Showing results by narrator "Amy Landon" in All Categories

Faeries. Computer games. A boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and the girl he’s forbidden to love. Jennet Carter and Tam Linn are almost out of time. Feyland, the most immersive computer game ever designed, is about to be released into the world - along with the Realm of Faerie’s dangerous magic. The faeries, desperate to break free from their realm, have set treacherous plans in motion. Despite magical allies of their own, Jennet and Tam have no idea what dire threats await, both in-game and out.

Great Uncle Winter has a dark secret - milk and cookies. He doesn't just like them, he needs them to maintain his essential goodness. When an abominable snow rat infestation devours his entire stash in the North Pole he starts to turn evil, and Justine's guild must reunite a lost tribe of elves that abandoned the North Pole centuries ago to bring the big man in red the greatest cookies in all the land.

Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel, Life Events, follows Evelyn, who, at 37, is on the verge of divorce and anxiously dreading the death of everyone she loves. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and aimlessly driving along the freeways of California looking for an escape.

Jennet Carter escaped the dark faeries of Feyland once. Now, fey magic is seeping out of the prototype game, beguiling the unwary and threatening everyone she cares about. Tam Linn may be a hero in-game, but his real life is severely complicated. Still, he'll do whatever it takes to stop the creatures of Feyland. Despite the danger, Jennet and Tam must return to Feyland to face the magic of the Bright Court - and a powerful new enemy who won't stop until the human world is at the mercy of the Realm of Faerie.

Jen did not want to leave the city. She did not want to move to a farm with her mom and her mom's new boyfriend, Walter. She did not want to leave her friends and her dad. Most of all, Jen did not want to get new "sisters", Andy and Reese. As if learning new chores on Peapod Farm wasn't hard enough, having to deal with perfect-at-everything Andy might be the last straw for Jen. Besides cleaning the chicken coop, trying to keep up with the customers at the local farmers' market, and missing her old life, Jen has to deal with her own insecurities about this new family.

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.

In recent years, nicotine has become as verboten as many hard drugs. The literary styles in this volume are as varied as the moral quandaries herein, and the authors have successfully unleashed their incandescent imaginations on the subject matter, fashioning an immensely addictive collection.

The Arunkel empire has stood a thousand years, forged by wealth and conquest, but now rebellion is stirring on the borders and treachery brews in the palace halls. Elsewhere, in a remote mountain village, a young mother sells the prophesies of her sister, Amarta, in order to keep them and her infant child from starving. It's a dangerous game when such revelations draw suspicion and mistrust as often as they earn coin. Yet Amarta's visions are true. And often not at all what the seeker wishes to hear.

Even in the fortress of the night watch there is no safety to be found. An indomitable power is stirring, and it has set its awful gaze upon the young Warden, Lillin. Where can she run when the world is crumbling beneath her feet, and the ones chasing her are far more powerful than she can ever hope to be? The struggle might be hopeless, but Lillin is a Warden of Will, and she will not be beaten down. Even if she must march headlong into the abyss, she will do as she must to gain the strength she needs to win.

Becoming a warden was an almost insurmountable task that pushed Lillin down a dark and winding path, but all of her training did little enough to prepare her for what was to come from beyond the walls of Black Mark. An insidious force moves, taking shape in the shadows and it rides on the winds of madness and misery. Lillin must struggle with her own lack of control over her abilities if she wishes to make a stand, but against such a terrible force, can anyone truly hold their ground?

It begins with a drowning. One day Mr. Arcilla, the romance language teacher at Briarfield, an all-girls boarding school, is found dead at the bottom of Reed Pond. Young and handsome, the object of much fantasy and fascination, he was adored by his students. For Lilith and Romy, Evie and Claire, Nellie and Grace, he was their first love and their first true loss.

Disgraced crime reporter Aloa Snow is scrambling to get her life back on track by doing what she does best: investigating hard-to-solve cases. But the latest one is personal. The son of her friend Tick - aging anarchist, confidant, and unofficial colleague - has been accused of a high-profile murder. The victim is Corrine Daniels, ex-prosecutor and wife of a heroic but now-paralyzed FBI interrogator. Corrine had enemies, but she also had a secret lover in Tick’s son, who, without an alibi, is now directly in the cops’ crosshairs.

Still stranded in the virtual world of Freehaven Online, the Toxic Muffins, lead by Justine, are given new hope after a beloved guild member died upon failing digitization. Mirae has come online. No one can message her, but they have a quest leading them into the depths of Hades, an underworld that serves two planes of mortal existence, to retrieve a lost soul and escort it back to the living.

In the early years of World War II, Josef Stalin issued an order that made the Soviet Union the first country in the world to allow female pilots to fly in combat. This is the story of Marina Raskova’s three regiments, women who enlisted and were deployed on the front lines of battle as navigators, pilots, and mechanics. It is the story of 1,000 young women who wanted to take flight to defend their country and the woman who brought them together in the sky.

Freehaven Online is more than a game to Justine. By day, she creates monsters for the world, by night she's raiding dungeons. Most importantly, it's her one connection to her dead brother whose buffs still linger within the game. When his virtual shrine is threatened by an update, Justine reforges his guild to complete the Dragonsbane quest in his honor. As an experienced tank, she's no stranger to the bandit attacks, PvP combat, and dragons Freehaven will throw at her. Little does she know, a hacker organization known as Archangel tampers with the update.

The are few forces more powerful than the Will of a fully trained Warden, but those who endeavor to become Wardens must first escape the crucible fires of Black Mark Academy. Very few who enter will leave as Wardens, and many will never leave at all. Lillin ends up at Black Mark Academy not as a willing volunteer, but as forced penance for a past wrong. She soon discovers that the training involved in becoming a Warden is more nightmarish than she could have imagined. With her face marked permanently for her past crimes, she has to either survive the Warden's cruel training program or die in the process. She must discover the determination within herself to move forward and kindle the flames of the eternal fire, the Warden's Will.

Arriving in the passage is a frightful, uncertain experience where unknowns abound. It is a strange place, and many are alarmed at the things they learn. Dissension between organizational members and allegiants keep them apart. Corilan and Swain work to find ways to smooth the friction while Jacob works on his own solutions. They can't succeed in Organic Earth if they don't unite.

Claire wakes in a hospital room in the Florida Keys. She has no idea how she got there or why. The loss of so many memories is paralyzing. Some things she can piece together by looking at old photos saved by her husband, Charlie, and her best friend, Rachel, and by combing through boxes of letters and casual jottings. Told from alternating points of view that pull the listener into the minds of the three characters, the story unfolds as the smudge that covers Claire's memory is gradually, steadily wiped away, until finally she can understand the why and the how of her life.

A former reporter, Aloa Snow knows what it means to be down and out. Once highly respected, she’s now blackballed, in debt, and dealing with the echoes of an eating disorder. Until she gets one more shot to prove that she has what it takes - with a story some would die for. After the body of a promising young athlete, Hayley Poole, is recovered in the Nevada desert, authorities rule it a suicide. But when Aloa discovers that the girl’s boyfriend died in a similar accident only months before, her investigative instincts are on high alert. It turns out the girl was on the run from secrets that could kill.

Twins Virginia and Tommy Matthews have been on their own since they were orphaned at the age of five, surviving a merciless foster care system by relying on each other. Twelve years later, the world begins to collapse around them as a deadly contagion steadily wipes out entire populations and a devastating world war rages on for the cure. When Tommy is drafted for the war, the twins are faced with a choice: stay and accept their fate of almost certain death or run. Virginia and Tommy flee into the dark night.