Showing results by narrator "Khristine Hvam" in All Categories

What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to the world's most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.

When Corporal Kaylin Neya is assigned front desk duty—a task hated by every Hawk—the only thing she can look forward to besides an endless stream of complaints is visits from a dotty old woman, because she always brings baked goods along with information passed on by her friends, who happen to be ghosts no one else can see. But then the old woman’s invisible friends have news about Severn Handred: his unusual weapon has caught their attention. Concerned, Kaylin accompanies the woman home because she has a few questions to ask these so-called ghosts.

Jane, a shapeshifting vampire-hunter-for-hire, crosses paths with a stranger who has arrived in New Orleans, enlisted to hunt vampires who have gone insane - or so he says.

My magic can kill. Now, it might be the reason I die. For years, I thought I was Raven Cursed - only to discover I’m something much worse. But nothing about my life is as shocking as what I discover about Mephisto, the mysterious and alluring client who’s always had a special interest in me. Now I know why. My curse and Mephisto’s secrets have to take a back seat when the most powerful vampire in the city hires me for a job. It seems simple enough: Negotiate the acquisition of a weapon that can kill his kind faster than a stake to the heart.

Kaylin returned from the West March in one piece. Now that piece is fraying. She's not at home in the Imperial Palace - and she never intends to be. All she wants is normal garden-variety criminals and a place of her own. Of course, normal in her new life involves a dragon as a roommate, but she can handle that. Kaylin can't as easily handle the new residents to the city she polices, because one of them is Nightshade's younger brother. On a night when she should be talking to landlords in perfectly normal buildings, she's called to the fief - by Teela.

Stephanie Harrington had always expected to be a forest ranger on her homeworld of Meyerdahl until her parents relocated to the frontier planet of Sphinx in the far distant Star Kingdom of Manticore. It should have been the perfect new home - a virgin wilderness full of new species of every sort, just waiting to be discovered. But Sphinx is a far more dangerous place than ultra-civilized Meyerdahl, and Stephanie's explorations come to a sudden halt when her parents lay down the law: no trips into the bush without adult supervision!

As if surviving the end of the world and the theft of my powers wasn’t enough on their own, a heaping pile of ogre and a side of human raiders has been added to my plate while trying to feed our starving caravan. The worst of what I face, though, is far harder to admit. My black magic takes its pound of flesh every time I use it, and each time the cost climbs. And yet, it calls to me, seducing me, all the while consuming little pieces of my soul. It’s a right bastard like that.

Get ready to rock with the KIDZ BOP Kids as they hit the road on their live tour.

It has been three years since the Destroyer sundered our world. The land is longer whole, but broken into pieces, most technology gone, and the continents shattered into an unrecognizable place. New monsters have risen from the depths, adding danger on top of danger. Through it all, the humans fight to survive as they compete not only with the supernaturals for food and resources, but their own kind as well. And me? The caravans of humans I pass - they look to me to save them. Only I am not the witch I once was.

Police Chief Delaney Reed thinks she knows all of Ordinary, Oregon’s secrets. Gods on vacation, lovelorn ghosts, friendly neighborhood monsters? Check. But some secrets run deeper than even she knows. To take down an ancient vampire hell-bent on revenge, she will have to make the hardest decision of her life: give up the book of dark magic that can destroy them all, or surrender her mortal soul. As she weighs her options, Delaney discovers she can no longer tell the difference between allies keeping secrets and enemies telling the truth.

My name is Pamela, and I am the most powerful witch the world has ever seen. Only my magic is completely bound away from me, rendering me next to useless. I’m about to face a witch who makes me look like a child fighting a seasoned general in battle. A witch whose strength lies within the dead, and whose magic I unleashed during my part of destroying the world. Now she wants me to bow to her, to give her my strength and my magic. I’ve been stripped of my familiars. Stripped of my magic.

I thought I'd finally stepped away from the madness of the underworld, away from the Abnormals, away from all those who would do me and those I love harm. The world, though, had different plans. And now I'm trapped, not only physically, but inside my head. Those who have me caged say none of it was real. That I'm not a highly trained assassin of Abnormals. That I have no family. My children do not exist. That there is nothing supernatural about this world.

In a changed world where the sky bleeds red, winter is hotter than hell and full of sandstorms, and summer's even hotter with raging fires that roam the desert-like country, the Heaters manage to survive, barely. Due to toxic air, life expectancies are so low that the only way the tribe can survive is by forcing women to procreate when they turn 16 and every three years thereafter. It is their duty as Bearers. Fifteen-year-old Siena is a Youngling, soon to be a Bearer, when she starts hearing rumors of another tribe of all women, called the Wild Ones.

Still avoiding magic whenever possible, Private Kaylin Neya relished investigating a run-of-the-mill theft. Until she found out the mysterious stolen box had been taken from Elani Street, where the mages and charlatans mingled, and it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between the two. And since the box was ancient, without a keyhole, and held tremendous darkness inside, Kaylin knew unknown forces were again playing with her destiny....and her life.

In Elantra, a job well done is rewarded with a more dangerous task. So after defeating a dark evil, Kaylin Neya goes before the Barrani High Court, where a misspoken word brings sure death. Kaylin's never been known for her grace or manners, but the High Lord's heir is suspiciously ill, and Kaylin's healing magic is the only shot at saving him - if she can dodge the traps laid for her.

Book Three by international writing phenomenon David Weber. Two young settlers on a pioneer planet seeks to stop a war and to save the intelligent alien treecats from exploitation by unscrupulous humans. The fires are out, but the trouble’s just beginning for the treecats. On pioneer planet Sphinx, ruined lands and the approach of winter force the now Landless Clan to seek new territory. They have one big problem - there’s nowhere to go. Worse, their efforts to find a new home awaken the enmity of the closest treecat clan - a stronger group who’s not giving up a single branch without a fight.

When Jenny Thorton and her friends open the mysterious white box given to her by Julian, they discover a mysterious game and enter a house of horrors full of their worst nightmares.

The battle between vicious spirits and strong-willed queens that started in The Queen of Blood and continued in the powerful The Reluctant Queen comes to a conclusion in The Queen of Sorrow, the final volume of the Queens of Renthia trilogy. Queen Daleina has yearned to bring peace and prosperity to her beloved forest home - a hope that seemed doomed when neighboring forces invaded Aratay. Now, Daleina believes that her dream of ushering in a new era can be realized, even in a land plagued by malevolent nature spirits who thirst for the end of human life.

As President Borg Lecter threatens to annihilate the Country tribes in order to expand his glass-domed empire, Adele ventures into the belly of the beast. Her only hope of survival is the consolidation of Dwellers and Country power before it's too late. Former demagogue President Nailin is eliminated, yet civil unrest infects every alliance. To save Adele, President Tristan faces his greatest challenge yet: unifying unfriendly Dwellers in the Tri-Realms to raise an army against Lecter.

After a college student speeding in a blue Honda Civic kills her husband of less than a year, Olivia is completely lost. One hot summer day, she walks into the beachfront Rhode Island cottage she and David bought the previous August—the place where they had planned to someday start a family—and finds a stranger sitting at her kitchen table. Pregnant fifteen-year-old Ruby is looking for a safe haven for herself and her baby-to-be. Olivia takes her in, desperate to assuage her grief through human connection, even with a troubled teenager.