Showing results by narrator "Nick Podehl" in All Categories

As a sorority pledge, there are commandments that Katie Vickery must live by. One: Thou shalt not show up for the party without a date. Two: The guy shall be an athlete, preferably an upperclassman. Unfortunately, Katie just broke up with her jerkface football player boyfriend. Even worse, her last encounter with him resulted in utter humiliation. She'd rather hide under the bed than attend a party where he'll be. Yet staying home would mean letting him win.

In this chronicle of the early history of Valdemar, Mercedes Lackey's best-selling world, a 13 year-old orphan named Magpie escapes a life of slavery in the gem mines when he is chosen by one of the magical Companion horses of Valdemar to be trained as a Herald. Thrust into the center of a legend in the making, Magpie discovers talents he never knew he had - and witnesses the founding of the great Heralds' Collegium.

The world ends in a slew of blue notification boxes, bringing with it a game-like existence including monsters and Classes. Now, John has to make his way from Kluane National Park in the Yukon to Whitehorse through monster infested forests. But, that's not enough; because he'll need to help rebuild civilization itself around the System, aliens and monsters. And, as always, humanity will be its own greatest enemy.

Freshman Lianne Challice is known to millions of fans as Princess Vindi. But sometimes a silver-screen sorceress just wants to hang up her wand, tell her manager to shove it, and become a normal college student. Too bad that's harder than it looks. She's never lived a normal life. She hasn't been to school since kindergarten. And getting close to anyone is just too risky - the last boy she kissed sold the story to a British tabloid.

The isolated town of Beldon, Wisconsin, is shocked when a high school freshman’s body is found in Lake Algonquin. Just like everyone in the community, 16-year-old Daniel Byers believes that Emily Jackson’s death was accidental. But at her funeral, when he has a terrifying vision of her, his world begins to rip apart at the seams. Convinced that Emily’s appearance was more than just a mere hallucination, Daniel begins to look carefully into her death, even as he increasingly loses the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

Less than three months have passed since Captain Charlotte Omandi and the crew of Earth’s first starship, the TSS Bladerunner, narrowly prevented an extinction-level event from wiping out humanity. Omandi knows Earth remains on borrowed time, until she meets with leaders of the Galactic Confederation to convince them that our planet no longer represents a threat. As she and her crew prepare to become the first humans to travel outside our solar system, a string of assassination attempts lead them to an unlikely mystery.

Bridger Macaulley used to be a player both on and off the ice. But now, while his teammates chase the next hockey victory, Bridger worries that the dean will discover he's housing his eight-year-old sister in his dorm room. Juggling a full course load and a big secret, it's only a matter of time until the other skate drops.

Tarak is thrown into a strange city with just a few coppers in his pocket and the tainted shadow of his family following him. At least the ale is better, but famine and poverty make it a little hard to enjoy that. With no one to call his friend and almost no knowledge of sorcery, Tarak will have to compete with the best sorcerers if he wishes to remain free.

Henry Mosley decides that he and his pals Riley and Reed need to go on some earth-shaking adventures and make a name for themselves. Henry is the mastermind; Riley’s the researcher who’s prepared for anything. And somehow fearful Reed always ends up with the scariest, craziest assignments.

Infinite Worlds is the most popular VRMMORPG on the market. Its maps are so vast, developer Hard Rock Data utilizes a network of highly advanced artificial intelligences to control it. But it’s not without problems. That’s why Game Masters like Jeff Driscoll have jobs. The downside? He’s not allowed to play the game. Something about conflicts of interest and favoritism. His very boring and tedious job is to help players deal with the occasional bug that slips through the cracks and ensure they enjoy their time playing enough to give a five-star rating.

On an isolated Texas ranch, Dr. Lucy cares for abandoned animals. The solitude allows her to avoid the people and places that remind her of the past. Not that any of the townsfolk care. In 1959, no one is interested in a woman doctor. Nor are they welcoming Calvin and Justin Bell, a newly arrived African American father and son.

A terrible deed from the past threatens to overtake the life of a young man only recently rescued from the claws of death… In one fateful moment, in the split second it takes to move from normalcy to tragedy, nearly everything that Alex Lonsdale holds dear was ripped from him. But when a doctor is able to bring him back from the very brink of death, he is considered a medical miracle - those who love him rejoice. But when they look closely into Alex’s eyes, there is something missing there.

Life for Sterling the vampire is sweet in sleepy Silveropolis. Blood is in easy supply with college kids and cryptid hunters swarming the town for mountain madness, an annual search for an elusive creature known as Smallfoot. But another corpse is discovered in the woods. Are the Everetts back? Is it a ritual killing or a random murder? With the help of a brooding journalist and a jealous storm god, Sterling must investigate before it’s too late. The victim was staked through the heart, after all.

Cinder Shade and his fellow cadets have survived a brutal mission in the vast wilds of the Dagger Mountains. Laying to rest many of their brother warriors, they return to the Third Directorate, battered, bruised, and weary of soul. But the world turns, and new challenges press. Cinder must set aside his grief, especially when granted a task by Anya Aruyen, the elven princess with whom he shares an inexplicable bond. She urges him to further master his skills as a warrior and become worthy of fighting at her side.

Virginia finally had the chance to explore a relationship with Aaron when he asked her on a date. She had been waiting, hoping that the widower and his young son, Buddy, would welcome her into their lives. But a terrible tragedy strikes on the night of their first kiss, crushing their hopes for a future together.

Luke knows his I´nupiaq name is full of sounds white people can’t say. He knows he’ll have to leave it behind when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles from their Arctic village. At Sacred Heart School things are different. Instead of family, there are students - Eskimo, Indian, White - who line up on different sides of the cafeteria like there’s some kind of war going on. And instead of comforting words like tutu and maktak, there’s English. Speaking I´nupiaq - or any native language - is forbidden.

From a smelly watering hole deep in the heart of the Serengeti to the ferocious clamor of the Colosseum, join Julius Zebra and his motley menagerie of friends as they gear up to be...GLADIATORS! Only if they win the love of the Roman crowds will they win back their freedom. But do Julius and his pals have what it takes to succeed in a world where only the meanest and toughest survive?

Corn is king in the Heartland, and Cael McAvoy has had enough of it. It's the only crop the Empyrean government allows the people of the Heartland to grow - and the genetically modified strain is so aggressive that it takes everything the Heartlanders have just to control it.

When tragedy strikes close to home, Mickey Bolitar and his loyal new friends - sharp-witted Ema and the adorkably charming Spoon - find themselves at the center of a murder mystery involving their friend Rachel. Now, not only does Mickey have to continue his quest to uncover the truth about the Abeona Shelter and the Butcher of Lodz, he needs to figure out what happened to Rachel - no matter what it takes. Mickey has always been ready to sacrifice everything to help the people he loves.

Contains three complete, novel-length books in the Middle Falls Time Travel series: The Empathetic Life of Rebecca Wright, The Successful Life of Jack Rybicki, and The Many Short Lives of Charles Waters.