Showing results by narrator " Joel Froomkin" in All Categories

The town of Willow Creek is seemingly free after Remy's sacrifice set off a life-altering chain of events that resulted in the demise of most of the world's vampire population. Sabine flees to her home afterward, except her family has disappeared and a "For Sale" sign is planted in her front yard. Just when she thinks she's lost it all, she's summoned back to Willow Creek Manor.

The deathly silence is about to be broken. She disliked the company of others and death did little to warm her spirit. She had led an independent life and she faced death in much the same way. She was finally alone, finally free from the mindless babble of others, at least that's what she thought. May Elizabeth Trump was the rarest of spirits and she was none too happy about it either. She was a dead medium, a ghost who can speak with the living, and her services were to become in great demand.

The gods are real and incorporated. Providence is a profitable global industry. For Loki, three hundred years is a long time to be trapped in divinity’s answer to crap customer service, especially when the PR machine makes him out to be the bad guy. But that’s what happens when you lose a war. All he has to do to regain his godly powers is avoid the seers, outwit the executives, and win a rematch against public perception. Easy. Too bad he's not the only one playing at espionage.

Mack is hot, popular, and used to getting exactly what he wants … until he sets his sights on the new exchange student from New Zealand. He’s never been one for love at first sight, but this chick has him feeling things he never knew existed within him, and in spite of her feisty rejections, he’s determined to get to know her.

London, 1588. Someone's turning Catholics into widows - and masking the crimes under cover of Armada fever. Francis Bacon is charged with identifying the murderer by the Andromache Society, a widows' guild led by his formidable aunt. His assistants, Thomas Clarady and Lady Alice Trumpington, are also struggling for control over their own lives. Bacon must free his friends from the Tower, track an exotic poison, and untangle multiple crimes to determine if the motive is patriotism, greed, lunacy - or all three.

Henry never believed his older sister Alice's fantastic tales about the world down the rabbit hole. When he's whisked away to the bizarre land, his best chance for escape is to ally himself with the person called the Mad Hatter. Hatter - an odd but strangely attractive fellow - just wants to avoid execution. If that means delivering "Boy Alice" to the Queen of Hearts at her Red Castle, Hatter will do what he has to do to stay alive. It doesn't matter if Henry and Hatter find each other intolerable. They're stuck with each other.

Sabine Crowley is adjusting well to her new life at Willow Creek Manor with Remy by her side. That is, until she finds out some devastating news from Bastian. Has Remy been lying all along about his feelings for her? Had she been a fool to believe he really could love her? Remy has been accused of trying to leave Sabine and his responsibilities to Bastian behind.

Welcome to Willow Creek. People are happy, crime is practically nonexistent, and life is good...unless you're Sabine Crowley. Sabine has been chosen to be the next blood bag for the vampire lord who has protected the town from otherworldly creatures for 200 years. Remy has been summoned by his maker, Bastian, to take his place beside his maker in the hierarchy of vampires inhabiting Willow Creek. He's repulsed by the whole situation. Sabine is terrified of him and her strange attraction to him.

Astrid Bailey is content living alone, balancing her career as a contract machinist with her true passion: making “felicitation devices” for her discerning female clients. At the upcoming World’s Fair, with its substantial cash prize, there's an opportunity for her to open the shop she’s always imagined and solve her financial woes. With questionable credentials, though, she’s unable to enter without a reputable businessman to vouch for her.

Smut sells. Michael Rourke learned this the hard way. Struggling to make ends meet as a mystery writer, he sold his soul - and his pride - as he pedaled sex and lust writing under the pen name Christoph Strong. No one knew he was the one behind the steamy stories on the best sellers lists. And he planned to keep it that way. Until he met her.

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings.

Windsor, 1942. War rages through Great Britain. Anna Duckworth, former lover of Prince George, Duke of Kent, is found dead after an enemy bomb blast at her country home. When courtier Guy Harford is called to dispose of incriminating love letters between Anna and the Duke, it becomes clear that there’s more to the story than anyone is prepared to reveal. As the court begins to whisper of a lone gunshot heard in the house that day, another gruesome death befalls the royal circle.

It’s 1589, and England is embroiled in a furious pamphlet war between an impudent Puritan calling himself Martin Marprelate and publishing’s brightest wits. The archbishop wants Martin to hang. The Privy Council wants the tumult to end. But nobody knows who Martin is or where he’s hiding his illegal press. Then two writers are strangled, mistaken for Thomas Nashe, the pamphleteer who is hot on Martin’s trail. Francis Bacon is tasked with stopping the murders - and catching Martin, while he’s about it.

Bow Street Runner John Pickett and Julia, Lady Fieldhurst, seem to have reached an impasse as they wait for the annulment of their accidental marriage to come before the ecclesiastical court. In the meantime, Pickett is summoned to investigate the theft of almost 200 pounds from a linen-draper's shop - but finds no sign that either the shop or the safe where the money was kept had been forced open. Given the lack of evidence, he can only assume the money was taken by someone inside.

No one gave Erik a choice as to whether he would fight or not. Duty to the crown belonged to him, his father's legacy remaining beyond the grave. Taken by the beauty of the countryside surrounding her, Linzi would do anything to protect her father's land. Britain is under attack and Scotland is next. At a time she should be focused on suitors, the men of her country have gone to war, and she's left to stand alone. Love will become available, but will passion at the touch of the enemy unravel her strong hold first?

Thirteen-year-old Suzie Sarnio always believed the Grim Reaper was a fairy tale image of a skeleton with a scythe. Now, forced to enter the College of Deaths, she finds herself training to bring souls from the Living World to the Hereafter. The task is demanding enough, but as the only female in the all-male College, she quickly becomes a target. Attacked by both classmates and strangers, Suzie is alone in a world where even her teachers want her to fail.

Weird Tales magazine is known for launching a number of sub-genres of fiction—cosmic horror, swords & sorcery, dark fantasy, and others. It has also greatly added to existing genres like science fiction, horror, and—a personal favorite of editor Jonathan Maberry—weird mystery stories. Or, as they became known—occult detective tales.

Penelope Fayre, nineteen years old and the belle of the Season, knows she must marry money, but she’d hoped to find a man she could love for his personality as well as his purse. Now the Season is drawing to a close, and if such a man exists, he has been keeping himself well-hidden. Painfully aware of having failed her family, Penelope makes a bargain with herself: She will accept the next eligible offer she receives, but first, she’ll make the most of her freedom by stealing away to Bartholomew Fair.

Dante O'Donnell is white, gay, and getting older every day. He has wasted his better years on starstruck dreams and the wrong men, so now he's working as a concierge for a vacation-rental outfit in Palm Springs, where the guests have far more baggage than what's packed in their suitcases. But when he finds a dead body floating in the swimming pool at one of his rentals, his own troubled past comes back to haunt him. So he turns for help to Jazz Friendly, a Black woman who, when she was a Palm Springs cop, nearly arrested him for murdering his husband, which he didn't do.

Richard, Lord Ramsay, has been brought up from the cradle with a consciousness of his duty to his family and his name. His sense of responsibility has led him to install two elderly aunts in the Dower House; educate his cousin Peter Ramsay and employ him as a steward; and provide a home for poor relation Jane Hawthorne, who once served as his mother's companion.