Showing results by narrator "Whitney Dykhouse" in All Categories

I never got involved in the dirt and the details of an investigation. I never let my preconceptions muddy a reconstruction. And I steadfastly refrained from ever allowing my past to dictate my future. At least until the one person I couldn’t lose went missing. Because then I’d relive every dark moment of my childhood, confront every heartbreak, and even sell my soul if that was what it took to get her back. Because I couldn’t accept a future - not even a promised one of immortality and unbridled power - that didn’t include one of the only two people I’d ever truly loved.

10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03. The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05. Someone starts shooting. Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist. I collected the puzzle pieces, then I gave those pieces to an investigative team to sort out. I didn't ask questions. I didn't offer answers. I saw. I recorded. I moved on. I didn't dwell or obsess. I didn’t hunt down suspects. I didn’t follow clues to find a killer. And I certainly didn’t work side by side with anyone.

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting. And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village. The friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still seems to hold the town in thrall. 

Just when I thought my struggles with Luxora were finally over, the dark lord decides to rise from the ashes. Guess who she’s got her sights set on? Yup, me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Coven Council has discovered my little warlock secret. And they’re pissed. With enemies coming at me from all sides, how am I supposed to concentrate on schoolwork?

After Kelsey Moore's husband dies, she wants only one thing. To adopt her husband's son who she has come to call her own. But as she begins the process, she learns a secret so shocking she begins to question everything she knows, except for the love she feels for her son. But when Kelsey starts asking questions, she runs into a brick wall named DEA Agent Devon Dunbar. But even if Devon brings out feelings she never thought she'd experience again, Kelsey can't give him the benefit of the doubt. If she doesn't succeed, she could lose the one thing that means everything to her.

Rule number one: Don’t piss off the dragon - or Sugar. When Katie Bishop is asked to join an elite Savannah society that guards the city against all the supernatural riffraff that blows into town on a regular basis, she can’t refuse. Especially when the city’s latest threat has targeted her to help it escape from an ancient book it’s been imprisoned in for more than a century.

When a local woman goes missing and Sheriff Blake Jenkins delivers her blood sample to DNA expert Emory Steele for analysis, Blake discovers Emory is a dead ringer for the missing woman. Blake’s gut says the woman is related to Emory. But Emory rejects the notion, requiring a DNA test before she’ll concede that she does indeed have a twin sister she never knew about.

Welcome to Darkblood - oops, I mean Darkhen Academy. There are three rules to survive the elite supernatural school: Do not talk or even look at The Seven, the uber-powerful supes that rule the academy. Never go into the Fae forest on a full moon...or else. And most definitely do not fall for one of the extremely hot and unattainable instructors. Too bad I’ve never really been a rule follower...If word gets out that humans are no longer safe from the supes, our worlds will once again be closed off. It’s up to us to stop that from happening.

When a Christmas vacation at a snowy Mt. Hood cabin turns into a home invasion, Jenna Paine will do anything to protect her four-year-old daughter. Even if it means putting Jenna's own life on the line. Which she must do when the intruder threatens to kill her. She knows the invader will stop at nothing to take her out, and she can’t let him get close or he might harm her daughter too. 

She faces dangerous situations all the time.... Olympic downhill skier, Harper Young, knows what it’s like to look danger in the face. After all, she does it every time she races down a ski slope. She’s fine with that danger and even excels under the pressure, winning Olympic gold. And as a governor’s daughter, she’s familiar with receiving threats from the general public. But when a stalker turns his sights on Harper, she possesses zero skills to protect herself.

One werewolf: Free to a good home. Three months after becoming a shifter, my bloodthirsty beast fights me for control of our shared body. My boss is unhappy with my erratic behavior. And Claw - the enticing alpha who made becoming a werewolf semi-palatable - is avoiding me while I try to transfer my wolf to his human sister. The transfer fails, but a vision promises I'll find mystical assistance on the other side of the country.

Fourteen years ago, I bit through the lip of the first boy brave enough to kiss me. Since then, I've acquired a PhD in archaeology, a new teaching gig at a prestigious university, and research interests out the wazoo. Unfortunately, my social life is still as bleak as a raided Egyptian tomb. Until, that is, a stranger interrupts my class bearing the same ancient cat fang I see in my dreams. He's rough around the edges and entirely riveting. No wonder my inner monster wakes up and seizes the reins

Somewhere in the Badlands, embedded deep in centuries-buried rock and sand, lies the skeleton of a massive dinosaur, larger than anything the late nineteenth century world has ever seen. Some legends call it the Black Beauty, with its bones as black as ebony, but to seventeen-year-old Samuel Bolt it's the "rex," the king dinosaur that could put him and his struggling, temperamental archaeologist father in the history books if they can just quarry it out.

It’s been three years since the Virgil County High School Massacre. Three years since my best friend, Sarah, was killed in a bathroom stall during the mass shooting. Everyone knows Sarah’s story - that she died proclaiming her faith. But it’s not true. I know because I was with her when she died. I didn’t say anything then, and people got hurt because of it. Now Sarah’s parents are publishing a book about her, so this might be my last chance to set the record straight. Except Sarah’s martyrdom is important to a lot of people, people who don’t take kindly to what I’m trying to do.

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital room, leg in a cast, stitches in her face and a big blank canvas where the last 6 weeks should be. She comes to discover she was involved in a fatal accident while on a school trip in Italy three days previous but was jetted home by her affluent father in order to receive quality care. Care that includes a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident...wasn't an accident.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves - which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)

Our task is simple. Kill all the demon baddies before they wreak havoc on the human realm and destroy the fragile peace between our two worlds. Easy peasy, right? Well if I can't figure out how to get this devil's mark off my chest, the demons won't stop coming for me. Luckily, my long lost father has shown up promising to help me get rid of it. But do I really want a dark warlock's help? Then there's my love life - or serious lack there of. I broke all the rules my first semester, and the worst was falling for my demon bad boy instructor. 

I barely survived my first year at Darkhen Academy, and now, with Ryder gone and my heart shattered, I’m not sure I’ll outlive the second. But I have to, right? Because, Luxora and her evil minions aren’t waiting around for me to get over my broken heart. With increased attacks in the human world, the super slayer squad must ride on! Then, there’s my father. He’s kind of obsessed with unlocking my new superpowers.

An inferno meant to destroy.... Blackwell Tactical operator and former criminalist Samantha Willis discovers forensic evidence to prove her friend has been murdered. But before she can gather the evidence, an explosion erupts and a fiery inferno traps her in a building. She helplessly watches the evidence go up in flames and prays that she can escape before the encroaching flames take her life. Or an act of revenge.... Firefighter and former Navy SEAL Matt Griffin knew his friend’s death was no accident, and he arrives at the building to gather his own evidence.