Showing results by narrator "Neil Hellegers" in All Categories

In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival freak Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles' death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband's murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. During Mary Teresa's dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book.

All Azure wants to do is leave The Realm, but the Bower Boys throw a wrench in his plans. Mistakes that Azure made when he first joined The Adventurers Guild come back to haunt him. Uden flexes between good and evil once more as he's put in a precarious situation. Is vengeance worth endangering all of your friends and possibly dying for? Azure answers that question with steel, taking a path he never thought he'd travel. Once he set foot down it, there was no going back. Decisions were made and someone will pay the ultimate price.

Ted Finley is your average suburban nerd, but when a group of thugs threaten to kill innocent people, something incredible happens. Gifted superhuman abilities during a seemingly random brunch, Ted quickly transforms from a nobody into a viral video sensation. Forced to navigate school and life with his newfound powers and fame proves to be difficult, but Ted’s biggest challenge lies ahead. He’s not the only one with powers....

For almost thirty years, Shirley Jackson Award–winning horror author Gemma Files has consistently served up tale after tale celebrating monstrosity in all its forms: the imperfect, the broken, the beautifully alien, and the sadly familiar. Her characters make their own choices and take their own chances, slipping from darkness into deeper darkness yet never losing their humanity—not even when they’re anything but.

For teenagers Chris and Miles, working at the city zoo in the summer is a pretty sweet gig. They chase girls, smoke a little dope, and avoid thinking about their rapidly approaching futures. One is headed to college, and one to…who knows? But then the Zombie Apocalypse hits, and things get weird. Deadly animals, psychotic house painters, and a face-humping lemur named Sexy Rexy all get thrown into the mix, with plenty of laughs and chills to go around.

In The Dinosaur Tourist, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s 15th collection of short fiction, 19 tales of the unexpected and the uncanny explore that treacherous gulf between what we suppose the world to be and what might actually be waiting out beyond the edges of our day-to-day experience. A mirror may be a window into another time. A cat may be our salvation. Your lover may be a fabulous being. And a hitchhiker may turn out to be anyone at all.

There ain't no rest for the wicked. And new mods don't grow on trees. But it seems enemies do. Gaining power in Artem is hard, but keeping it can be harder. With their budding new corporation and expanding gang territory attracting covetous eyes, the battle is just beginning for Oshbob and Unara. And while it's sometimes hard for an orc to accept, violence isn't always the answer. Oshbob and his band of loyal followers are going to have to be smart and play the game if they're to survive what's coming.

Tasked with killing the Eastern spy known as Nadine, as well as risking his life to get information by traveling to a foreign country, Roman develops an exit strategy with a lot of working parts, some of which he has absolutely no control over. Exploiting telepaths, tricking his companions, his government, and even his former teacher, Roman does everything within his power to bring his exit strategy to fruition. But he's still being hunted by Margo, and once the Centralian Government learns of what he's been up to, Roman's enemies grow exponentially.

There are no victors in war. That's the refrain that goes through Matt Fang's mind. With losses mounting, not just among his units but his Heroes too, Matt is struggling with confidence and the mounting pressure. That's, of course, when a ship is sighted on the horizon; opening up a whole new front. In the final volume of the Magic Kingdom at War series, Matt is about to learn the reason why. Whether it's enough, well... even he's not certain.

With multiple enemy lords on each front, Matt has quite the challenge before him. Even with the multiple cities he's conquered, balancing the need for more units, future updates and traitorous lords is straining his patience and knowledge. Now, the enemy armies are coming, on all sides. And the only question is whether he can hold them off and push forward, before they overwhelm his defences.

Bloodsport is the story of the creation of America's deal culture and the battle for control of America's corporations. Told through the fascinating, complex, and often flawed characters who created a new era, it begins as the '60s are ending, with the rise of the conglomerates, those vast assemblages of corporate assets. It rolls through the crisis-wracked '70s and the birth of the hostile deal then careens into the '80s, when the deal culture of mergers and acquisitions is truly unleashed.

In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy’s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. Within this book, you’ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakable and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime.

Orphans of deep space... They're outlaws now. Created to serve a function grown obsolete, haunted by the holographic ghost of their father, Ubu and Maria have lived their entire lives skating along the edge of extinction. Now they and their ship, Runaway, are in flight both from the law and from a predatory clan of competitors. They're going to come back rich or not at all. But what they find in the depths of space isn't wealth, but a secret so startling that Ubu and Maria will need every last reserve of guile, cunning, and intelligence just to survive.

This collection of 22 short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow.

The only thing worse than an assassin is a zombie assassin. And this killer is no ordinary zombie, and Cisco Suarez, the Miami Police Department's resident supernatural consultant and a practicing necromancer, has to untangle his story and solve the case.

Eric McCaffrey has been playing Zag in the VR-MMOFPS Battlegrounds Online for a while now. The more he plays, the more entrenched into the game he gets. It hardly even feels like a game anymore. Zag, now one of the commandos for the Knights of the Tactical Operations Group, is tasked with freeing Punta del Muerta from the terrorist group Wyvern. Along with the rest of the Knights, Zag will dive deep into the jungles, war-torn cities, and concrete bunkers, but will he be able to complete all the missions in time?

After escaping with the information they needed, Kyle and his team must plan their next move. While working hard to discover many things about himself, his shipmates, and his denti body, Kyle finds not one...but three stowaways. An exotic female Kiain who helps him unlock his Kenosi potential, and a deadly Sitha mother protecting her young son. He doesn’t throw them out of the airlock, but pirate and monster infested space isn’t exactly the safest place to be raising a child.

Their work complete, Kyle and his guild leave Tolsa. The rebellion against Arndale is spreading, the economy is destroyed. They took everyone with them when they fled the doomed world, including their new allies the M-Wolves. Kyle wants to begin his final missions: rescue his familiar, meet Motaki’s mech challenge, and save the Denti homeworld. Yet, Kyle is nowhere near ready, and he knows it. They must upgrade and train every possible second, or everything will be lost. Arndale has other plans, and attacks the orphans on Cinna forcing Kyle to reverse course.

In her second collection from Trepidatio Publishing, award-winning author Gemma Files takes her listeners on journeys out beyond safe borders—from the trackless depths of the sea, to the empty desert frontiers of the Weird West, even to the edges of cracks between worlds. Here, in these narrow spaces between the known and the unknown, behind the paper-thin curtains of reality, lurk monsters both human and ancient: selkies and avenging revenants, voodoo priestesses and pirate sorcerers, ghosts and vampires, and the most famous murderer of all time.

Micah fought the Third Prince of Elsewhere once. He was defeated more thoroughly than he had ever thought possible. Even when he fled from his failure through time itself, the prince pursued him, dogged and unwilling to give up on an injured quarry. The gods gave him a quest: gather the artifacts needed so that he could contend with an evil capable of devouring existence itself. He fought and bled, finally acquiring the tools he thought he would need for the climactic battle waiting for him when he returned home. Unfortunately, his adventures didn't prepare him for one simple truth.