorkshire, England, in an alternate 1890, who embarks on a journey to find Captain Lucian Trigger, the famed Hero of the Empire, to deal with a mystery plaguing his home village.

Young Gideon Smith has seen things that no green lad of Her Majesty’s dominion should ever experience. Through a series of incredible events Gideon has become the newest Hero of the Empire. But Gideon is a man with a mission, for the dreaded Texas pirate Louis Cockayne has stolen the mechanical clockwork girl Maria, along with a most fantastical weapon - a great brass dragon that was unearthed beneath ancient Egyptian soil. Maria is the only one who can pilot the beast, so Cockayne has taken girl and dragon off to points east.

Remo is set to teach a few lessons in hospitality at Florida's top tourist attraction, but his mind is made up. He is a free agent. No more CURE, no more trying to solve America's problems. But the nation goes into a state of shock when a Lee Harvey Oswald look-alike is nailed trying to shoot the President and Remo can't ignore the call of duty - and a sense of déjà vu. Soon, a meddling television anchorwoman and strange transformations at the White House leave him feeling that he has landed a role in a bizarre Hollywood thriller.

Hawk and Fisher, famous for their years of keeping the peace in Haven, are really quite happy being legends. They gave up the hero business when they decided they’d grown too old for it. Now they run the Hero Academy, training young hopefuls to be heroes. Legends never die, but it seems they cannot retire, either. Hawk and Fisher’s adult children, Jack and Gillian, have been kidnapped. They were taken by the Demon Prince, an old enemy from the Forest Kingdom who challenges the couple to one final battle for their lives.

Cade Williams' worst nightmare has come true. The Necromancer's black magick has not only released the Adversary from the infernal realms where Cade imprisoned it, but allowed the fallen angel to possess the body of Cade's beloved wife, Gabrielle, in the process. When the Templars interrupt the ritual and kill the Necromancer, the Adversary sprouts wings and escapes into the darkness.

Luke Jensen has seen some sorry looking bounties in his time, but this one takes the cake. A wanted poster is offering a reward of one dollar and 42 cents — plus one busted harmonica — to capture Three-Fingered Jack McKinney. Turns out, McKinney’s 12-year-old son Aaron wants revenge on his daddy for abandoning him and his mom. The reward is all the money Aaron can scrape together. Luke can’t say no to the poor boy — or his beautiful mother — so he agrees to go after McKinney and his bank-robbing gang.

Unlike his brothers Jacob, Sam, and Patrick, Shawn O'Brien isn't content to settle down on the family ranch in New Mexico territory. With his razor-sharp eye, lightning-fast draw, and burning thirst for justice, Shawn is carving out a reputation of his own. As a town tamer, he takes the most dangerous, lawless towns in the West and makes them safe for decent men, women, and children. When a stagecoach accident leaves Shawn stranded in Holy Rood, Utah, it doesn't take long to realize he's landed in one ornery circle of hell.

Bounty hunter Lou Prophet is escorting a Russian noblewoman through Arizona on the trail of her missing sister - and a buried treasure that is being sought by a gang of desperadoes.

Nearly a hundred years after Russia's thermonuclear first strike turned America into a radioactive wasteland, the brave survivors and fierce FreeFighters of that shattered nation have forced the brutal Sov invader to the peace table. But a new and unexpected danger suddenly appears in the skies over America - from orbit. Someone is reactivating the ancient space systems of the 1980s...one by one the nuke-armed space missiles of the past change orbit to threaten every major population center of the world.

Cuno Massey is determined to start a new, peaceful life. But when he comes across a prison wagon under attack, he can’t just ride on. A gang of outlaws is hell-bent on granting four hardened convicts an early release, and with two other lawmen down, the marshal is badly outnumbered. Dispensing frontier justice from the barrel of his Colt .45, Cuno does his best to even the odds and keep the murderous animals where they belong — in their cage. But the trail is long, and the gang is relentless. Looks like Cuno has just signed on for the ride of his life.

John Henry Cole is an operative of Ike Kelly's Detective Agency, based out of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Returning to Cheyenne from what had been a deadly assignment in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Cole has decided that he has no alternative but to resign from the agency and pursue a different line of work. However, in Cheyenne, Cole learns that Ike Kelly has been murdered and his body burned in a fire that destroyed both the agency office and the shop next door.

In the forested coastal region of the eastern seaboard, near the Pine Barrens of what was New Jersey, Ryan and his companions encounter a group of rebels. Having broken away from the strange, isolated community known as Atlantis and led by the obscene and paranoid Odyssey, this small group desires to live in peace. But in a chill-or-be-chilled world, freedom can only be won by spilled blood. Ryan and company are willing to come to the aid of these freedom fighters, ready to wage a war against the twisted tyranny that permeates Deathlands.

In what was once the nuclear testing ground of the pre-dark world, the Marshall Islands are now the kingdom of the grotesque lord Baron Kinnison. Here in this world of slavery and brutality, the companions have fought a fierce war for survival, on land and sea — yet the crafty baron still conspires to destroy these interlopers. Activating a 20th century hot air balloon left untouched by the blast, they escape to the neighboring pirate ruled forbidden island, with the Baron and his sec men in hot pursuit — and become trapped in a war for total supremacy on this water world.

The South Pacific is a rad-blasted paradise, inhabited by giant mutated crustaceans and savage cannibals. The local baron rules the Marshall Islands with a despotic iron fist and a secret formula for making Deathland’s gold: gunpowder. But his true invincibility lies in his possession of stockpiles of pre-dark rapid fire missiles and a fleet of functional PT boats. Ryan Cawdor and his companions have faced off against the baron and survived. But this time there’s only one way out of these death seas — through the sec-men infested waters of the baron’s kingdom.

In this raw, brutal world ruled by the strongest and the most vicious, an unseen player is manipulating Ryan and his band, luring him across an unseen battle line drawn in the dust outside Tucson, Arizona. Here, a local barony becomes the staging ground for a battle unlike any other, against a foe whose ties to pre-Dark society present a new and incalculable threat to a fragile world. Ryan Cawdor is the only man living who stands between this adversary's glory...and the prize he seeks.

Using a traditional Yakama tale as a motif, "Coyote’s Swing" combines the author’s firsthand experiences as a consulting psychologist with rare history and sociocultural critique, revealing how the U.S. mental health system reframes Native American reactions to oppression and marginalization into "mental disorders" and "mental illness," and how the Indian Health Service’s contemporary practices echo historical injustices.