Showing results by author "James Axler" in All Categories

After the liberation of Front Royal from the Magus’ tyranny, Ryan Cawdor and his companions grieve the heart-wrenching loss of loved ones, but must carry on. Ryan and his surviving friends assume leadership roles in Front Royal, contributing to the rebuilding of the ville and the struggle to carve out a future for the beleaguered community. Ryan must learn how to be a good father for his unique baby daughter, and with the support of his larger family do his best to help her navigate the treacherous future that is her destiny.

Ryan Cawdor is a true warrior of Deathlands, fighting for survival in a bizarre, freakish world. But now, beyond the unseen perils, a new threat emerges: Invaders arrive from a parallel Earth where the nukecaust never happened. Ryan is abducted through a time corridor to the twin Earth, where he discovers a nightmare that makes Deathlands look tame by comparison — and a new plot for its grotesque destruction....

Using a rigid code of honor learned from pre-nukecaust fantasies and westerns, Thunder Rider is a self-styled superhero, serving up mass murder in a haze of napalm and nerve gas. Seeing his trail of destruction firsthand, Ryan Cawdor accepts a bounty from a ravaged ville to find and eliminate this vigilante. But Thunder Rider is determined to have Krysty Wroth, Ryan's lover, as his new sidekick and her abduction makes Ryan's quest deeply personal, and unleashes the vengeful fury of Cawdor and his warrior companions.

The Marshall islands, once the testing grounds for 20th-century weapons of mass destruction, remain perversely beautiful. But the infested waters become the battleground for looting pirates and sec men in still-functional navy PT boats, all driven by greed and madness to plunder the predark caches of science and technology hidden in the islands. Ryan Cawdor and his band emerge in this perilous waterworld, caught in a grim fight to unlock the secrets of the past.

Denver offers a glimpse of that very hope — a power plant, electricity, food, and freedom. But the city is caught in a civil war between two would-be leaders and their civilian armies. Challenged by both sides to do their bidding, Ryan discovers a third player in the quest to control the mile-high city — a secret enclave of White Coats with the strength and technology to pursue a twisted agenda of their own.

Ryan Cawdor’s time-lost companion, Doc Tanner, has finally found the Operation Chronos facility that can return him back to his own era. But reaching it through a gauntlet of mutie enemies and their enslaved army is only one half of the battle. As the Chronos facility falls to the mutie siege, a traitor within the ranks of Ryan’s crew finally reveals their hand, and the remaining allies find themselves backed into an impossible corner... with no way out.

Kane and his fellow Outlanders are thrown into a world where the nuclear war never happened but a clandestine war rages on against the sinister forces that still rule humanity. Here, this deadly spectre has openly revealed itself - as mankind's great benefactors. As Kane and his band meld with their doubles in this new reality, their quest to change history is confronted by ultimate evil.

In the nuclear-storm devastated Deathlands, a warrior survivalist of the 22nd century leads the relentless fight to reclaim a lost world. Barely escaping from a marauding gang, Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors emerge from a gateway into an idyllic community ruled by Druidic law. But this new Eden may be a mirage, concealing a deadly threat. For the seed of dissent had been sown in the past and is again ready to destroy.

Built upon a predark military installation in former California, a ville called Progress could be the utopia Ryan Cawdor and his companions have been seeking. A place where humanity and technology thrive, it's the nucleus of a new hope for Deathlands. The successful replacement of Ryan's missing eye with a cybernetic prosthetic nearly convinces the group that their days of surviving hell are behind them. Then they discover that the high tech in Progress isn't designed to enhance human life, but to destroy it.

The mysterious barons — either hybrids of another race or genetic evolution gone mad — are dying. Kane, once a keeper of law and order in the new America, is part of the driving machine to return power to the true inheritors of the Earth. California is the opening salvo in one baron's savage quest for immortality—and a fateful act of defiance against earth's dangerous oppressors. Yet their sanctity is grimly uncertain as an unseen force arrives for a final confrontation with those who seek to rule, or reclaim, planet Earth.

The woods surrounding Lake Huron are filled with danger and bounty alike. Pirates frequent the waters, cold-hearted cannibals and stickies wander the woods, and the mystical Sea Hag and her Hag-Sworn keep an eye on it all. A local moonshiner has offered to escort the companions through the forest to the nearby Martkplatz where they can resupply at the ville’s annual trade festival. However, the companions get more than they bargained for when forces converge on Marktplatz and kick off the festival with a bang.

The sulphur-teeming Gulf of Mexico is the poisoned end of the earth, but loaded cargo ships ruined by skydark lure doomie and cutthroat alike, Here, Ryan and the others glean rumors of whole cities deep in South America that survived the blast intact. But as the companions contemplate a course of action that may divide them, a new horror approaches unseen on the horizon. The Lords of Death are Mexican pirates raiding stockpiles with grim vengeance. When civilization hits rock bottom, a new stone age will emerge, with its own personal day of blood reckoning.

Washington, DC, was hardest hit in the nukecaust that heralded the Deathlands era. But beneath the crater of radioactive ruins, a functioning city of survivors is crafting a culture that plans to reshape America. Ryan Cawdor and his companions enter into this enclosed, underground world and find an ordered and progressive society based on the tenets of the US Constitution. But as they settle into this seeming idyll, the companions uncover a sinister threat at the ville’s heart and a bold plan to finally wipe out the last remnants of humankind.

Survival is a dangerous enterprise in the aftermath of a nuked America. Humanity perseveres, but the Deathlands code is far simpler: Kill or be killed, live or die trying. Driven by the fires of hope, a resilient band of warriors traverse the new frontier of the future, survivors by skill and legends by reputation. The legend of the trader returns in the simmering dust bowl of the Badlands, the past calling out to armorer J. B. Dix. Her name is Eula. Young, silent, and lethal, she's part of a new trading convoy quick to invite Ryan Cawdor and his band on a journey.

Washed ashore in the North Atlantic, Ryan Cawdor and Doc Tanner discover two islands still pristinely intact after Skydark, but whose inhabitants suffer a darker, more horrifying punishment. A hideous strain of mutation infests, turning some into half-monstrous giants with an unquenchable thirst for blood. The Nightwalkers unleash a hellish feast of horror when the sun goes down. Now Ryan and Doc struggle to survive this enclave of unimaginable terror, trapped in a baronial conflict between the rulers of night and day, with only one way out - internecine war in a world of the damned.

Of all the resources Ryan Cawdor and his group struggle to recoup, hope for escaping the grim daily life-and-death struggle has suffered most. But now reports of a ville holding the mythical waters of rejuvenation, a fountain of youth, appear to be true, luring Doc and the others on a journey inspired by promise, tainted by mistrust. Hiring on as sec men with a convoy headed to the healing waters of Babyville, the survivors discover the deadly price of immortality.

Emerging from a gateway in New England, Ryan Cawdor and his band of wayfaring survivalists ally themselves with a group of women warriors who join their quest to locate the Illuminated Ones, a mysterious pre-dark secret who may possess secret knowledge of Deathlands. Yet their pursuit becomes treacherous, for their quarry has unleashed a deadly plague in the twisted plot to cleanse the Earth.

In what was once the nuclear testing ground of the pre-dark world, the Marshall Islands are now the kingdom of the grotesque lord Baron Kinnison. Here in this world of slavery and brutality, the companions have fought a fierce war for survival, on land and sea — yet the crafty baron still conspires to destroy these interlopers. Activating a 20th century hot air balloon left untouched by the blast, they escape to the neighboring pirate ruled forbidden island, with the Baron and his sec men in hot pursuit — and become trapped in a war for total supremacy on this water world.

The legacy of the 20th century was the world-wasting nuclear firestorm that destroyed a way of life forever. Civilization is in ruins, its pitiful remnants perverted by brute force, and mankind is less at home on the planet than ever before. Yet in the desolation that is the Deathlands, an intrepid group of wayfarers continues that determined fight for survival and a better future. Leaving a western ville besieged by desert pirates in search of the legendary cities of the Spanish conquistadors, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists enter a hidden valley untouched by civilization.

A bad jump from a near-space Gateway leaves Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists in the devastated heart of the American Midwest. Moving through the ruins in the safety of an abandoned war wag, they discover a small community that was once the sprawling metropolis of Chicago. The town seems devoid of life, until the first night, when Krysty Wroth vanishes without a trace. Then the group is attacked, leaving Doc Tanner gravely wounded. Ryan realizes that someone, or something, wants them gone — or dead.