Showing results by narrator "Gary Bennett" in All Categories

Over the past five years, organizations adopted Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams in droves. Think of COVID-19 as pouring gasoline on the fire. The pandemic didn't start a trend, as much as it accelerated an existing one. Unfortunately, far too many of us mistakenly view these applications as Email 2.0. As a result, we are missing out on extraordinary opportunities to create more collaborative work environments, increase organizational transparency, reduce manual work, make our work lives less stressful, simplify core business processes, and much more.

The women of The Homegrown Café Book Club are over 40, single, and loving it. Fate, however, has a different plan with a younger man, for every last one of them. CPA Deacon Jeffries has carried a torch for his favorite client for over a year, but she would probably sooner light him with it than return his affection. She makes an offer he can’t refuse to save her farm, one that makes his wish come true and gives his daughters the mother they need...

Friends and comrades had put their lives on the line, defending not only their homes and loved ones, but their galaxy as well. Both galaxies, to be exact. And more than a few had paid the ultimate price. Now the threat of a massive war spilling over between both realms had gone from a vague threat to a deadly reality, and facing Visla Dominus’s incredible power, Charlie and his friends were forced to call in every favor they were owed.

Charlie thought building a spaceship had been tough, so being king should be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, it was like a cake made of cement. Hard to swallow, and just might kill him. It was good being king, or so Charlie had believed. After an abrupt crash arrival, people had finally stopped trying to kill him - for the most part, anyway - and his new subjects respected him. Or feared him. It was sort of hard to tell, what, with the ginormous dragon who had eaten the previous king standing right behind him.

On October 28, 1940, Mussolini provides Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas with an ultimatum - either allow Axis forces to occupy their country or face war - and Greece’s response is swift: “Oxi!” they say. “No!” In a small village nestled against the radiant waters of the Aegean Sea, Alexei, the son of a local fisherman, and his best friend Costa - who were both born on the same night eighteen years earlier and have been like brothers ever since - leave their homes, like all the other young men in their village and throughout Greece, to bravely fight for their country.

Could a magic wielding astronaut fight off an alien invasion with just his vampire assassin and space dragon friends? Amazingly, Charlie thought they might actually pull it off... that is if Lady Luck decided to play nice for a change. Unfortunately, knowing his fortunes, the odds of that were slim to none. The aliens were coming, that much was certain. What they could do to stop them, however, remained up in the air. Having joined forces with the mighty AIs overseeing the planet and its defenses, at least their toys had been upgraded accordingly.

Who is more dangerous, supernatural foes or enigmatic allies? That's on Magnus' mind a lot while the thousand-year-old "Chosen Warrior" deals with bikers, cartels, a Yaqui shaman, visitations, explosions, crashes, brawls, and the occasional gunshot wound. Being an Einherjar hiding out from Odin and his Valkyrie is hard enough without having to wonder who is on your side and who is just waiting with a knife for your back. To make matters worse, it's one of Odin's own immortal wolves that Magnus, a.k.a. Mouse, is sworn to rescue.

Echoes of the Frontier gathers thirteen unforgettable tales by literary giants such as Jack London, Willa Cather, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte—each story capturing a different facet of life at the edge of civilization. From the perilous ride of The Denver Express to the poetic solitude of On the Divide, and from the chilling desperation of Love of Life to the dry wit of Nevada Sketches, these stories illuminate the grit, dreams, and humanity of those who dared to tame the wild.

The next standalone action thriller in the pulse-pounding series. Enter the world of Silence Jones. Hold on tight....

Pella, Greece; 341 B.C. Alexandros is a middle child caught between two warring spouses, born to both a king and queen, but never meant to rule himself. When a mysterious young man arrives from the north, fleeing his own family, and meets Alexandros in a garden in the Macedonian capital, the bond that's created between them will soon become unbreakable and ultimately define both the direction of the Ancient World and ours.

The Urvalin invaders had linked three realms in a bid to join their power and create an intergalactic dominion. And they would have succeeded without incident if not for one crucial mistake. They hadn’t counted on the resourcefulness of Charlie and his friends.

Someone had Charlie in their crosshairs. A war-like race hell-bent on galactic domination. But unlike Charlie’s enemies of the past, this new threat had a few tricks up their sleeves, namely, using technology and magic interchangeably. Suddenly, what was once Charlie’s biggest advantage had been negated. Worse yet, his own magic, as well as that of his friends, wasn’t quite working right in this new corner of space. In fact, they learned the hard way that if they weren’t careful they could just as easily harm their allies as well as their enemies. Strike two for Team Charlie.

Trapped in a distant galaxy run by magic instead of technology? Check. Kidnapped by space pirates and alien slave traders? Check. Nearly eaten by wild dragons in gladiatorial combat? Check. Locked in an interstellar war spanning galaxies? Check. Charlie had faced it all, and yet somehow he and his friends had managed to come out on top. But now, at the peak of his powers, something new was coming over the horizon, and it was a threat the likes of which he’d never imagined. Facing a desperate struggle against all odds, Charlie found himself forced to dig deeper than ever before.

When a hungry ghoul uncovered a cache of treasure hidden beneath Lost Falls, he thought all his problems were behind him. When he realized how wrong he was, he came to me for help. As Lost Falls' resident folk wizard, breaking curses is my specialty. But the ghoul and his treasure hunting friends found more than cursed gold down there in the dark. They unleashed something old. Something alive. Something better left buried.

The Fever Hordesman sits outside my house, wailing punny lyrics while beating a rock rhythm on his armor, and I'm late for work. My omega heat’s coming on early, throwing a monkey wrench into my single-minded plan to ignore his single-minded quest to mate me. I have to admit - privately - his strong jaw, full mouth, and a scent that can send over a dozen omegas into heat, make my girly bits quiver. Just a little.

When your luck just plain sucks in not one galaxy, but two, most people would throw in the towel. But not Charlie. In fact, it almost seemed like he was a glutton for that sort of misery. His friends were spread across two distant galaxies, separated by a heavily guarded magical portal and struggling to deal with a war now spilling over into both the technological realm as well as the magical one. And it was beginning to look like they’d reached their breaking point. But Charlie wasn’t about to give up, nor would he give in.

Jake has it all — a new home, an amazing girlfriend, and nearing a promotion at work. Best of all, he feels he’s finally moved on from the horrors of his traumatic past. But when he learns that his estranged brother, Trevor, has moved back into their haunted childhood home, Jake knows his past is not quite finished with him yet. Jake rushes to the old house in Rose Grove — a small town with a tragic history — to pull his brother from that dangerous place. But it’s too late. There, he finds Trevor trying to make contact with the spirit that tormented them years ago.

He’s half my age. He cooks. He fusses over my bad sleeping habits, and knows how to handle a gun. Our little reprieve during a mission can only mean one thing: My guard is down. And the enemy I hunt is watching me, waiting for the perfect time to strike. The time is now.

What could be more powerful than weapons crafted by the hand of God for his own army of angels? Bastian Santé is a man driven by greed and the desire to possess that power. Unfortunately for him, only an angel can touch angelic steel. That is, until recent breakthroughs in human genome editing have given him the hope of changing that. With the help of his girlfriend Iris, and his best friend Francesco Ferrari, can Professor Skull and the team from Meridian put together enough information to stop Santé before his plan succeeds and he becomes the most powerful villain in the world?

Terror Hordesman came. With flowers. Red roses. He came, he marked me, and he moved into my house. This is bad. Very bad. Because, I'm funding the Betaren project he's trying to destroy. If he finds out, I fear, he'll end me.