Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

This collection of stories from some of the brightest fantasy writers in the world run the gamut from steampunk to horror, from steamy romance to weird western, from Victorian thriller to contemporary bondage. But they all feature one thing in common - the corset. From vampire comedy to steampunk action to BDSM, Cinched is certain to free your mind. What else will follow?

While vacationing in Egypt Jeannette Walker, a cynical scientist jaded by swarms of tour groups and knick-knack shacks, is lured by a teenage tour guide to visit a newly discovered tomb. No other tourists there! Inside the chamber, she tumbles down a shaft and 3,000 years back in time. Now, in a world where deities walk the streets and prophecy stinks up the air, Jeannette is desperate for normal and the simple pleasures of sanitation and refrigeration.

Sole heiress to a forbidden craft, Eolyn lives in a world where women of her kind are tortured and burned. When she meets Akmael, destined to assume the throne of this violent realm, she embarks upon a path of adventure, love, betrayal and war. Bound by magic, torn apart by destiny, Eolyn and the Mage King confront each other in an epic struggle that will determine the fate of a millennial tradition of magic.

Although it is not entirely to her liking, grief-stricken Satha, a dark-skinned woman from a poor Theseni clan weds young Loic, the wealthy Doreni son of the king's First Captain. Loic, graced with ability to see into the hearts and minds of others, begins to help Satha overcome her sorrows. Despite coming from different tribes, they begin to forge a life together. But when Satha's own compassion is used against her and a treacherous enemy contrives to dishonor her in Loic's absence, Loic's love turns to anger and disgust.

Lands Ravaged. Dreams destroyed. Demons set loose upon the earth.War strikes at the heart of women's magic in Moisehén. Eolyn's fledgling community of magas is destroyed; its members killed, captured or scattered.Devastated yet undaunted, Eolyn seeks to escape the occupied province and deliver to King Akmael a weapon that might secure their victory. But even a High Maga cannot survive this enemy alone.

Set internationally and spanning two decades, Annisa is an intricate portrait of a young Afghan girl's struggle to survive after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Her harrowing escape to America, and her fatal decision to return to her people in Afghanistan, evokes insight into a society torn apart by terrorism, drug smuggling, and bitter conflicts over the role of its women.

In the sentient land of Veridia, Fila dreams of a simple future: using her women's magic of creation to help the Toiler people of the countryside. But when Veridia loses its Servant, the human conduit linking Veridia and its peoples, it chooses her daughter, Fila, as its new Servant. Mourning her mother and her lost dreams and doubting her worthiness, Fila sets out for the capital to be invested. On her journey, assassins attack, sent by a usurper with corrupted magic.

Forty-seven-year-old housewife Marge Christensen finds her husband, Gene, dead in their garage, slumped over the steering wheel of his still running BMW. The police rule the death a suicide. Marge does not believe Gene killed himself and determines to discover what really happened to him. In the process, she discovers all their money is missing. So, what was Gene doing before he died? Why did he die? And what was she going to do now?

When Marge Christensen discovers a body buried in a park in Bellevue, Washington, she has no intention of getting involved. Until her best friend Lori's husband is accused of the crime, that is. He claims his arrest is Marge's fault because she told the police what she knew about his activities. So Marge and Lori set out, with perseverance and a disregard for their own safety, to discover what really happened.

On December 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks took a stand by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her defiance against an unjust system triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped spark the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Parks demonstrated the effectiveness of unified peaceful protests, and throughout her life she advocated an end to violence, discrimination, and injustice, eventually establishing the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development.

Isabel Kramer's dream of running competitively, frustrated since age 17, reveals itself when, on a lark, she joins her daughter in the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. Now age 60, Izzy challenges her misgivings, the sage and well-intentioned advice of family and friends, and prepares for long-distance running. Izzy, a psychiatrist and professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has no illusions about the likelihood of success and the possibility of injury, but amazingly, she outperforms expectations.

Speculative fiction stories that are set in or about Archaeological Ruins. The protagonist in each story is an archaeologist who is a woman of color. Ruins range from those in the American Southwest to Central America, to the Andes Mountains to Egypt to the Middle East, Egypt to Aboriginal Australia, and across other areas. Some incorporate mythology of the ancient cultures who built and inhabited the ruins. Some of the protagonists are descendants of the ancient peoples of the ruins.

Often the smallest unexpected surprises garner the most demanding dilemmas, which proves to be the ordeal that entomologist Ben Whytten faces. While netting butterflies to add to his vast collection, he mistakenly sweeps what he thinks is the most spectacular butterfly he has ever seen into his net. Upon examining his catch, Ben is horrified to discover he has captured a faery and shredded her delicate wings into useless ribbons.

From a galaxy torn by civil war to a sleepy planet on the edge of the known universe, Enforcer Jakai del Quint pursues the failed Warlord Dorno Ban Sant to final showdown leaving Jakai alone and stranded on a planet called Earth far from the civilization he fought to protect. More than a hundred years later Jakai awakes, freed from his hibernation by a curious hiker.

Abbie had been treating two victims of the Chabot rapist who targeted girls, and as she's making progress in their care, unbelievably, someone abducts and strangles them. Their deaths devastate Abbie. During Abbie's difficult recovery, memories of past events gradually return. They are fragmentary and torture her with memory flashes and nightmares. Gradually, she begins to suspect that one of her adult patients may be the strangler.

When Marge Christensen arrives at Ocean Shores on Friday afternoon, it feels like the perfect place to get away from it all for a week and do a little painting. But, on Sunday afternoon, a man's body is discovered on the beach. The man has been murdered, and when Marge's son, Robert, is implicated in the murder, Marge must delve into the tangle of relationships, motives, and opportunity to uncover the truth.

During a dark, foggy night, Vyking ships from the Isles of Welkstone slip into Hoffnung Bay to aid Lord Waxxon's coup to take Hoffnung's throne from half elf Queen Taube. As Lord Waxxon's guards storm the castle, Queen Taube flees to Lady Dawn's chambers to help her daughter escape. After Hoffnung's fall, Lady Dawn flees for her life in the hope of gathering together an army to overthrow Lord Waxxon, who killed her mother to take the throne.

Winters are typically quiet and uneventful in Northern Michigan - but when Marge Christensen arrives in Traverse City to visit her mother, who is rehabilitating from a series of small strokes, Marge and her aunt soon become embroiled in trying to solve the deaths of two old ladies. Although the women resided in different nursing homes, is there a connection - or are the witnesses simply senile old ladies who are imagining intruders?

Over a century ago, The Brothers Grimm compiled an iconic collection of stories. Over forty years ago, American cinema was infected by the walking dead. A few years ago, classic literature fell to that same infection. Now, it is time for the logical, but simultaneously unlikely, fusion of the often mistakenly labeled Grimm's Fairy Tales to fall prey to the gaping maw of undeath. Volume One of Gruesomely Grimm Zombie Tales offers up the first twenty-five stories with a liberal dose of blood, gore, and zombies.