Showing results by author "R L King" in All Categories

When a portal trip home to visit Aubrey on a stormy Halloween night goes awry, Alastair Stone finds himself in a bizarre, alternate-reality version of his idyllic, wealthy adopted hometown, Encantada. Not that much is different, really—except nobody can leave, most of the population doesn’t seem to know or care, and terrifying monsters prowl the streets when the sun goes down.

It's hard enough for Alastair Stone to keep his two lives - powerful mage and mundane Occult Studies professor - separate without an old friend asking him to take on a new apprentice. Especially after a university colleague wants him to investigate a massive old house for things that go bump in the night. Still, Stone figures it's an easy job: just turn up, put on a little show, and announce that the house is clean. Only it isn't. A malevolent spirit is reawakening in the basement.

When a friend asks Alastair Stone to question a disturbed child who's committed a horrific act, Stone has no idea what kind of rabbit hole he's starting down. His investigations uncover more instances of appalling crimes, all committed by people with no history of violence. And other people have turned up missing.

Alastair Stone figures using tracking magic to help Jason Thayer and his new wife Amber find a missing child will be a good diversion. At least it will take his mind off a summer that, without Verity around, is shaping up to be a lot less eventful than he’d hoped. But when the boy’s kidnapper turns out to be a mage — one who’s using the public portal network to steal children for some mysterious purpose of his own — Stone, Jason, and Amber are thrown into a terrifying web of mystery, mad science, and deadly peril.

Alastair Stone had long thought the ability to interfere with arcane energy to be the holy grail of magical study. Until a piece of an item capable of doing just that turns up in a collection of mundane occult art, and someone nearly kills one of his colleagues while trying to steal it.

It’s been a rough and harrowing few months for Alastair Stone and his closest friends—but despite all the mayhem they get up to together, they still have separate lives that sometimes take them in very different directions.

It starts with an article from Jason's crank file. Some campers have discovered an unconscious "space alien" in the wilds of Colorado. Every mention of the story quickly vanishes from the internet - but not before Alastair Stone gets a look at the single, blurry photo. The "space alien" looks tantalizingly familiar....

When Alastair Stone’s former apprentice Verity approaches him with the story of a drugged and caged Changeling she spotted at a magical black market in Europe, Stone is quick to offer his aid to locate the victim. Once on the Changeling’s trail, though, Stone and Verity soon discover they have stumbled upon the tip of a horrific iceberg—a shadowy organization operating deep underground, kidnapping specifically-targeted Changelings for an unspeakable fate.

Alastair Stone is surprised when a long-forgotten friend breaks his self-imposed silence to contact him. It seems that two other allies from his past have disappeared without a trace, and Stone's tracking magic might be the only way to find them. Should be simple. Right? But as Stone delves into the deepening mystery, he finds connections to unexpected avenues: old enemies, forbidden magic, and even Verity's group of San Francisco vigilantes.

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times best-selling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: Ask some of the world's greatest writers-regardless of genre - to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The results are surprising and joyous.

When Kolinsky asks Alastair Stone to investigate a curious anomaly near a familiar location, Stone is ready to find a connection between the two. What he's not ready to find is an old friend he thought was dead for eleven years. A friend who's got more than one shocking bombshell to drop on him - including an unexpected companion - before she goes on the run and disappears.

It was meant to be a simple few days away: Verity heading off for a much-needed girls’ weekend in New York City. But then comes her desperate call to Alastair Stone: A terrifying disaster has occurred, killing dozens of people - including a dear friend. When Stone joins her to investigate, they quickly discover that magic is behind the catastrophe. Even worse, it’s magic that isn’t even supposed to exist. As a long-simmering disagreement explodes into a rift between Stone and a grief-stricken Verity, Stone learns that things are even worse than he feared.

Wracked with guilt and rage following the death of an ally he felt he should have prevented, Alastair Stone wants nothing more than to track down the murderer and exact violent revenge. The Universe, however, has other plans. For one, the dragons want to put him on trial for revealing sensitive information to his friends, with the penalty for losing the case potentially worse than death.

When Trevor Harrison founded New Argana, he envisioned it as a place magical and nonmagical people could call home without fear of the powerful and sadistic Talented. An arcane shield protected them from the deadly magic of the Calanarian Wastes and allowed them to live in peace.

For Alastair Stone, problems rarely come one at a time. He’s busy helping an old friend with a case of blackmail, when he’s contacted about a mysterious wave of minor crimes in the Oakland area - one that might involve magic. He asks Verity to look into it. When tragedy strikes, and the petty crime spree leads to a friend's disastrous near-death, Stone hurries home to investigate the situation himself. What he finds suggests terrifying new connections to a problem he thought he’d already dealt with.

Alastair Stone isn't proud of the dark deeds of his family's past, but he thought they were just that: past. But when a routine renovation of his ancestral home releases a horde of angry spirits bent on vengeance against anyone of his blood, he soon learns that his family's horrific acts were even worse than he ever could have imagined. Driven from his home, Stone must rally his most trusted friends and allies to discover the truth and find a way to exorcise the relentless spirits.

When Alastair Stone investigates a tale of odd events at an abandoned Midwestern paper mill, he figures it's just another hoax. After all, he's seen hundreds of them in his career. He soon discovers this one isn't a hoax, though - and neither is the backwoods hunter who's suddenly developed healing abilities in Pennsylvania...Stone knows he has to get to the bottom of this supernatural mystery - no matter how many enemies he has to make in the process. And when he finally does learn the truth, it comes with the horrifying revelation that he might already have made a terrible mistake.

A father's sins. A son's wrath. An enemy's revenge. When a shadowy, sinister organization begins killing apprentices, Alastair Stone is determined to track down the people pulling its strings. But Stone’s life quickly spirals into chaos when a young man contacts him - claiming to be his son.

When a police detective approaches Alastair Stone to consult on a grisly occult-related murder, he initially considers it nothing more than an intriguing puzzle to fill a few dull late-summer hours. But then the detective becomes a victim, and the murderer begins taunting Stone, daring him to discover the truth before more of his friends join the list of targets. As he delves deeper into the case, Stone soon learns that the murderer isn't human - and has committed similar crimes in the past.

With Jason and Verity in southern California, Alastair Stone quickly discovers he misses his best friends and favorite confidants far more than he expected to. It isn't long, though, before he's got some new matters to occupy his mind: a student who may have fallen under the influence of a magical cult leader, and a budding relationship with a sexy, intelligent, and stunningly beautiful woman who's everything he never dared to dream of.