Showing results by narrator "Nicole Poole" in All Categories

New York Times best-selling author Rachel Gibson delivers a sordid and quirky romance. Maddie Dupree's mother was once the other woman in a love triangle with Mick Hennessy's parents. It ended tragically. When Maddie returns to Truly, Wyoming, after a long absence, sparks fly between her and Mick. But can white-hot passion erase their painful family histories?

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

After narrowly surviving my debut into the magical world, I made a promise to myself: no more hiding in broom closets. But with the Mages' Guild reorganizing faster than anyone thought possible, and naming me as their number one target, that promise seems a little far-fetched. Especially since my training with Callie and Dizzy, the highly experienced dual-mage pair, goes off like a cake in a cannon. Left to find someone that can fill the role, it isn't until a formal dinner party goes horribly wrong that I find the best (and worst) solution imaginable: Reagan Somerset, the leather-clad crazy woman who busted into my broom closet sanctuary in the first place.

Who is Callie Penrose? They say she’s been kissed by Heaven - whatever the Hell that means. Because Callie was orphaned on the steps of a church in Kansas City, and doesn’t know her parents. She starts out as a rookie wizard who hunts monsters for the Vatican. Except…ironically, she’s never been a churchy kind of girl, and she quickly learns that monsters can reside anywhere. Even among the most devout.

When Lieutenant Iari hears screams in the night, she expects to interrupt a robbery or break up a fight. Instead she discovers a murder with an impossible suspect: a riev, one of the battle-mecha decommissioned after the end of the last conflict, repurposed for manual labor. Riev don't kill people. And yet, clearly, one has. Iari sets out to find it.

Mackenzie Grey is tying up loose ends before she says goodbye to the life she knows. In doing so, that means closing up all her cases that are left open at the Supernatural Investigative Unit, and nothing prepares her for the blood thirsty vampires roaming the streets of New York City. It is time to rein them in and bring order back to the city. Except Kenz is just as blood thirsty as they are.

In a world where the human population has suffered devastating losses, a handful of survivors cling to what passes for life in a postapocalyptic, dying landscape. A world where humans wander, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. A dying world of no children and no art, where reading is forbidden.

Charity hasn't had it easy. Growing up in a bad part of Chicago, left by her mother at 16, she's a survivor. So when she gets a scholarship to a good college out in California, she thinks all her dreams have come true. Instead she falls head first into a nightmare. At a posh party she doesn't belong, she gets the shock of her life: vampires and shifters are real! Magic is real. And she is anything but a mundane poor kid just trying to make it.

The modern master of suspense Ira Levin returns to the horror of his 1967 groundbreaking novel Rosemary's Baby with this darkly comic sequel set at the dawn of the millennium. Thirty-three years ago, Rosemary gave birth to the Devil's child while under the control of the satanic cult of witches. Now the year is 1999, and humanity dreads the approaching 21st century, desperately in search of a savior for this troubled world.

Katie MacAlister’s sultry paranormal romances zip to the top of best-seller lists across the globe. Here, Francesca Ghetti returns to GothFaire in order to deal with her latest problem, Loki - the Norse god of mischief. However, Fran is surprised to once again encounter her ex, the vampire Benedikt, who just happens to have his new girlfriend on his arm. And that’s just the beginning, as Vikings, shapeshifters, and rabid opera fans soon work their way into her life.

Magic can be a blessing or a curse. Emma Ayers is about to discover the biggest secret of her life - she's a witch. When tragedy upends Emma's idyllic life, she is taken in by a mysterious woman - the matriarch to Hell's Belles, a secret society of debutante witches in the historic city of Charleston. With Emma's help, they'll try to defeat an enemy that wants all the powers the Belles are gifted with - and who will stop at nothing to get them. Even if it means destroying everyone in the path, including the city they protect.

Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor has struggled to do his patriotic duty in the wake of the loss of the love of his life, Empress Mercedes de Arango. Amid a desperate war, the Solar League cannot afford his grief, nor the political instability of admitting the depth of their relationship. It is for duty alone, both as a soldier and as a father, that he has entered into a loveless marriage that makes him part of the royal family to shepherd his son and the Solar League towards what seems to be humanity's triumph against its foe.

Traveling to Faro, Portugal, journalist Joanna Millard hopes to escape an unsatisfying relationship and a stalled career. Faro is an enchanting town, and the seaside views are enhanced by the company of Nathan Emberlin, a charismatic younger man. But behind the crumbling facades of its Moorish buildings, Joanna soon realizes, Faro has a seedy underbelly, its economy compromised by corruption and wartime spoils. And Nathan has an ulterior motive for seeking her company.

Legend says that all dragons have a mother, a goddess-dragon named Tiamat. But few dragons take those old stories seriously these days. It's been too long since anyone saw Tiamat. Her tale has faded into myth. A cult of her followers still remains, though. These dragons believe that someday, a dragon will rise who is the sum of all dragons, with the powers of every dragon. When that dragon comes, Tiamat will be close behind. Kylara knows nothing of these legends, but she's about to take center stage in a story that began thousands of years ago.

As any fan of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic rereader of books. In 2008, then-new science fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her rereading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor. Now this volume presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series.

Coyote shifter Tate Allen has been watching. Learning his mate every possible way before he moves in. Protecting her through the night, always from afar. He'll be the one to teach her about her gifts. He’ll be there when she changes for the first time. With him, she’ll fulfill her destiny. Elise Ralston loves Tate for the patience he's shown. The faith he's demonstrated - denying himself what he needs sexually, even as he teaches her about pleasure. But someone unknown is still stalking the clan.

The Emperor's daughter Mercedes is the first woman ever admitted to The High Ground, the elite training academy of the Solar League's Star Command, and she must graduate if she is to have any hope of taking the throne. Her classmate Thracius has more modest goals - to defy his humble beginnings and rise to the rank of captain. But in a system rocked by political division, where women are governed by their husbands and fathers, the poor are kept in their place by a rigid class system, and the alien races have been conquered and subjugated, there are many who want them to fail.

Escalation is the watchword for the dangerous contest between the Imperium and the conclave. Executors seek the means to push the conclave out of the empire, and desperate measures are taken to design and construct new ships, which are armed with a terrible weapon.

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.

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.