Showing results by narrator "Luke Daniels" in All Categories

"The Big Guys" - Flash fiction, winner of the Derringer Award. "A Fistful of Cozy" - A satire of the mystery cozy genre. "Cleansing" - An ancient crime of biblical proportions. "Lying Eyes" - Solve it yourself, given the clues."Perfect Plan" - Another solve it yourself. Don't you remember One Minute Mysteries and Encyclopedia Brown? "Piece of Cake" - Another solve it yourself, originally featured in Woman's World.

It's one minute after the Big One. Marty Slack, a TV executive, crawls out from under his Mercedes, parked outside what once was a downtown Los Angeles warehouse. Downtown LA is in ruins. The sky is thick with smoke. His cell phone is dead. The freeways are rubble. It will be days before help can arrive. Marty has been expecting this day all his life. He's prepared. He knows there is only one thing he can do... that he must do: get home to his wife, Beth.

Seven years ago, young Stella Pierce vanished from the face of the earth. Now her grieving, broken family - along with Detective Orson Cheever, who never stopped working her case - is stunned by her mysterious return. The now-teenage girl claims to have spent her missing years in the company of Travelers - extraterrestrial nomads - voyaging through space. Despite her family's effort to keep Stella's incredible tale secret, the story becomes a national sensation.

When a merchant appears at the Catalonian chapter house of the Shield-Brethren, seeking to hire guards for his caravan, young Andreas is suspicious. Knights with his martial prowess are above protecting mere cargo wagons. Yet Andreas’s wanderlust outweighs his concern, and soon the group is headed to the merchant’s mountain village - and into great danger. As the caravan approaches, a woman suffering from terrifying visions feverishly paints her latest revelation - in her own blood. The image horrifies her fellow villagers, who fear an imminent attack, or worse, the return of the brutal Inquisition.

A severed head and a cry of “Witchcraft!” start a frenzied witch hunt in a sleepy German village. When her dead husband’s severed head appears on her doorstep, a local woman is charged with practicing heretical rituals. It is up to the knights to discover the truth behind the brutal murder before the torches are lit and the woman is burned at the stake. Their task proves daunting, though, as the townspeople have their own long-buried secrets and sins that they want to keep hidden - even if it means allowing the sacrifice of an innocent woman.

Closeted teenager Jeremy is sent to live with wealthy relatives after his mother enters rehab. Struggling to fit into the posh world of Ballena Beach, Jeremy joins the high school swim team, dates a popular girl, and begins to think he may have landed in paradise - until his great aunt Katharine starts to dictate his every move…and a late-night phone call insinuates that his father’s accidental death was not so accidental after all. As Jeremy grows accustomed to the veneer of a fabulous life, so grows his need for answers - as well as the danger of immeasurable harm.

When linguist Andrew Dennison is yanked from his bed by the Secret Service and taken to a top secret facility in the desert, he has no idea he's been brought there to translate the words of an ancient demon. He joins pretty but cold veterinarian Sun Jones, eccentric molecular biologist Dr. Frank Belgium, and a hodge-podge of religious, military, and science personnel to try and figure out if the creature is, indeed, Satan. But things quickly go bad, and very soon Andy isn't just fighting for his life, but the lives of everyone on earth…

A 39-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Edward Stanton lives alone on a rigid schedule in the Montana town where he grew up. His carefully constructed routine includes tracking his most common waking time (7:38 a.m.), refusing to start his therapy sessions even a minute before the appointed hour (10:00 a.m.), and watching one episode of the 1960s cop show Dragnet each night (10:00 p.m.). But when a single mother and her nine-year-old son move in across the street, Edward’s timetable comes undone....

The details of the crime scene are no coincidence. The body — a promising starlet — has been battered, bloodied and then discarded between two of Manhattan’s oldest graveyards. One look and Detective Jude Crosby recognizes the tableau: a re-creation of Jack the Ripper’s gruesome work. But he also sees something beyond the actions of a mere copycat. Something more dangerous...and unexplainable.

Ten years ago, the Empath known as the Black Death battled the Legion of Heroes and laid waste to a continent. Infused with the blood of countless superhuman victims, he struck down the Legion one by one, until only its leader, Captain Dawn, remained. When the smoke finally cleared, the Black Death was vanquished—but at a terrible cost to both Captain Dawn and the world . . . Now, the students and staff of Morningstar Academy hope Matt Callaghan, who they believe is a clairvoyant, will lead them to a bright and glorious future.

Addisyn leads her band of Sparrows, clashing with other groups in a daily struggle for dominance. Stranded here against his will, Trew searches for a way to leave this reality and continue searching for his daughter. Danielle ensures the Game and society run as intended, all the while wondering if her husband and daughter are safe. A field of orbs glow brightly as an old man wearing pop bottle cap gloves watches them with keen interest, and a young woman learns that she is much more than a sentient computer program…

Alien invaders have come to Earth. Rade, vacationing in the south of France, is mightily pissed to have his liberty time so rudely interrupted by these extraterrestrials. But he was willing to let it go. He was done fighting wars, and more than ready to leave the grunt work to the professionals. But then the aliens made the mistake of bringing his family into the equation. Ouch. The invaders were counting on humanity falling quickly. What they weren't counting on was Rade's fury.

Rade and his team have joined forces with a new ally to hunt a rogue alien on a lava world. He intends to use a research station on the planet as his base of operations. Unfortunately, when the team arrives at the station, the research scientists are not quite who they appear to be.

Jesse seems like a normal sixteen-year-old, but he isn't. He is a victim of King - a ruthless hacker who has been blackmailing Jesse with incriminating screen photos and videos. So far, Jesse's given in to King's demands in order to protect his family. But now King wants something that's too horrible to contemplate - and if he doesn't get it, King will kill Jesse's little sister.

When a beautiful journalist drowns mysteriously off Waikiki, former Special Forces veteran Pono Hawkins, now a well-known surfer and international surfing correspondent, quickly gets caught up in trying to solve her death. What he learns soon targets him for murder or life in prison as a cabal of powerful energy corporations, foreign killers and crooked politicians focuses the blame on him.

Malem has joined the forces of good and wages war against the vast host of Vorgon, the Balor who has come to destroy the world. Malem has four beautiful women fighting at his side, one of them a former general of Vorgon's army - a night elf tamed by his unique skill. He also has a few hill giants and other monsters ready to follow him to the gates of hell itself.

Rade and the Argonauts hunt a fugitive alien to a colonized world. Embedded within the most populous city, the rogue is hidden in plain sight. Unable to obtain clearance from the local authorities, Rade and his team must sneak inside the city and quietly capture the rogue without alerting law enforcement. The operation won’t be easy. The city’s security forces have drones and mechs watching on every street corner, and the alien fugitive himself is known for his cunning, resourcefulness, and cruelty.

Ben Dailey's Viper Company has one motto: Play hard and fight even harder. The crew is comprised of some of the most elite fighters in the Fleet, though occasionally overconfident and, some might say, obnoxious. So when Dailey is handed down a mysterious, high-security mission that's ostensibly a search-and-rescue for his once-upon-a-time academy rival turned brother in arms, he's convinced there's more to the job than meets the eye. Soon, the USF Murphy is on its way to the edge of the Void to track down what happened to Capt. Rick Bearing and the Asher-5.

Capt. Ben Dailey knows his team will always get the job done—no matter what it takes . . . or what rules they have to break. Whenever the Federation is threatened, they're one of the first units to the front lines to save their comrades' skin, salvage important assets, and kick some invader ass. But when Dailey's ship, the USF Murphy, is sent to the edge of the Void to help a planet under attack, what should be a simple rescue-and-recon mission turns out to be a political quagmire with potentially apocalyptic consequences.

Contains books one and two of the Renegade series: The Renegade and The Deal.