Showing results by narrator "Michael Troy" in All Categories

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success.

"You may now kiss your bride". They were the last words my mother heard before she collapsed on the church steps, poison ending her pitifully short life. When her new husband dies minutes later, all eyes turn to me. There are whispers. Accusations. The verdict is split. I murdered them both. Or I'm the next to die.

Beaten, drugged, and tied, I sink beneath the surface. Water invades my mouth. It seeps down my throat and fills my lungs until breathing becomes a desperate memory. My only hope are the three men who know the evil of my attacker. If I make it through this, we can’t fail again. A murderer needs to be found. Caleb needs to pay for what he did to me. He has another woman held hostage, bound, and gagged. But she’s not the only one. There are others who will befall the same fate as me if Caleb and his friends aren’t stopped.

At the edge of a grave, one man lies dead. Another flees, leaving behind a trail of destruction and heartbreak. In the middle, I’m left with a sister I didn’t know I had and three men I’m falling hopelessly in love with. But new threats endanger our happiness at every turn. Secrets hide in corners and evil lurks in the darkness. Caleb won’t stop until one of us is dead. Until my rebel heart beats for the final time. Or until I rip his out.

Abandoned by her allies, the Republic of Venice holds out as the last beacon of resistance against the hobgoblin armies. Armed with new weapons the Southern Horde drives upon the floating city by land and sea. The Northern Horde drives deep into the heart of Europa and all fall before it. The Horde is vast beyond measure. Assassin daggers lurk in every shadow. Necrotic evil seeps and infects.

The Odradek is an imaginary creature that appears in the short story "The Concerns of a Family Man" by Franz Kafka . The physical description of the Odradek shows it as a flat, star-shaped spool of thread, with the addition of a few other appendages. Later in the story, Kafka gives the Odradek more human characteristics, being able to stand on two legs and speak. The narrator even gets to have a few conversations with the Odradek, during which the creature's nomadic and possibly immortal nature is emphasized.

On the eve of the year 2001 a vast crowd of interested spectators were present amidst the romantic ruins of Cohen’s Garage, on the former site of New York, to witness a fistic encounter between two renowned champions of the strange-story firmament Two-Gun Bob, the Terror of the Plains, and Knockout Bernie, the Wild Wolf of West Shokan. [The Wolf was fresh from his correspondence course in physical training, sold to him by Mr. Arthur Leeds.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is relayed by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity while simultaneously describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, and he hides the body by dismembering it, and hiding it under the floorboards.

The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 and written as a frame narrative. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle.

"Hop-Frog or the Eight Chained Orangutans" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1849. The title character, a person with dwarfism taken from his homeland, becomes the jester of a king particularly fond of practical jokes. Taking revenge on the king and his cabinet for the king's striking his friend and fellow dwarf Trippetta, he dresses the king and his cabinet as orangutans for a masquerade. In front of the king's guests, Hop-Frog murders them all by setting their costumes on fire before escaping with Trippetta.

When Dr. Watson returns to London from a weekend seminar, he finds hat Sherlock Holmes has been arrested. Inspector Lestrade refers Watson to a questionable psychiatric hospital where Holmes is jailed for mental incapacity.

"The Knock at the Manor Gate" is a short story by Franz Kafka. The short story illustrates many important themes in Kafka's works. The narrator details a ride with his sister on the way towards home. His sister playfully knocks on the door of a large house. This knock proves to have grave consequences. The owner is a person of great power and sends troops after the two of them. The narrator describes the tale as one of warning, that small actions can have big consequences in life, as he is about to be tortured.

"The Fir-Tree" is a literary fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). The tale is about a fir tree so anxious to grow up, so anxious for greater things, that he cannot appreciate living in the moment. The tale was first published 21 December 1844 with "The Snow Queen", in Copenhagen, Denmark, by C.A. Reitzel. One scholar (Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager) indicates that "The Fir-Tree" was the first of Andersen's fairy tales to express a deep pessimism.

The Story of the Last Trump is a humorous, symbolic tale with a theological theme, albeit somewhat esoteric. It was first published in 1915 and is the final chapter in a satirical literary work, titled “Boon”. Upon publication the author of the book was given as Reginald Bliss and initially Wells denied being the writer of the work, officially only having written the introduction. However Reginald Bliss was but a Nom de Plume. The book received mixed reviews and did not sell well.

"The Hound" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in September 1922 and published in the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales. It contains the first mention of Lovecraft's fictional text the Necronomicon. "The Hound" contains several references to the body of lore known as the Cthulhu Mythos that Lovecraft shared with other horror writers. Most notably, it marks the first appearance of one of Lovecraft's most famous literary creations-the forbidden book known as the Necronomicon.

"The Christmas Tree and the Wedding Christmas Story" is a short Christmas-Story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The other day I saw a wedding... But no! I would rather tell you about a Christmas tree. The wedding was superb. I liked it immensely. But the other incident was still finer. I don't know why it is that the sight of the wedding reminded me of the Christmas tree. This is the way it happened.

When Dr. Watson returns to London from a weekend seminar, he finds hat Sherlock Holmes has been arrested. Inspector Lestrade refers Watson to a questionable psychiatric hospital where Holmes is jailed for mental incapacity.

When Dr. Watson returns to London from a weekend seminar, he finds hat Sherlock Holmes has been arrested. Inspector Lestrade refers Watson to a questionable psychiatric hospital where Holmes is jailed for mental incapacity.

"The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, in February 1928. The story's narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, recounts his discovery of various notes left behind by his great uncle, George Gammell Angell, a prominent Professor of Semitic languages at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who died during the winter of 1926 after being "jostled by a nautical-looking negro".

Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim - though, if you will notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true that this one was called Jim. He didn't have any sick mother either - a sick mother who was pious and had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt that the world might be harsh and cold towards him when she was gone.