Showing results by narrator "Nicole Poole" in All Categories

Human descendants of the Earth colony ship Destiny face an incursion into their area of space by a powerful race. The Imperium Empire, which is ruled by the Krackus, is one wormhole away from the humans, and a rim mining planet, Kilmer, would be the alien race’s first contact. Fear rules the company leader. The Krackus represent danger. They sail powerful battleships. Moreover, the Naiad Council reels from the news that an alien race abuts their space. For centuries, humans in the Axis Crossing region thought they were alone.

The sisters’ leader, Miriamal, and three mining chairpersons investigate an unexplored wormhole for possible economic expansion. Aboard the Dominance, they exit the wormhole and are stunned to find the nearby system inhabited. More troubling, technologically advanced warships hold station above the system’s exoplanet. SADEs witness the hasty return of the Dominance and the cessation of messages between Miriamal and Lisa Dyehouse. The Truth Matters partners race against time to save Samuel, and they’re not above leveraging an unreliable criminal hacker.

The Four Horsemen are hunting the most deadly and elusive of fugitives - the White Rose. Despite being wanted and on the run, Callie has no intention of hiding from the angelic fallout that now plagues Kansas City. Never. Master Dracula will stand as a nightmarish specter against the forces of Heaven, Hell, the nephilim, and the Vatican Conclave. But nothing is as simple as it seems in this war.

One monster wants my soul. One man wants my magic. Me? I want to be left alone to live my life out like a dull, one of the lucky people who were born devoid of magic. But that won't happen because being born a Wyrd blood gives me two choices in life: ruler or slave.

As any fan of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic rereader of books. In 2008, then-new science fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her rereading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor. Now this volume presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series.

On a summer night in 1984, 19-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested. Fast forward 2014, 30 years after her assault. Why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget?

The Citadel of Wizards was under siege. Deep in the Vaults beneath the walled city, gates into inhuman realities were opening and closing without warning. Monsters emerged from other dimensions; and ancient, malign magics came to life under the influence of cosmic chaos. Someone was tampering with the Void. The Council of Wizards blamed Antryg Windrose, the rebel mage who had fled their justice to find haven in the City of Angels.

The name's Joey Santana and my twenty-fifth birthday didn't necessarily go as planned. In a world where supernaturals and humans live together, I was attacked, then saved by none other than the Alpha of the Los Angeles Pack. But with survival came a price. And I wasn't sure if I was ready to pay it. Fast forward and I'm waking up the next morning in some stranger's house with a half-naked man coming out of a bathroom. Awkward. And it so happens to be the Alpha's son, Reed Stone. Right off the bat, he knows I'm trouble with a capital T since there haven't been any humans turned into supes since supernaturals were outed five years ago.

This first novel takes us on a journey through the centre of an explosive, illicit relationship that drives into the fragile heart of a family. A young girl and an older man succumb to an incendiary love affair at an unpayable price. As lies are revealed, the characters must pick up the fragments of whom they thought they were and turn towards an awareness of whom they have now become. They must explore the truth of love and the cost of passion.

Once you've felt love, it's hard to let it go. The curse has been unleashed at the stroke of midnight and everything has changed. Everyone who once cared for me is now indifferent. And the one person who loved me unconditionally now hates my guts. I've never felt more alone before in my life. Hiding out with the seelies has been my only option, but when truths unfold, even the seelie aren't safe anymore. With nowhere to turn to and no one to trust, I find an unlikely ally who amidst it all, doesn't hate me.

"Tanjiri is not for you. You are not ready to encounter what exists there." So Lezuri spoke in warning, long ago. Urban still possesses the strange gift—the impossible puzzle—Lezuri gave him that day. A needle, ultra-thin and twelve centimeters long, with a silvery surface that slices light into rainbow glints. All Lezuri's knowledge lies locked within that needle. Urban has only to discover the trick of opening it, to gain that knowledge for himself—but the needle remains an enigma.

The weirdest thing about my life isn't the fact my cat started talking to me. I had it all. Awesome, blossoming business. A cute boyfriend who gave me butterflies. My kids living at home and reconnecting with me. Plus, I was a witch. What should have been the most amazing night turns into a disaster. I'm crushed, in more ways than one. When I recover, it's to find my reality has shifted. My cat can speak. Some of the townsfolk appear to be possessed by demons, and I'm supposed to be sacrificed to free magic.

Priest Rahandras has lived with the darkness trapped inside himself for years. Betrayed by his own brother and forced to watch his clan's brutal annihilation, the only thing Priest wants more than to escape the curse that haunts him - as both man and beast - is to rebuild. Until the mate he's longed for walks into his life with an elder from his past. She's everything he's wished for, and the key to the clan's very survival.

My name is Rachel Sambrook, and I thought I understood the world...until I discovered the world is full of living, breathing monsters. When I teamed up with Lea, I thought we had stopped the experiments on vampire blood. All we did was open a can of wolves we had not expected. The clues we find take us halfway across the world and, to my irritation, leave us depending on two men. One, a werewolf who has his own set of secrets. And the other, a Cazador like Lea...only this one is human and more tempting than I’d like to admit.

If you want to get to heaven, you’ve got to raise a little hell.... Callie Penrose is struggling to find her special purpose in life. Rather than allying with any of the powerful supernatural groups begging to sign her up - the Vatican, the vampires, the shifters, or the Armies of both Heaven and Hell - Callie has been picking fights with all of them. But when she’s abducted by a host of angels, and a greater demon begins hunting her through the daytime streets of Kansas City, Callie learns that her past has come back to haunt her.

One of the Vatican’s most infamous Shepherds has been murdered, and Callie’s friends are the prime suspects. To prove them innocent, Roland and Callie must risk their very souls.... Because Callie can’t reveal that she’s hearing strange whispers when she uses her magic, or that she’s harboring an Angel’s Grace. And if the Shepherds discover the hellish bargain Roland made, the streets of Rome will flow with blood as brother turns against brother.

When a mission in New York City goes terribly wrong, Sienna Nealon finds herself replaced as head of the government agency in charge of policing people with powers beyond those of a normal human. Marginalized, humiliated, she ponders her place in the world now that her war is over. But it isn't long before another threat rears its ugly head, and Sienna finds herself outmatched and outgunned - against former prisoners bent on executing a scheme which will push Sienna past limits of ruthlessness even she could not imagine.

With Creed battling the darkness inside him and an injury the only person who can save him is his true mate—Amelia. But their trust is fragile, while their enemies are strong. It's a passionate, intense battle of good and evil, nowhere near over.

Creed. Addie. Pulled together and torn apart by those who want to use Creed as a weapon. Addie is hurt, tormented, eager to protect herself from Creed. But there is a bond between them unbreakable beyond anything known to mankind. Addie is about to find out just how strong that bond truly is, how impossible to break.

Callie Penrose returns home to find a year has passed, and that everyone believes her long dead. Roland Haviar, once her mentor and now a Master Vampire, has become a bloodthirsty tyrant, fulfilling his vow to bathe the City of Fountains in blood until he avenges her death. And the Vatican Shepherds, once his brothers, stand in his way. In his quest for closure, Roland surrounds the city in a magical barrier that blocks all methods of escape - or help - giving him time to seek out an ancient artifact powerful enough to put an end to everyone and everything once and for all.