Showing results by narrator "Natalie Naudus" in All Categories

Some truths are carefully concealed; others merely forgotten. In this spellbinding collection, seven acclaimed fantasy authors create characters who venture into the depths where others fear to tread. But when forbidden knowledge is the ultimate power, how far can they go before the darkness consumes them?

Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly White school, and too White to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too.

Young, ambitious, and in possession of the Mandate of Heaven, Zhu believes utterly in her own capacity to do anything – endure anything – that will bring her closer to being crowned Emperor. But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor, the former courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband – and her powerful kingdom has the strength and resources to wipe Zhu off the map. The only way for Zhu to defeat Madam Zhang is to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the beautiful, traitorous eunuch general Ouyang.

I’ve become what I feared most, and a demon is hunting me for my power. He’s opened a portal to the underworld, and I’m the last piece in his puzzle. If he captures me, he’ll use my magic to desolate the world. The only person who can help me is Damian Malek, a cursed angel. He’s sexy, powerful, and ruthless. The only problem is - our attraction is fatal. When the veil to the underworld breaks, we’ve got one shot to save our world. We’ll have to confront my past, find the secret of my magic, and broker a deal with the angels - a deal that could cost Damian everything.

Emiko Soong, newly minted Sentinel of San Francisco, just can't catch a break. Just after she becomes the guardian for a sentient city, a murder strikes close to home. Called by the city and one of the most powerful clans to investigate, she traces the killer whose scent signature bears a haunting similarity to her mother’s talent.

Magic Side is under attack, and the prison has been cursed. If I can’t break the spell, my city will be overrun. The problem is, my magic is out of control, and I can’t fight this battle alone. There’s only one person to turn to - Damian Malek. But my strongest ally might also be my greatest threat. I’ve discovered what Damian is, and it’s far worse than just being a fallen angel.

A landmark short story collection that put the more character-based New Wave science fiction on the map, Dangerous Visions won several prestigious awards and was nominated for many others. This now-classic anthology includes thirty-three stories by thirty-two award-winning authors, over half of whom have won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.

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.

It’s been twenty-five years since The Midnight Club last convened. A tight-knit group of college friends bonded by late nights at the campus literary magazine, they’re also bonded by something darker: the death of their brilliant friend Jennet junior year. But now, decades later, a mysterious invitation has pulled them back to the pine-shrouded Vermont town where it all began. As the estranged friends gather for a weeklong campus reunion, they soon learn that their host has an ulterior motive: she wants them to uncover the truth about the night Jennet died.

Daniel Abe, a young doctor in Chicago, is finally coming back to Hawai'i. He has his own reason for returning to his childhood home, but it is not to revisit the past, unlike his Uncle Koji. Koji lives with the memories of Daniel’s mother, Mariko, the love of his life, and the scars of a life hard-lived. He can’t wait to see Daniel, who he’s always thought of as a son, but he knows the time has come to tell him the truth about his mother, and his father.

As a descendant of the Chinese god of medicine, Elle was destined to be a doctor. Instead, she’s underemployed as a magical calligrapher at the fairy temp agency. She and her older brother are in hiding from their younger brother, who seeks their deaths to gain their god’s favor. Safety means an order of invisibility with a side of no attachments at the No Fun Allowed store. Elle only relaxes around her client Luc, to whom she’s gotten attached. Oops.

When a second body turns up in a truck stop parking lot, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to rural North Carolina to investigate. These crimes are quickly connected to more. And more. And more. The scope of the crisis balloons. Soon, a task force is formed to work a serial murder case spanning a 1,500 mile stretch of the interstate.

The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd―spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist―accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past―riddled with grief and shame―has never seemed so far away. But then Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun.

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.

Early in life Belle Sorensen discovers the world is made only for men. They own everything: jobs, property, wives. But Belle understands what few others do: where women are concerned, men are weak. A woman unhampered by scruples can take from them what she wants. And so Belle sets out to prove to the world that a woman can be just as ruthless, black-hearted and single-minded as any man. Starting with her long suffering husband, Mads, Belle embarks on a killing spree the like of which has never been seen before nor since.

MediMiracle Corporation manufactures Sophrosyne, a miracle cure for opiate addiction. Ellison Ricard, a research analyst for the company, claims to have uncovered data that proves Black users of Sophrosyne experience fatal side effects far more often than people of other races. When Ricard confronts MediMiracle’s charismatic founder and CEO, Peyton Burke, a violent confrontation ensues. The wheelchair-bound Ricard—a Black man who had been severely injured years earlier—is fired that very day.

For the past four decades, no film saga has touched the world in the way that Star Wars has, capturing the imaginations of filmgoers and filmmakers alike. Now, for the first time ever, Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, the best-selling authors of The Fifty-Year Mission, are telling the entire story of this blockbuster franchise from the very beginning in a single exhaustive volume.

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.

The Dragon Singers of old summoned typhoons and routed armies, liberating mankind from the orcs before fading into legend. Now, with the world again facing a new cataclysm, the power of music stirs in Kaiya, an a naïve misfit with the perfect voice. Without a master to guide her, she must rely on Hardeep, a disgraced foreign paladin, to help awaken her latent magic. His motives might not be entirely noble. When he leads her to the fabled Dragon Scale Lute, which only a Dragon Singer can wield, it is up to Black Lotus Clan to intervene.

But while some days can feel more sad than happy, there's always a bright spot on the horizon. Anna Dewdney and Judy Schachner perfectly blend rhyme, humor, and comfort to show readers the way out of a tough spot--no matter if it's big or small.