Showing results by narrator "Nicole Poole" in All Categories

The descendants of a fourth Earth colony ship, Destiny, successfully establish a foothold in unoccupied space. Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems. Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.

There was a time when Joanna Sheraton knew nothing of the Void. She was an ordinary computer programmer, toiling in a cubicle in air-conditioned Southern California comfort, unaware that sinister forces had penetrated her universe. But from across the interdimensional divide, an evil mage had put in motion a scheme for eternal life by transferring himself into a computer that feeds on Earth’s life force. Called upon to help by the wizard Antryg, Joanna could do nothing more than delay.

Our enemy claims that the darkness lives in all Arcana. That in a world of light and shadow, one cannot exist without the other. That we're all but one tragedy away from giving in. Even the mages who've sworn to love and protect me. Even me - the Star herself. We call ourselves the Light Arcana, but you know what? The enemy's right. I've seen that darkness. Tasted it. Felt it flickering inside me like a black flame.

Niko is caught in a powerful spell that was cast from the very book he sought to protect. Trapped between life and death, his chances of returning look grim. Gem is determined to set things right. Armed only with her innate knowledge of language, she begins her daunting quest to break the diabolical spell...no matter the cost. When an irreversible action unleashes a new threat, Keystone scrambles into action.

Pushed to the breaking point, Cara Burrows flees her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can't afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied - by a man and a teenage girl. A simple mistake at the front desk, but soon Cara realizes that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can't possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving natural life sentences for her murder.

The weirdest thing about my life isn't the fact my cat started talking to me. I had it all. Awesome, blossoming business. A cute boyfriend who gave me butterflies. My kids living at home and reconnecting with me. Plus, I was a witch. What should have been the most amazing night turns into a disaster. I'm crushed, in more ways than one. When I recover, it's to find my reality has shifted. My cat can speak. Some of the townsfolk appear to be possessed by demons, and I'm supposed to be sacrificed to free magic.

Two weeks after joining Keystone, Raven Black is ready to take on the world as a criminal hunter for hire. If only her partner wasn't a bloodsucking Vampire with a penchant for getting under her skin. Despite her lavish surroundings, Raven misses the freedom of life without rules. And Keystone's next assignment is about to test her self-control in more ways than one. Dead bodies are popping up in the human district, and all signs point to a Breed serial killer.

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. "I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian," she writes, "or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut." But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.

Omnians, Earthers, and alliance members are fighting the Colony, the horde of sentient insectoids that threaten alliance space. The Colony has had centuries to expand through the network of domes built by the Messinants, an ancient race. The domes’ Q-gates allow the insectoids to invade planets through their inventive use of rings, which extends the power of the domes. It’s Omnian superior technology that gives a temporary advantage to the peaceful alliance members who lead the fight to retake their planets.

After what was supposed to be a simple job, Raven and Christian uncover a sinister plot against the higher authority, and the stakes are as high as the body count. The assassins are merciless, with anyone who stands in their way becoming collateral damage. Meanwhile, Raven is still struggling to make sense of her feelings for Christian following a memory wipe. During a blackout, the city erupts into chaos. With Breed on the brink of war, Keystone has only 24 hours to complete a secret mission. Raven seeks help from the most unlikely of places, but at what cost?

I am officially a divorcee who is muddling through a midlife crisis. As if being single in my 40s isn't traumatizing enough, my ex tried to kill me, my best friend thinks orcs are coming after us, the town is convinced I'm a witch, and my daughter moved back in with me.

Johanna Kaplan’s beautifully written stories first burst on the literary scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today they have retained all of their depth, surprise, and humor—their simultaneously scathing, hilarious, and compassionate insight into character and behavior. From Miriam, home from school with the measles, to Louise, the daughter of a family that fled Vienna for the Dominican Republic, to Naomi, a young psychiatrist, her heroines are fierce, tender, funny, and cuttingly smart.

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.

Fiona doesn't remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered - her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right wrist - a black oval with five marks on either side - that she doesn't remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. And she's right.

To save her life, Mackenzie had no choice but to turn Amy into a vampire. Wrought with guilt over it, Kenz searched throughout the supernatural world and found the impossible - a cure to vampirism.

The Citadel of Wizards was under siege. Deep in the Vaults beneath the walled city, gates into inhuman realities were opening and closing without warning. Monsters emerged from other dimensions; and ancient, malign magics came to life under the influence of cosmic chaos. Someone was tampering with the Void. The Council of Wizards blamed Antryg Windrose, the rebel mage who had fled their justice to find haven in the City of Angels.

The Four Horsemen are hunting the most deadly and elusive of fugitives - the White Rose. Despite being wanted and on the run, Callie has no intention of hiding from the angelic fallout that now plagues Kansas City. Never. Master Dracula will stand as a nightmarish specter against the forces of Heaven, Hell, the nephilim, and the Vatican Conclave. But nothing is as simple as it seems in this war.

Ryker calls it an accident. I call it another betrayal. He didn't want me to leave but didn't fight to keep me by his side. Wronged magically and devastated emotionally, I exile myself to another country, Dorley. Now I perform tricks under a tent, my mystical gifts a common sideshow.

One monster wants my soul. One man wants my magic. Me? I want to be left alone to live my life out like a dull, one of the lucky people who were born devoid of magic. But that won't happen because being born a Wyrd blood gives me two choices in life: ruler or slave.

Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton is a Milwaukee bar owner with a nose for trouble - literally. A neurological glitch has left her with extra-perceptive senses. So when she stumbles upon a dead body in the alley behind the bar - the same spot where her own father was shot eight months earlier - she can tell right away there's something fishy in the air. The lead detective thinks there's a link between the two deaths, and he'll need Mack's help to sniff out the murderer. But when all the evidence points to her as the most likely culprit, it could be an early last call for Mack.