Showing results by narrator "Natalie Naudus" in All Categories

In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor. Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts.

The brilliant scientist Reed Richards, also known as Mr. Fantastic, teams up with the woman he loves, Sue Richards, who also goes by Invisible Woman; her hot-headed kid brother Johnny Storm, or the Human Torch; and Ben Grimm, the Thing and top-flight test pilot. Together, these four braved the unknown dangers of outer space and were transformed by sizzling cosmic rays into something more than merely human! In this installment of their adventures, the Fantastic Four will go head to head against Dr. Doom.

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition—qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California.

Romance novel obsessive Tara Chen has had more than her fair share of heartbreak. Nevertheless, she is determined to keep trying and find her perfect match. The only problem? Modern dating apps have killed the classic meet-cute. So, Tara decides to revisit her exes in hopes of securing her very own trope-worthy second-chance romance. Firefighter Trevor Metcalfe will be the first to rush into a burning building but the last to rush into a relationship. Love just isn't his thing. When his new flatmate Tara enlists him to help her reconnect with her exes, he reluctantly agrees.

Once there was a prophecy that a chosen one would rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, an immortal god-king. But the prophecy was wrong. Now Jian, the former chosen hero, is just an ordinary young man trying to find his own way. But he may yet have an extraordinary destiny, because he joins forces with Taishi, his grumpy grandmaster, who instructs him in the ways of her family’s powerful war art. Jian still has a long way to go before he can become her heir, so she recruits a band of elderly grandmasters out of retirement to whip him into shape and help with this one last job.

The first blast takes out an actor from a string of famous coffee commercials. A plain cardboard box in the mail blows when he opens it—pumps hot nails through his face. So begins the series of mail bombs that beckons FBI profiler Violet Darger to New York. The bomber's plan is meticulous—an ever-growing spectacle of gruesome violence meant to spread his cryptic message piece by piece. And the clock is ticking. Starting at midnight tonight, a bomb will go off roughly every eight hours, and a target will be neutralized.

Since Zilan entered the world of royal alchemists, she has learned that alchemy comes at a price. She has lost loved ones in her search for justice against the evil Empress and all she wants now is to find some way to bring them back. Resurrection is her specialty, after all. In search of the myth of Penglai Island, where it's rumoured life can be fully restored, Zilan starts a new adventure. But when old threats come back to haunt her and the path to Penglai Island means facing down unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, alchemists, she wonders how high of a price she may be willing to pay. . .

The Fogg River Seminary, a girls’ school in a small Illinois town, is supposed to be just another stop on Maryse and Vasyl’s endless travels. They’ve made lucrative use of Maryse’s “foreign” looks in their melodramatic séance act—and an act is all it is. Then, during their performance, a blizzard sweeps in and cuts them off from town completely. In the freezing halls, there’s a voice speaking the secrets of the dead, and Maryse has no choice but to listen…because this time, the voice is real.

Stevie and Nora had a love. A secret, epic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. They also had a plan: to leave their small, ultra-conservative town and families behind after graduation and move to California, where they could finally stop hiding that love. But then Stevie has a terrible fall and the last two years of her life are erased overnight. Suddenly Stevie finds herself in a life she doesn’t quite understand – she’s estranged from her parents, drifting away from her friends and dating a boy she can’t remember crushing on.

The kingdom of Cansere is on the brink of war. Young men are conscripted from their homes, and a royal decree from the queen has made healing the only legal form of craftlock. Nym, a healer and beekeeper, is the sole provider for her family of seven now that her younger brother has been sent to the war front. But when a letter comes from the queen, summoning Nym to the palace to heal Prince Renn, the kingdom’s ailing shut-in, Nym finds herself making the tumultuous journey from her family’s apiary to the capital city.

Jin-Lu has the most dangerous job in the wasteland. She’s a magebike courier, one of the few who venture outside the domed cities on motorcycles powered by magic. Every day, she braves the wasteland’s dangers—deadly storms, roving marauders, and territorial beasts—to deliver her wares. Her most valuable cargo? A prince’s love letters addressed to Yi-Nereen, a princess desperate to escape the clutches of her abusive family and soon-to-be husband. Jin, desperately in love with both her and the prince, can’t refuse Yi-Nereen’s plea for help.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first issues of Weird Tales Magazine, 100 Years of Weird is a masterful compendium of new and classic stories, flash fiction, essays, and poems from the giants of speculative fiction, including R. L. Stine, Laurell K. Hamilton, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Asimov.

The tournament is past, the Inner Sect achieved, and Ling Qi has chosen the path of her life going forward. Retainer to the heir of the province, an absurd step up from a girl who lived on the street a year before. Now she faces a strange prospect, peace. There are no great tournaments in her immediate future, no desperate battles to maintain her station. Formal duels and skill challenges just aren't the same. But she has much to learn, and now that she has proven herself, the Argent Peak Sect has much to teach an inner disciple.

The Sky Thieves have conquered their worst enemy. Now they face an even greater threat: the ruthless mentor who brought him to power. Uncovering the mentor’s identity is their first step to staying out of jail and exercising their own personal brand of justice - by stealing from the mentor's incalculable wealth. But they aren’t the only ones looking for clues, as their new opponent activates a vast web of connections to hunt them down.

The stories in this anthology range from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative. Humans transform into cosmic energy or sentient algae. A man wakes up in a new body in a world with continents cut out, months absent from the calendar year, and souls misplaced. Students at a high school regularly vanish without a trace. A woman descends into the depths of the ocean and encounters all-knowing creatures who may have the answers to her deepest questions.

Once every generation, the Major Gods hold a Celestial Banquet, inviting chefs from all over the Continent to prepare mouthwatering fantastical feasts. The winner is awarded the fabled Peaches of Immortality, along with a lifetime of fame and fortune. The losers perish per the whims of the fickle gods.

The rugged landscape of Sequoia National Park is a challenge on the best of days - but when a park ranger discovers an abandoned exclusive campsite with an empty tent and high-end technical gear scattered on the shores of an alpine lake, the wilderness takes on a sinister new hue. Thirty-two-year-old Felicity Harland - a former FBI agent who left the service in the wake of a personal tragedy and has taken her skills off the grid - is brought in as chief investigator.

I’ve been betrayed. I spent years hiding my magic from the world, but now I've got new powers I can’t control. Everyone around me is at risk, and if my secret is revealed, I’ll be hunted. But I don’t have time to worry about the monster I might become. Someone has stolen a dangerous artifact that could turn my world upside down. It could get me and my friends killed and bring destruction down on my city.

The world moves and it waits for none. Assigned by the Duchess to investigate the strange foreigners who were encountering in dialogue with the tribes of the mountains, Ling Qi, Cai Renxiang, and their companions must take a perilous journey through the wild mountains, and see what can be made of their intentions. A difficult and none-too-popular task, for the people of the Empire have only ever met barbarians with war. Or have they, history is not as simple as it seems.

After thwarting the man behind the gruesome ironborn murders—and breaking several fae laws to do so—all Arlo wants is a quiet summer. As the deity of luck's Hollow Star, capable of bringing about endless possibilities, this shouldn't be too much to ask, right? But someone is still trying to summon the mythical Seven Deadly Sins. All signs point to immortal meddling, and if this is the gods' attempt at returning to the Mortal Realm, it's Arlo they're going to use to do it.