Showing results by narrator "Kirt Graves" in All Categories

What do you do when you’re assigned a commander that you can’t take orders from? If you’re the Wildcards, you put your heads together and get rid of him. After all, the Wildcards are known for creative insubordination, chaos, and commanders begging to be reassigned.

In 2127, a young farmhand who calls herself Janice runs away from her corporate contract, her home, and everything in her past. Ahead of her is the Colorado desert, baking in a hundred and ten degrees of summer heat. But it’s better than what’s behind her.

Sometimes life deals a bad hand. But it’s all about how you play the cards. Solidarity in the face of oppression. Songs in the dark. Finding hope in spite of the odds. Thirteen stories set in the dystopian universe of the Aces High, Jokers Wild series keep fighting the good fight in the darkest of times.

Get up. Stand up. America is standing up. Armed with training and new confidence, people who’ve been owned by seven corporations for too long are forming workers’ unions, subverting corporate rule, spreading change, and demanding lives worth living. The Wildcards land the assignment of advising and supporting the workers in civic actions—a.k.a. playing pranks for a good cause. The crew is sure it’s the best assignment of their lives...for about five minutes. And then it starts to get hot.

Seven Corporations control what was the United States of America. The food supply and its production are controlled by American AgCo. All agricultural seeds in the United States have been genetically designed to fail outside corporate control. At least, that’s what the Corporations say. There’s a rumor that a seed bank has survived the destabilization that brought down old America, and the 75 years of Corporate ownership that followed. If it still exists, it would provide free, accessible food for the Democratic State Force and everyone in their care.

In 2159, the Democratic State Force gains ground every day. As they fight to bring representative democracy back, they become heroes to the citizens indentured to the United Corporations of America. Widely spread guerilla units support the first civilian protests the country has seen in decades. Now it’s the Corporations on the defensive. And they are getting desperate.

King Bastien’s father locked him into an ironclad betrothal contract with Lady Helena Rey when the two of them were only seven-years-old. Bas and Helena have never been friends—and not only because she marked their first meeting by dropping a frog down his shirt. He’s been unsuccessfully petitioning Parliament to annul the damn contract ever since he took the throne nine years ago. But with the deadline for officially confirming the engagement rapidly approaching, Bas is getting desperate.

On the battlefield of Heaven, Uriel lost more than his left ear. He lost his Committeds and his will to live. Decades later, he’s drowning himself at the bottom of a bottle, with no escape in sight. He tried to end his misery, but death didn't take. Resigned to suffering eternity alone with only the ghosts of the ones he lost as company, the last thing Uriel wants is a new love.

America is waking up. People are standing up for each other and a future worth living in. But they can’t do it alone. Now, they don’t have to. The Democratic State Force is calling in favors across the nation. Members of Base 1407 and hundreds of other teams across the country are teaching the citizens how to fight back on their terms, with tactics that hit the Corporations right where it hurts–in the wallet and the pride.

Koré knew that meddling in politics could end badly, particularly when trying to sabotage his aristocratic father's campaign before it destroys the city he has come to love. And when a chance encounter with a dying god imbues him with magic-breathing powers, it gets worse: he suddenly becomes a commodity—and a political player. But the corruption in his city runs deeper than just one man, and an ally's betrayal unleashes an army of the dead on his home street.

Help wanted: Producer for the latest album from multi-platinum selling band Birds of Prey. Enter Sammy Rhodes, famed DJ named The Spin Doctor. He is a musical genius and fits in with the band like he's our sixth member.

On a small path leading to nowhere sits a looming cathedral, once-abandoned, now hosting the most dangerous of pleasures. And Stone Brice is the most dangerous of all: Lust. A former acrobat, Stone’s life was changed dramatically after an accident, and now he runs The Carnal Tower, a place where people can go to have their deepest and sometimes darkest fantasies realized.

When their father went to prison last year for embezzlement, twins Alex and Olly Brucke lost everything: their house, their college funds, most of their friends, and even their mother, who’s so focused on making ends meet that she’s never around anymore. The only thing they can count on lately is each other. But after their father dies unexpectedly in prison, the twins start to fracture. Alex is spiraling, skipping classes to spend all of her time drunk or high. And Olly is struggling with a secret his dad ordered him to keep: they have a secret half-brother named Tyler.