Showing results by narrator "Mikael Naramore" in All Categories

A century ago, the world burned. Even now, though rebuilt and defiant, civilization is still choking on the ashes. Jackson, a smuggler, lives in the shadows, once a boy with no memory, no name, and no future. Ravens followed him, long-extinct birds only he could see, and nightmares flew in their wake. Once, Jackson thought himself to be one of the lucky few touched by magic, a candidate for the Order of Mages. He is a man now, and that dream has died. But, the ravens still follow. The nightmares still whisper in his ear.

Alexandra Yorke was a top police clairvoyant, but years of living inside the heads of serial killers has taken its toll. Unable to control her gifts, she retreats from the world, but a few months of peace is all she has before a friend calls in need of help.

Tensions are running high aboard The Camelot, a deep-space exploration vessel. Spending an extended amount of time in close quarters has left most of the crew at each other’s throats, and put their veteran captain in the position of constantly playing peacemaker. As bad as things are, they get markedly worse when The Camelot unknowingly picks up a stowaway: a shapeshifting alien monster who boards their ship and begins killing the crew one by one.

Roleplaying games have come a long way since the 1970s. Possessed of this second edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, you can become and x-treme dungeon master, and as an XDM you'll stand ready for the next 50 years of RPGs.

Comedy doesn't pay. Some might claim that's the wrong cliché, but Chuck Ramsey knows the truth of it all too well. That's why he resorts to crime to pay the bills. His latest scheme isn't to pick up odd, questionably legal jobs near his gigs; this time he's found the perfect opportunity, and he's willing to buy a gig to be in the right place at the right time. All he has to do is get a certain wizard to play his part without knowing it.

War. An old English word derived from the 11th century. But what does the word mean? Death and destruction are the common denominators. In the last century, Earth had two global wars. World War 1 had over 15 million deaths. World War II, over 70 million deaths. Whatever the cost, humans have not learned how to avert wars. Perhaps it would make a difference if we knew where we came from.

Brad went on the run with his sister Michelle. He got away. They're safe. With new identities and a clean start, all Brad has to do is fake being a responsible, law-abiding adult until Michelle turns 18...in nine years. But how long can an incorrigible delinquent keep that up? Meanwhile, Chuck goes out of his mind trying to find his missing kids. With Mort along to help, they crisscross the galaxy, searching for a trail. Family friends haven't seen or heard anything, leaving the pair to confront a hard truth.

On the heels of a crazy, dangerous scheme that he barely got away with, Chuck Ramsey presses his luck and keeps trying. But on Ganymede, in the heart of Sol's wine country, in the territory of a small but ruthless local criminal syndicate, his luck runs out. Chuck sends off quick comms to the rest of the family to get them back to the ship on the double.

After a glorious run as the world’s first full-immersion VR mega-game, Armored Souls is on its last legs. Competitors are on the rise, and the company’s own projects are surpassing it. In a last-ditch effort to inject new life into the game, Valhalla West announces a tournament with such an awesome prize that no player can resist. Reggie has led Wounded Legion to the top ranks of the factions on the Armored Souls servers, but the game has gotten easy for him. Too easy.

Reggie King lives his life in the Armored Souls universe. But there’s more to the game than taking missions as they come. Even turning a secret asteroid base into a kickass man cave only holds appeal for so long. There comes a time when a platoon of mercenaries either needs to join up with a major faction. Or create one. With the founding of Wounded Legion, Reggie takes on responsibility for building and recruiting an elite fighting force capable of conquering planets.

A war is raging in the galaxy, a diversion, a means of keeping beings from several planets from realizing the deceit in which their leaders are cooperatively engaged. Genocide is taking place, threatening to wipe out an entire species, and the only hope for these gentle beings requires that one of them have the courage to make a dangerous and lonely journey through space and merge with a creature from another world. Quizan Azah braves the journey, merging with a human, Cole, creating a powerful new species, the Trekachaw, setting in motion the events that may ultimately restore peace.

A book can open an entire world of experience or provide a recipe for meatloaf. Either is wonderful to Lewis Buzbee, who has spent much of his life in bookstores as a bookseller, a sales representative, and a customer. In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Buzbee celebrates the unique experience of the bookstore - the smell and touch of books, getting lost in the deep canyons of shelves, and the silent community of readers.

As Norway’s newly appointed minister of justice, child-rights advocate Clara Lofthus has a chance to accomplish something meaningful on behalf of the most vulnerable members of society. It couldn’t be more personal. After her husband’s death, she is the sole caretaker of her twin sons, Andreas and Nikolai. She’s also still haunted by her own traumatic childhood—and the lengths to which she was willing to go to pursue her own brand of vigilante justice. How far? No one ever needs to know. And this is just one of Clara’s secrets.

With humanity out in the open, Eve and her sisters are now the subject of worldwide adoration—and constant surveillance. With Eve as humanity’s spokeswoman, it’s up to her to bargain for the freedom she craves. But Eve’s pleas fall on deaf ears. Hers is only one voice, lost in a committee of robots hundreds of years her senior. No amount of earnestness can overcome the crushing inertia of the Human Committee. With no prospect of gaining room to breathe within the rules, Eve hatches a plot to escape and finds out exactly why the robots have tried so hard to keep the humans safe.

Charlie7 has his secrets. Every robot knows that history has a dark period where he was the only one alive, with no one to corroborate his story. That was before an old adversary, long believed dead, emerges from hiding to expose Charlie7 as a fraud. With a newfound internship mixing new robotic personalities, Rachel Eighteen stumbles across an old file in the archive that no robot can access. The data it contains could upset the underpinnings of the thousand-year-old robotic civilization.

Eve has responsibilities now. As chairwoman of the Human Welfare Committee, she is humanity’s voice in a world run by robots. Her job includes approving geneticists who want to engage in ethical human cloning as well as overseeing the agency that hunts down threats to mankind. So when one of her sisters vanishes, Eve can’t afford to abandon her post to personally search. Eve’s agents hunt for her missing sister, but in the process, they run afoul of some influential robots.

Martian terraformer Kaylee Fourteen is a recent immigrant from Earth. Residents of the domed colonies of Mars can practically smell the day they’ll be able to walk outdoors on their own planet without the need for air supplies. But the committees on Earth control the resources the colonists need, and their interference threatens the terraforming project’s very existence. Until a group of radicals takes hostages to force the release of the tech and materials the terraformers need.

A new generation of humans has entered adulthood. Raised by robots, these freshly minted citizens of Earth struggle to fit into a society that has gotten by without them for a thousand years. Until Alex Truman shows them a new path. Raised by Charlie7 and cloned from the original Charles Truman, Alex feels that it's his right to rule mankind. With the entirety of human history as his guide, he learns from the successes and failures of the Human Era and puts them to use against a society that's completely unprepared to oppose him.

Games were made to be broken. Gary Burns has been kidnapped, thrown in a dungeon, and tortured for information. Worst of all, he’s been separated from his friends, so no one even knows where to look for him. Cut off from his support network, Gary uses the only tools at his disposal: A silver tongue and an insider’s knowledge of the game world that’s second to none. With a makeshift party of former foes, Gary must not only escape his captor but plan for payback.

Fresh off their defeat of the lich’s army, Gary and his friends find themselves preparing for an even larger threat. While unlocking elder magic gave them the juice they needed to turn aside one foe, it uncorked the bottle holding back an ancient evil. Gary knows what’s coming because he wrote it. Now, with political responsibilities crushing him from one side and a demonic army looming on the other, Gary must balance the necessity of victory with the means to achieve it. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons and old TSR novels will love Hero Time.