Showing results by narrator "Nicole Poole" in All Categories

Foster kid Briar Givhans grew up on the wrong side of the Charleston society tracks. She has no idea who her parents are or where she came from. She showed up as a toddler on the door step of a fire station with a note stuck to her back with just her name and age on it. No one ever claimed her. Now she's an adult and has long since given up on figuring out her true identity. And then Hell's Belles comes knocking on her door.

This first novel takes us on a journey through the centre of an explosive, illicit relationship that drives into the fragile heart of a family. A young girl and an older man succumb to an incendiary love affair at an unpayable price. As lies are revealed, the characters must pick up the fragments of whom they thought they were and turn towards an awareness of whom they have now become. They must explore the truth of love and the cost of passion.

From cakes to stakes, a celebration of everyone's favorite bloodsucking subculture by a baker's dozen of favorite authors. Each of these 13 original stories offers a fresh and unique take on what birthdays mean to the undead. From Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse attending a birthday party for Dracula to Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden battling bloodsucking party crashers, these suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous stories will ensure paranormal fans will never think of vampires or birthdays quite the same again.

Best-selling author Claire A. Nivola has won multiple awards for her captivating books introducing historical figures to young audiences. In this critically acclaimed profile of noted oceanographer Sylvia Earle, listeners follow Sylvia as her childhood adventures in the Gulf of Mexico help inspire her life’s work: discovering the secrets of “the blue heart of the planet”.

Christine Snow, a Chicago therapist, wakes one morning to find her live-in lover gone. At first Chris thinks that Taylor has left in a funk because they fought the night before over a minor flirtation. But too many clues point to another explanation: Either Taylor has left for Morocco and a mysterious woman there, or she has come to harm. Running the emotional gamut from anger to alarm, Christine anxiously tracks the course of Taylor's disappearance, only to discover that her trust in her lover may have been misplaced.

The Queller race has lived for millennia in isolation. However, a secret kept by the Queller senior elder and a few associates drives the elder to make contact with another race. Little do the Quellers know that they send a QASAP ship, an autonomous search ship, to engage the conclave. Not detecting an aggressive society, Julien chooses to accept the autonomous ship’s invitation, and a small fleet commanded by Commodore Tocknicka follows the QASAP’s star map to the Queller home world.

Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, this hair-raising holiday collection includes 15 original tales - including an original Sookie Stackhouse story.

As Milwaukee counts down to New Year's Eve, bar owner Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton has but one resolution - unmask the dangerous mastermind who has been taunting her and killed bouncer Gary Gunderson. Mack and her fellow barflies have fleshed out a suspect and arranged an invite-only party to put a cork in the murderer's game for good. But when the clock strikes midnight and their suspect is found cold and stiff on the basement stairs, it seems the celebration may have come too soon.

As Anumith the Destroyer's army draws nearer to the western realms, an alliance is forming to stand against him. The heir to the throne of Krimathe embarks upon a quest for the goddess Vela—a quest that the goddess has promised will give her strength enough to defeat the Destroyer. All that Laina must do is stay silent . . . and serve a man she has sworn to kill. A man who helped destroy her family.

One of the Vatican’s most infamous Shepherds has been murdered, and Callie’s friends are the prime suspects. To prove them innocent, Roland and Callie must risk their very souls.... Because Callie can’t reveal that she’s hearing strange whispers when she uses her magic, or that she’s harboring an Angel’s Grace. And if the Shepherds discover the hellish bargain Roland made, the streets of Rome will flow with blood as brother turns against brother.

Ever since Callie - the Vatican's rookie monster hunter - killed a demon a few weeks ago, Kansas City's been eerily quiet. But she soon learns it's just the calm before the storm. Because werewolves begin abducting young women in Kansas City, and a new church opens its doors, pronouncing death to all idols, including these "make-believe" monsters and wizards. But when one of their congregation is disemboweled by a monster on the steps of the church with the phrase God is dead painted in blood, someone in the church decides to take a lesson from the Salem Witch Trials.... And the police seem to be helping.

The view from outside couldn't have been more perfect. But within the walls of the family home, Rachel's life was controlled and indeed terrorized by her father's serious depression. In prose that is both precise and rich, Rachel's childhood experience unfolds in a chronological recounting that shows how her father became more and more disturbed as Rachel grew up. House Rules will keep you reading even when you most wish you could look away.

If you want to get to heaven, you’ve got to raise a little hell.... Callie Penrose is struggling to find her special purpose in life. Rather than allying with any of the powerful supernatural groups begging to sign her up - the Vatican, the vampires, the shifters, or the Armies of both Heaven and Hell - Callie has been picking fights with all of them. But when she’s abducted by a host of angels, and a greater demon begins hunting her through the daytime streets of Kansas City, Callie learns that her past has come back to haunt her.

Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet. Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies.

Fresh off solving a murder that hit too close to home, Mack's trust is shattered. But when Milwaukee Police Detective Duncan Albright asks for her help with a shooting, she can't resist using her extra-perceptive senses to benefit others. It turns out the victim was the ruthless businessman their friend Mal was investigating undercover. And now Mal is missing - and his fingerprints are on the gun. Was his cover blown, forcing him into hiding? Or could he be a straight-up killer on the run?

Priest Rahandras has lived with the darkness trapped inside himself for years. Betrayed by his own brother and forced to watch his clan's brutal annihilation, the only thing Priest wants more than to escape the curse that haunts him - as both man and beast - is to rebuild. Until the mate he's longed for walks into his life with an elder from his past. She's everything he's wished for, and the key to the clan's very survival.

Iolanthe Tennyson has had a very bad year—due in part to the very bad men in her life. So she’s accepted her cousin’s invitation to spend the summer in Austria to indulge her photography hobby. Rumors of a haunted forest there draw Iolanthe into the dark woods—and into the 18th century.... Nikola Czerny is a cursed man, forced by his half brothers to live forever as a Dark One. But his miserable existence takes an intriguing turn when a strange, babbling woman is thrown in his path.

While on a singles tour of Europe, Seattle's own Pia Thomason is looking for a man and trying not to think about her 40th birthday. Too bad her choice of suitors is less than appealing. But when she meets two mysterious strangers in Iceland, Pia becomes immersed in an undead love affair.

Centuries of political games killed most of the female werewolves. Now only a few survive, and the Elders work to change the old ways of thinking. Winter, the only daughter of the SilverPaw Alpha, finally meets the soul Gaia has chosen for her: Sterling, the cold, demanding, and entirely-too-human Alpha of the tiny SnowFang pack. Thrust into a world of human wealth for which she was never prepared, Winter must become Sterling's flawless wife and Luna from the moment she arrives.

The Solar League, humanity's empire, has existed since mankind reached for the stars. While the humans considered it the pinnacle of human achievement, for the subjugated alien races it seemed only to endorse humanity's worst impulses. But the worst of humanity pales in comparison to an alien onslaught that is on the verge of bringing mankind down into death and subjugation.