Showing results by narrator "Michael Braun" in All Categories

Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called "Creedish Death Cult" - is dictating his incredible life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity and crash into the vast Australian outback.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Röschenberg has inherited a ghost train and its members of the undead are very lively! And it's a suspenseful time for our young Ghostsitter: Vlarad the vampire has consumed too much hamster blood and has now turned into one, and Wombie the Zombie's hundredth deathday is coming right up. But the ritual for celebrating Wombie's deathday is no easy task: It requires a voodoo dagger, a magic ring, and an enchanted cauldron, and if Tom and his undead friends don't perform the ritual in time, Wombie will turn to dust.

Think you've had a bad day at work? Marcus definitely takes the cake. First, he had a horrible customer during his shift. Then he got fired by his boss. And after that, he got shot to death during a robbery. To top it all off, he awakened within the body of a weak and strange creature in a fantasy world full of deadly monsters. And that's just Monday!

A nuclear attack in the Persian Gulf wrongly implicates Jake Bayard. Everyone seems to be hunting for him. Bayard flees to Garm, an ice-age world full of sabertooths, dire wolves, mammoths, and Neanderthals. Unfortunately, Institute Homo habilises are also there: extraterrestrial, crafty, small, and deadly hominids. They've enslaved the Neanderthals to mine for dreaded alibite.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

Zoe Morgan's childhood was marked by her younger sister's tragic illness, watching as her parents dedicated themselves completely to her final days, and then later divorced. As a young woman, driven by these painful memories, Zoe set the bar high for herself, studying hard and pursuing a career in the nonprofit world, where her deep compassion towards disadvantaged children finds a focus.

The year is AD 316. Imperial persecution has officially ended. For the first time in history, the Roman emperor supports the church. But the fledgling faith’s future still hangs in the balance. Flavia, a Roman senator’s daughter, is sent from her convent by Bishop Sylvester to seek Emperor Constantine’s permission to determine the canon of scripture and build great churches where pagan temples once stood. But God’s enemies are on the move, and the path to the bishop’s goals is fraught with peril.

In 1974, Dennis Lynn Rader stalked and murdered a family of four in Wichita, Kansas. Since adolescence, he had read about serial killers and imagined becoming one. Soon after killing the family, he murdered a young woman and then another, until he had 10 victims. He named himself “B.T.K.” (bind, torture, kill) and wrote notes that terrorized the city. He remained on the loose for 30 years.

It is AD 312. Rome teeters on the brink of war. Constantine's army is on the move. On the Rhine frontier, Brandulf Rex, a pagan Germanic barbarian, joins the Roman army as a spy and special-forces operative. Down in Rome, Junia Flavia, the lovely and pious daughter of a nominally Christian senator, finds herself embroiled in anti-Christian politics as she works on behalf of the church.

After more than a decade of tumult, Roman warrior Rex and his beloved wife, Flavia, are thankful to the God they serve for the peaceful life they are living in the city of Alexandria. But with the empire in flux, such tranquility cannot last. When Rex is called away to serve Constantine in his fight against Licinius, Flavia’s loneliness and longing for a baby lead her down the road of temptation. Perhaps one of Egypt’s gods will grant her conception?

Faith Ferguson is New York's most in-demand wedding planner, an arbiter of taste for elegant affairs, lavish ceremonies, and exclusive fêtes. She appreciates a simple celebration as much as a dazzling event, for she knows that a dream wedding is not necessarily the most expensive one. As much as Faith enjoys her work, her two failed engagements leave her with no desire to get married herself. She finds fulfillment in her close relationship with her twin sister, Hope, her role as a mentor for her assistant, Violet, and her career.

Dante's Inferno, his depiction of hell, was written while Europe was suffering through war, famine, the corruption of the Church, and the evils of the pogrom - the brutal massacre of countless Jews. Shortly after Dante's passing, the black plague killed off half the world's population, an end-of-days-like event that birthed a legend depicted in paintings and dance: the Grim Reaper. What few people know is that Dante's poem draws inspiration from the Zohar, an ancient text that warns that the true end of days will be brought on by the corruption of man.

Jake Bayard led tormented Neanderthals in a successful slave revolt on the planet Garm. But when the Corporation owners fled, they took all the women with them. The Neanderthals are blaming Bayard for their lack of mates, and every day that passes is making the lonely brutes angrier. Bayard needs a solution fast, or his former friends are going to string him up. He decides to risk a raid onto Saddoth where millions of Ophidians eat and keep herds of meat Neanderthals. He can only take nine with his traveling power—nine to free nubile females for the Neanderthals of Garm.

It was supposed to be a peaceful exploration, Earth's first step in expanding to the stars. But, no plan survives first contact. Thrown into a battle for survival against the deadliest threats imaginable, the Marines must contend with ice and desert planets with mysterious creatures, along with a history of turmoil that threatens to spill over to Earth if not checked. Meanwhile, a genetically-engineered threat rises on Earth - one that holds the secret to this intergalactic war.

Alvor the Sleek—a Krekelen shape-shifter—hates Jake Bayard because the Galactic Marine slew the others of his plotting brood. Bayard wants to wring Alvor’s neck because the alien tricked him into teleporting to deadly Canopus instead of Saddoth to help his friend. Bayard’s teleportation opens the way for Alvor to reach Canopus so he can board an ancient, orbital sleeper ship and collect a cargo that should give the Krekelens ultimate victory everywhere.

Former CIA officer James ‘Wes’ Wesley paid the ultimate price for his patriotism when he was locked up in a French jail for an anti-terror operation gone wrong--abandoned by the Agency he served, shunned by his colleagues and friends, cut off from his family. Now he is shattered by the news that his ex-wife, Rachel, a State Department analyst, has been killed in a terrorist attack in Spain. He also discovers that his young son, Ethan, is missing. But Wes didn’t know he had a son--until now. Why was Rachel in Spain? And why did she keep his son secret from him?

Humanity listened to the night sky. What we heard shattered the world. Listen. Just once. That’s it. As soon as you hear it, it has you. And once it has you, it’s over. You may think you’re in control. You’re not. You want one more listen. You want to look at that strange spot in the sky. The one that’s been slowly growing. The one that didn’t make sense...until you listened. You want to listen again, and you will do whatever it takes to make everyone else listen. By any means necessary. Even if it kills you. Just one more listen. One more. Listen.

The new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, featuring never-before-published stories and curated reprints by some of the genre's most popular and critically-acclaimed authors. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.

Book two in bestseller Joshua T. Calvert's next science fiction epic. A story of survival, invasion, and war that's perfect for fans of Jay Allan, Joshua Dalzelle, and S.M. Anderson.

To Jake Bayard’s amazement, he meets a Homo habilis: a five-foot, hundred-pound hairy hominid that was supposed to have gone extinct 1.65 million years ago. Philip is no moronic precursor to man, but a member of the elite extraterrestrial Institute, needing help to leave Earth. The problem is that Philip is a liar, a sneak, and a diabolical genius using the Traveler for his own ends. Out in the stars, Bayard discovers a conspiracy backed by ancient military tech and run by the little hominids bent on conquering everything, including Earth.