Showing results by narrator "Vikas" in All Categories

Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death. Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town.

Hannah and her friends were just having a bit of fun when they decided to play a game to communicate with spirits of the dead. Little did they know something would answer their call and crawl its way into the pages of Hannah’s journal. What started out as a game has turned into something much more evil. With dire, horrifying consequences. Is there any way to escape the curse?

People kill people. Guns just make it easier. A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for needed protection. But which was it? Each has the incentive to pick up a gun, to fire it. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race, who possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything after a devastating accident, and has sunk quietly into depression?

When crusading lawyer Vikram Pandey sets out in search of a missing youth, his investigations take him to Holywell Street, London's most notorious address. He expects to find a disgraceful array of sordid bookshops. He doesn't expect one of them to be run by the long-lost friend whose disappearance and presumed death he's been mourning for 13 years. Gil Lawless became a Holywell Street bookseller for his own reasons, and he's damned if he's going to apologize or listen to moralizing from anyone.

The fruit of the long history of John Brockman's profound engagement with the most important scientific minds who have been thinking about AI - from Alison Gopnik and David Deutsch to Frank Wilczek and Stephen Wolfram - Possible Minds is an ideal introduction to the landscape of crucial issues AI presents. The collision between opposing perspectives is salutary and exhilarating; some of these figures are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others have a very different view.

The Headshot Online Box Set is a LitRPG adventure set in a post-apocalyptic virtual world featuring hordes of undead. It's perfect for fans of Daniel Schinhofen, Tao Wong, and C.M. Carney. Headshot has just gone live, and the whole world's playing the new Artificial Reality blockbuster. Unfortunately, unless you can buy your way onto the Survivor's side, you can only participate as a Zombie. Each week, the forces gather to tear each other down to the bone...until, at week’s end, the Apocalypse is reset.

Nick Antosca's The Girlfriend Game is a tumble through the looking glass into a vortex of violence and desire. The 12 stories in the newest collection by the Shirley Jackson Award-winning author are brutal, urgent and unforgettable. In "Predator Bait", a decoy in a sex-sting news show questions her job and the man who shares her bed. An undependable son watches his mother become a creature he hardly recognizes in "Amphibian". A young man plots the death of his girlfriend's killer in "Winter Was Hard".

At eight years old, Shulle has known only life in a small village with her loving but peculiar father. When Uncle Shebna offers shelter in Jerusalem in exchange for Shulle's help tutoring King Manasseh, Judah's five-year-old co-regent who displays the same peculiarities as her father, she's eager to experience the royal court. But Shulle soon realizes the limits of her father's strict adherence to Yahweh's Law when Uncle Shebna teaches her of the starry hosts and their power.

Tough. That's Freddy Martinez and his friend, Cara. They're not afraid of anything. But that was before they went exploring in Freddy's basement. Before they found the secret room. Before they found the bottle of Vampire Breath. Poor Freddy and Cara. They should have never opened that bottle of Vampire Breath. Because now there's a vampire in Freddy's basement. And he's very, very thirsty....

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.

Top three reasons why sleeping with the enemy is a bad idea.... She's my fiercest rival. She's also my fiery ex. We're going up against each other in a stiff competition to win the hottest new client on the market. And yet, I'd like to be up against the wall in a stiff competition to get her to call out my name. Time to double down on my resistance to her tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners, sexy-as-sin attitude. The same attitude I find irresistible.

In this second book in the Prince Warriors trilogy, the Prince Warriors face new challenges on Earth and in the unseen realm of Ahoratos. The enemy, angry about his last defeat, is targeting them with weapons and tactics they had never imagined, including the flaming Olethron. The kids must turn to Ruwach and the Source, who can give them more pieces of armor to help them stand strong against this deadly threat.

Jack doesn't like it, but he'll do what is necessary to honor the man who raised him. But surviving Darkthorn Academy won't be easy. Jack will have to make alliances, learn to harness magic, and face dangerous enemies - both alive and dead. If he's lucky, he might just make it to second year.

After barely escaping the machinations of his terrifying mother, two all-knowing seers, and countless bloodthirsty siblings, the last thing Julius wants to see is another dragon. Unfortunately for him, the only thing more dangerous than being a useless Heartstriker is being a useful one. Now that he's got an in with the Three Sisters, Julius has become a key pawn in Bethesda the Heartstriker's gamble to put her clan on top.

Twenty-one-year-old, foul-mouthed Olympian Sullivan Meadows just made a huge mistake. She told her bodyguards - her buddies, her pals - they could take her virginity. Words forever engrained in her brain. And theirs. Akara Kitsuwon and Banks Moretti are best friends, sworn to protect each other and their client Sullivan. But upon hearing her confession, their reactions aren’t what Sulli expects. As the three embark on the road to Yellowstone, tension builds and close quarters leave no secrets behind.

Twenty-two-year-old Sullivan Meadows knew dating Akara and Banks would be complicated, but now that her relationship is public, everything has been put on blast.

After successfully finishing his first year at Darkthorn Academy, Jack returns to Sunder with his new friend, Stannerios. Together, Jack and Stann intend to enjoy their summer preparing for their second year. But even in Sunder they aren’t safe, as they deal with street thugs and assassins. When Jack and Stann finally return to Darkthorn Academy and reunite with the rest of the team, they learn that things have changed. A new headmaster has been appointed and the rules for questers have changed drastically.

While recovering from the physical and emotional wounds he sustained in Challenger's Hope, Nick Seafort is named as the liaison between the wealthy planters of Hope Nation and the United Nations Navy. The lurking, acid-spewing, fish-shaped aliens are a real threat, and everyone is on edge. When the fleet returns to Earth, dissent grows among the people of Hope Nation, who feel abandoned by the military and left at the mercy of the alien horde.

When powerful real estate tycoon Nero Golden moves to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking Roman names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Invoking literature, pop culture, and the cinema, Salman Rushdie spins the story of the American zeitgeist over the last eight years, hitting every beat. In a new world order of alternative truths, Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies.

An alien invasion comes to one man’s doorstep in the form of a story-creature, followed by death and rebirth in a transformed Earth, in this Tor.com Original science fiction tale from Jeff VanderMeer, the New York Times best-selling author of the Southern Reach trilogy.