Showing results by narrator "Christopher McCormick" in All Categories

Riverboat gambling is a blast, until hot-headed Chance finds out just what he won in his final hand against a Missouri River gambler named Haggarty. Chance's "prize" is a beautiful Chinese slave girl named Ling. The twins want to set Ling free and keep their cash, but at Fort Benton, Ling gives them the slip, robbing them blind. When they hunt her down in Rimfire, Montana, she's with Haggarty, lining up their next mark.

As they blunder towards doom, Warlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson find themselves inconvenienced by a variety of eldritch beings. Christmas brings a goose that doesn't let being cooked slow it down; they meet an electricity demon, discover why being a redhead is even trickier than one might imagine, and Holmes attempts an Irish accent. And, naturally, Moriarty is hanging around...in some form or other.

The war of Honce drags on, and the roads and seas are littered with bodies. To everyone's stunned disbelief, Yeslnik the Fool has tipped the war's scales in his favor. The reign of the newly self-appointed King Yeslnik is already distinguished as the most bloody and merciless in Honce history. Trapped, Dame Gwydre and Father Artolivan concoct a desperate plot to join forces with Laird Ethelbert, the lesser of two vicious evils. But Ethelbert's paid assassins slew Jameston Sequin and nearly did the same to Bransen.

"The City," a tiny metropolis of a few hundred sheltered citizens floating serenely on a seemingly random course a few feet above the ground, has long been thought safe from the predation of marauding monsters. It seemed like a paradise. A paradise shattered when an invasion of apparent vampires threatens the small haven.

A collection of the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by #1 New York Times bestselling author and guest editor Jess Walter and series editor Steph Cha.

It’s been eight years since the Change rendered technology inoperable across the globe. Rising from the ashes of the computer and industrial ages is a brave new world. Survivors have banded together in tribal communities, committed to rebuilding society. In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, former pilot Michael Havel’s Bearkillers are warriors of renown. Their closest ally, the mystical Clan Mackenzie, is led by Wiccan folksinger Juniper Mackenzie. Their leadership has saved countless lives. But not every leader has altruistic aspirations.

When Vampire Hunter D entered the town of Sedoc, it was in search of answers to the meaning of a dying vampire's last words: "Find Muma." But when he meets Mia, the daughter of the local fortuneteller, he learns the mists emanating from a smoking crater on the outskirts of Sedoc have reanimated thousands of corpses, compelling them to crawl from their graves and hurl themselves into the smoking chasm.

In the bustling streets of St. Louis, two cousins have a dream: to travel west with a wagon train of supplies and make a fortune in trade. Preacher needs a job and is heading west anyway. But he doesn't bargain on the beautiful woman who sneaks her way into the wagon train and the trouble she brings on board.

In this chilling adventure, Vampire Hunter D has been dispatched to vanquish the ancient vampiric Noble Count Braujou, guardian of an ancient buried treasure. But when a mysterious object crashes into the earth, destroying half of the northern Frontier, D faces an even more terrifying opponent—the renegade vampire Valcua, the Ultimate Noble! Having been exiled to outer space, Valcua took his entire kingdom of strange and deadly creatures with him, and swore that when the time was right they would return to have their revenge.

Prometheus returned to his solar system, and de Finita’s forces prepare to defend what’s theirs. The AllSeer’s return threatens to conquer both militaries in one genius move. He’ll obliterate Mars and force Prometheus to make an impossible choice: Save his friend or save his insurrection. Will de Finita bend the knee or watch billions burn alive beneath the AllSeer’s magnificent power? Will Prometheus let his friend die? Or will he abandon everything that what he’s built and risk his own life for someone he once loved?

Jon-Tom has been trapped in a strange land of talking owls and wizarding turtles for a year now, his sole consolation that in this universe his musical abilities have inadvertently made him something of a sorcerer. But when an encounter with some burglars leads to him snapping the magical duar that channels his power, he finds himself an ordinary human again — on a quest to repair his instrument with nothing but his staff and his semi-faithful, ever-complaining otter sidekick to defend him.

Now a deputy US Marshal, Chet Byrnes hunts down the baddest hombres the west can throw at him. Chet and his crew must travel to New Mexico to free his cousin J.D. from a corrupt sheriff and his band of deputies. New allies will emerge to help Chet as he squares off with his greatest challenge yet; stopping bandits along the Arizona-Mexico border. Friendship will carry Chet across the Mexican border into a land where the only justice is found at the end of a six-gun.

Steeped in beauty and mysticism, the canyons of Mesa Verde, Colorado, survived the blast that altered the American west. Hired to track a group of missing children, Ryan Cawdor and his band follow the trail to a legendary city carved in stone, older and stronger than the nukecaust. The inhabitants of the palaces of light are more than warriors and survivors; they are masters of mind games that prey on illusion. And true believers in a metaphysical end game poised to push the companions over the edge of reality…into certain death.

Chet Byrnes is building a new life in Arizona Territory as he expands his cattle ranching operation - but trouble just keeps coming. A brutal Apache attack on his cattle drive. A friend's young daughter is abducted, and the search leads Chet and his men to the wild town of Tombstone and ultimately south of the border, where everything comes with a price...and life is cheap.

Apropos is the unlikely noble whose life began in the lowest of ways: as the result of a gang assault by a group of drunken knights on a helpless tavern wench. Last time out, Apropos attempted to seize control of his own fate, and ended up with, appropriately, nothing. Time has passed since he fled the kingdom of Runcible, and Apropos leads a quiet existence as a tavern owner.

David Valentine resigns as a Wolf militia, and accepts an offer to become a Cat, one of the stealthy warriors trained to spy on, and go toe-to-toe with the Reapers. Under the command of his mentor, Smoke, Val's first mission is to enter the Kurian zone and investigate "The Twisted Cross", a strike force of alien-human hybrids, possessing the skills of combat veterans and the hunger of the Reapers.... Along the way, he befriends a powerful alien, a Grog named Anh-Ka, who declares David his blood brother after Valentine nurses him back from death.

Bad luck has driven half-breed Yakima Henry and Sheriff Jack Kelly into the town of Dead River during a severe mountain winter - where Yakima must weather a killer who's hell-bent on making the town as dead as its name.

Back in London, Gideon and his colleagues: journalist Aloysius Bent, airship pilot Rowena Fanshawe, and Maria, the mechanical girl to whom Gideon has lost his heart, are dragged into a case that is confounding the Metropolitan Police. For the city is on the edge of mass rioting due to the continuing reign of terror by the serial killer known only as Jack the Ripper, who is rampaging though London's less salubrious quarters.

In the tenth year of the Change, the survivors in western Oregon live in a world without technology. Michael Havel’s Bearkillers hold the lands west of Salem in peace and order. To the east, the Clan Mackenzie flourishes under the leadership of Juniper Mackenzie, bard and High Priestess. Together, they have held Norman Arminger - the warlord of Portland - at bay. With his dark fantasies of a neofeudal empire, Arminger rules much of the Pacific Northwest, spreading fear with his knights, castles, and holy inquisition.

Luke Jensen brings a body to Rio Rojo. After all, it's his job and he's going to get paid. But before he can collect the bounty for killing a killer, two notorious criminals hit the Rio Rojo bank. Now Luke can't get paid unless he catches bandit Gunner Kelly and his Apache sidekick Dog Eater. Unfortunately, a would-be man hunter is after the money-toting outlaws, too, and young Hobie McCullough is mostly a menace to himself. With a green kid to protect, renegade Mexican soldiers, and a beautiful runaway bride crossing Luke's trail, the blood hunt takes one deadly detour after another.