Showing results by narrator "John Pirhalla" in All Categories

After more than 20 years in special operations, USMC Gunnery Sergeant Wolf Mathison wasn’t looking forward to retirement when—implanted with an experimental artificial intelligence—he deployed on his last mission with a platoon of Marine Raiders being sent to the Jovian moon Europa. The USS Jefferson was destroyed en route, though, and only Mathison and three other marines survived. Trapped in stasis, they were hurled into the outer reaches of the solar system, where they wouldn’t be found for hundreds of years.

Mike and Beth didn't know each other existed before the night of the meteor shower. A melancholy film producer and a house sitter barely scraping by—chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together, and a shared need for human connection sparked something more. After a drunken and desperate one-night stand, the two strangers awake to discover a surprise astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only part of something much bigger, and far more terrifying.

Charlie Travers has been away from home for a long time, fighting to free the galaxy from the tyranny of the Anguilar Empire. But now the Anguilar know where that home is...and it's only a matter of time before they set their sights on Earth, intent on conquest and enslavement. Charlie doesn't have enough troops or supplies to stop them. And there's only one place he can get them.

With the threat of rogue elementals escaping from the element bond and fear of another attack by the Draasin Lord, life at the edge of Terndahl is difficult for Tolan. Without any magic of his own, he spends his days working a menial job as a carpenter’s apprentice. When an elemental attack draws the attention of the Inquisitors from the Academy, everything changes.

The cursed families of Black River are about to make their final stand. On one side are the survivors of the ancient curse, a nightmare that has plagued their bloodlines for centuries. And standing against them is the sinister and twisted Bell Witch, an evil spirit who lives on in a new host.... Powered by the souls of her victims, the witch’s malignance infests the woods surrounding Black River.

Centuries after being driven from Earth as part of a massive diaspora triggered by an alien invasion, can the Valers face their worst—and unimaginable—nightmare? Can they withstand the might of the Komran Empire as it sweeps across the galaxy in a campaign to conquer all in its path? When the conflict reaches a crisis point, will they recognize that what they see as their greatest strength is their greatest weakness before it’s too late? Sometimes, situations are so ugly that only an ugly solution will suffice.

War crimes investigator and ex-CIA officer Joe Johnson is more than intrigued when he learns of a link between the financing for the presidential candidate's 2012 campaign, the Nazi train, and a ruthless blackmail plot. But the investigation becomes bigger and more deeply personal than Johnson expects when it turns out the SS Holocaust killer escaped his net years earlier. Soon, there are high-level intelligence agencies and criminal networks combining across three continents against Johnson and his two female colleagues.

The skies above Olympus rumble as a long pilgrimage reaches its apex. With Cal having reached his lighthouse and found his way home, the ancient dungeon wakes to a world made from the remnants of the old. Caltopia! A glorious planet, complete with an uncharted sea. A grandfather welcomes Cal home at the end of a great fight and the dawn of a new era. The time for Oaths has come. The memory cores are undone. Odin waits with demons abound, as Artorian delves up ancient heroes from the Divine Dungeon era to help him do the rounds.

Hazard King had always wanted to be an Imperial Fleet officer, just like his father. But he’s a Prince of the Realm, which make things a bit more… complicated. And when Hazard’s parents tell him that they don’t trust his older brother and want Hazard to be the Crown Prince—the heir to the throne—things go from bad to worse. Just when it seems they can’t get any worse, the Empress is attacked.

They called it the Event. The Event changed everything. The earthquakes came first, including the Big One, shattering the Pacific Rim and plunging the world into chaos. Then, the seas came, the skies opened, and the never-ending rain began. But as bad as that was, there is something worse.

Sam Levine knows what it means to struggle. After several missed opportunities, he's been forced to turn his talents to freelance work, picking up whatever dirty job he can find only to make ends meet. But there's an end in sight. An opportunity to change everything. And when a dangerous, high-profile job comes his way, he sees light at the end of the tunnel. Hope has been in rare supply, but even with the dangers inherent in his decision, he puts his life on the line for a chance to elevate his situation.

Being a supernatural assassin and bounty hunter had its perks...until the Trust’s bloody assignments made me question everything. When I found my sister lying in a coma, I became a mercenary, killing vampires to pay her hospital bills and searching desperately for a cure. When my handler offers me a job that could clear my debts and give me answers about what really happened to Cat, I’m all in.

Beneath the light of three moons, the world of Aster Fall lies shattered. Classes are broken, Outsiders are invading, and the future is unknown. The ancient guardians have left and no one knows where they have gone. The fate of the world lies with one young man. Sam Hastern. His family has been cursed by a broken class for the last fifty years. No one has ever managed to level it, condemning them to the lowest paying jobs and life in a barren village.

In his introduction, guest editor S. A. Cosby observes that writing short stories is “a special skill that combines brevity with wit and cleverness and the hint of the existential malaise that imbues crime fiction with its gravitas.” The stories in this collection overflow with gravitas in the most unexpected ways: a cryptic note left on a windshield, a murder for hire meets a game of Mouse Trap, a swipe right on a dating app goes horribly wrong.

The Moonlight Relic sits high atop the Western Reaches, an ancient fortress against invasion from beyond. An age ago, its enchantments were designed to stabilize the dimensions and defend those who lived there, as well as to be a model for other relics of the same type. Not long after it was built, it was shattered in a cataclysmic war.

Charlie Travers didn’t ask to be the leader of a rebellion…but no one else wanted the job. Now that he’s gathered an army and armed them with the deadliest starfighter ever made, the legendary Vanguards, he just needs one more thing: someone who knows how to fly the things. Unfortunately, no one has been behind the stick of a Vanguard in hundreds of years, since the end of the war that threw the galaxy into chaos. Their only hope lays in the legends of a crashed ship, a fighter crew frozen in stasis for centuries.

Abner Fortis joined the International Space Marine Corps for two reasons: to escape a life of drudgery building biodomes for his father’s company and to pay off several billion credits in student loans, which the ISMC promised to do. Every Space Marine starts out as a cherry, though, and Abner is no different. When he makes his first combat drop, or cherry drop, he’s a know-nothing second lieutenant added to the mission roster as an afterthought.

The resistance has been playing defense too long. Now that Charlie knows about the Imperial Redoubt, a starship the size of a planet that guards the Emperor and the bloodline families from all threats, he's decided it's time to take the fight to them. And if trying to infiltrate the heart of the enemy's stronghold is a suicide mission, Charlie, Laranna and Gib can't think of a better way to go out.

In Locksburg, Pennsylvania, a former coal and steel town whose best days seem long past, five thousand residents have toughed it out, and have reasons for both worry and hope as this neglected place teeters between decay and renewal. For some of them, their biggest troubles have just arrived.

Trained to kill from a young age, Gavin Lorren finally escaped that life. No more killing innocents. No more working alone. Holed up in a quiet city that has outlawed magic, Gavin finds himself drawn into dangers unlike any he’s ever faced before. Each job tests him more than the last, and each tied to the kind of magic he’d hoped to avoid.