Showing results by narrator "Peter Kenny" in All Categories

From the marble city of Sanc Aldet, to the dark woods of the Dullwilds, to the dragon-filled continent of Drakon, Jelly has become a rather well-traveled Ooze. However, he is about to go on the biggest trip of his life when the X-ranked adventurer Jeris Cowl takes the young Royal Ooze for special training far away in the mystical planes of the Aether, a land beyond mortality, where the Heavens and Hells clash and eldritch entities of primordial energy reign as gods over entire universes.

Drakon: A mysterious continent of vast potential and incredible danger. Inhabited by the ancient, powerful dragons, the brave and sturdy Lizardfolk, and the cunning Kobolds, it is a land that offers much and demands even more. It is this place that Jelly now arrives, eager to seek out fellow speech-capable Oozes. His excitement, however, is overshadowed by the turmoil that has draped across Drakon. Tensions between the human, elfish, and dwarfish colonists and the native scaled denizens has reached a peak, and conflict seems inevitable.

Young wizards coming of age in a time of war... Will they be ready? Eynon was excited to leave his village and set off on his wander year. He’d turned sixteen today, and hoped for at least a few adventures. At high noon, he arrived a crossroads and saw a shimmer of silver in the mud. It was a thin and dirty oval, about the size of his palm. He washed it with squirts of water from his goatskin, then marveled at what was revealed.

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than seafog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.

Jelly has come to terms with two facts: one, having friends is hard, and two, trying to save Erafore with them may be a little bit harder to pull off. Ever since he entered the Aether, things have changed for him. As a Chosen One, it's his duty to save his world from the cruel caress of the Void. Part of that duty's to fight alongside his fellow Chosen Ones, but can he really handle the two others that the goddess Nia has selected to save Erafore? He will need every ounce of cunning and strength he can scrounge up; the forces of the Void won't tolerate this gathering of Chosen Ones.

In a tradition that runs from R. M. Williamson’s Bits from an Old Bookshop in 1904 to Jen Campbell’s Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops in 2012 (with George Orwell’s 1936 Bookshop Memories in between), here is the latest and perhaps most complete attempt to classify people who shop in bookstores. It does take all kinds. Employing something like Linnaean taxonomic groups, there’s the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), and more.

Rome, AD 63. Vespasian has been ordered to a far-flung empire in Africa to free 200 Roman citizens who have been enslaved by a desert kingdom. But when Vespasian reaches the city, he discovers tensions spilling over into bloody chaos. Battling thirst and exhaustion, Vespasian must help the Romans escape, their only route to survival a desperate race across a barren desert with a hoard of heavily armed rebels at their backs. Meanwhile, back in Rome, Rome's elite fear for their lives as Emperor Nero's extravagance goes unchecked.

AD 58. Rome is in turmoil once more. Emperor Nero has surrounded himself with sycophants, and together they rampage by night through the city. Meanwhile, Nero's extravagance has reached new heights. The Emperor's spending is becoming profligate at the same time as the demands of keeping the provinces subdued have become increasingly unaffordable. Could Nero withdraw from Britannia, and at what price for the Empire?

Rome, AD 41. Caligula has been assassinated and the Praetorian Guard have proclaimed Claudius Emperor – but his position is precarious. His three freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas and Callistus, must find a way to manufacture a quick victory – but how? Pallas has the answer: retrieve the Eagle of the Seventeenth, lost nearly 40 years before. Who but Vespasian could lead a dangerous mission into the gloomy forests of Germania?

Rome, AD 51: Vespasian brings Rome's greatest enemy before the emperor. After eight years of resistance, the British warrior Caratacus has been caught. But Agrippina, Emperor Claudius' wife, pardons Caratacus. Claudius is a drunken fool, and Narcissus and Pallas, his freedmen, are battling for control of his throne. Separately,they decide to send Vespasian east to Armenia to defend Rome's interests. Meanwhile the East is in turmoil.

What should be a simple journey forces the trio of heroes to slip past furious fae, escape angered servants of the Void, and visit one of the Afterlives in order to successfully return to their home. Yet is Erafore the same as when they left? How long have the Chosen Ones of Nia been gone? And what cruel surprises does the World Rebellion have up its sleeves for their eventual return? Regardless of the threats looming on the horizon, Jelly, Dora, and Gaelin will face whatever their enemies throw at them, and save Erafore and their loved ones.

The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?

Jellik and his friends have traveled Erafore and beyond, training and preparing for the final confrontation against the World Rebellion. But are the three Chosen Ones able to unite a divided world against the existential threat? And can they make it to the site of the final battle before the Void cult condemns everyone they know and love to nothingness?

Young wizards Eynon and Merry struggle to save their friends from a trio of wizard-assassins in the next installment of The Congruent Mage series.

Art teacher Walter Hartright is on the road to London when he encounters an enigmatic woman dressed entirely in white. She's an unnerving portent of strange things to come as Hartright starts a new job as drawing-master at Limmeridge House. There the teacher falls in love with Laura, his betrothed pupil, who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in white. Soon Walter is drawn into a family intrigue of greed, secrets, madness, and revenge.

Young wizards, Eynon and Merry, and their friends prepare for an unexpected invasion by a deposed Roma emperor bent on conquering Orluin with her vast fleet and forty legions.

Young wizards Eynon and Merry suddenly have to cope with a huge, scaly, ill-tempered fire-breathing problem allied with their worst enemy.

While George has always been the brother to rush towards the action, fast becoming a boy-soldier when war breaks out, Joe thinks differently. Refusing to fight, Joe stays behind as a conscientious objector battling against the propaganda. On the western front, George soon discovers that war is not the great adventure he was led to believe. Surrounded by mud, blood and horror, his mind-set begins to shift as he questions everything he was once sure of.

Kingdoms are at war and young wizards Eynon and Merry are thrust into a complex web of conflicts, conspiracies, and long-hidden secrets as they learn more about the true threats facing Dâron, including an invasion by 500 dragonships from the northern kingdom of Bifurland.

"A rare treat: a time travel tale that brings something new to the subgenre. . ..A wry social commentary and an uneasy tale of escalating paranoia." Guardian THE FUTURE IS ALREADY WRITTEN. THE FUTURE HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. "Welcome to the 21st Century. Please don't feed the natives. . ..Echoes of...