Showing results by narrator "Scott Aiello" in All Categories

This collection of two short stories and assorted short pieces were published previously, and gathered here for the first time. "The Perils of Effrijim" is loaded with quirky characters, a fast-paced story, and an adorable demon who just wants to be with his beloved. In "Cat Got Your Tongue", Joy Randall thought her honeymoon with husband Raphael was going to fulfill all her expectations, but almost immediately they run into a decades-old curse, a spurned ghostly first wife, and a long-dead randy Scottish Laird.

When 10-year-old Megan helps her uncle invent the Thumbtop, the world's smallest computer, mice are overjoyed, and they want one for every mouse hole. The Big Cheese, leader of the Mouse Nation, has orders: Follow that girl - even if it means high-tailing it to Megan's new home on the other side of the country. While Megan struggles as the new girl, the mice wait for their chance.

Experience the exciting breadth of #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins's wild imagination and adventurous spirit in this anthology of his short masterworks, including a new full-length novella featuring Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane, as well as nine previously published short stories, gathered together for the first time.

Dak Korasa is wounded by his team and left for dead on a hostile jungle world. On the verge of succumbing, he’s saved by a sluglike organism created by an otherworldly entity. This parasite, or chok’tal, has one purpose: to alter its host’s DNA, turning him into a super-soldier known as a Purifier who is then expected to serve in the “Glorious Game.” Imbued with superhuman strength, speed, and endurance, Dak must kill to earn enough points to win the mysterious game—or the chok’tal will kill him.

Assigned to a new warship with cutting-edge technology, Jack Samson returns to the Frontier, determined to cast off the question marks over his previous conduct. The Navy ventures ever farther beyond the Frontier, with fantastic new discoveries becoming a daily occurrence. As humanity reaches for these technological riches, it enters a deadly contest with a lethal adversary, the very survival of the human race being at stake.

Seven years ago the New Earth colony received one final message from Earth...a warning. First a global pandemic, then the emergence of a new species. A war for survival ravaged the Sol system. Now they are coming for the colony. Many colonists don't believe it, but Connor does. They must prepare. They must fight. But how can they survive something that killed every person back on Earth?

Earth is in turmoil. The enemy is bearing down on us with every warship they have, and our only allies are in chaos. Our one hope for survival is Andy Clanton - a hack science fiction writer trying to convince some aliens that humans are worth saving. It’s an uphill battle, because to the aliens, we are the monsters. We look just like their sworn enemies, the Tevynians, who’ve sworn to wipe out both our civilizations. When everything falls apart and the fate of the galaxy is on the line, can Andy Clanton pull our fat out of the fire?

As a sci-fi author with a hit TV show, I have a few ideas about what alien invaders are supposed to look like. In my stories, they’re technologically advanced monsters, with tentacles, and no faces. Turns out I was right about the technology. And about how angry they’d be. But the way they look is more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.

Galaxy on Fire: Publisher's Pack 2 contains books three and four of the Galaxy on Fire series. Firestorm, book three: If you can't be dead, make sure someone pays for that fact dearly. When he was a human, Jon Ryan always looked forward to a better future. We all do. But his tomorrows turned out poorly. Ripped from his original time, he's being tested severely two billion years down the time stream. He only wants to protect the shape-shifting teens he rescued from genocide. The Adamant and his evil twin aren't going to make that easy.

The galaxy is on fire. The ruthless Adamant Empire is sweeping across all of space leaving only chard ashes in their wake. No civilization can withstand their firestorm of conquest. But they made one serious mistake along their path to galactic domination. They pissed off Jon Ryan. Bad move. That's never a healthy thing to do.

Danger stalks across the surface. Tension and panic rise within the clan as whispers of a massive raider army of a size never before heard of, rallying together. They plan a grand crusade to sweep across the white wastes, eliminating any who stand in their way. Their numbers are legion, their power and resources near limitless. And their course is set to cross the clan.

A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to epitomize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.

Hal Bregg is an astronaut who returns from a space mission in which only 10 biological years have passed for him, while 127 years have elapsed on Earth. He finds that the Earth has changed beyond recognition, filled with human beings who have been medically neutralized. How does an astronaut join a civilization that shuns risk?

An alien message is now humanity’s only hope. Decoding the signal has given us one chance to stop the Anomaly, an ever-tightening cosmic noose, before it squeezes the life out of Earth. The only problem is, the aliens’ single instruction sounds like a bona fide death wish. They want me to step through their incredible quantum gateway, an enigma wrapped in starlight. Believe me: if I had any other option, I’d be taking it. But with the best data giving Earth a few days before the Anomaly consumes us, options are in short supply. Suicide or salvation? I’m about to find out.

She has the city brought to its knees, a single death stroke away from victory, but in the same breath, she struggles with her own wavering loyalty. Haunted by the fate of her predecessors, who all turned against the Pale Lady—and nearly succeeded. Time is her enemy. Her elder brother, To'Aacar, has set his plans in motion. The city must be taken, and her treasonous thoughts must be handled soon, or else.

Jon Ryan had lived long enough to know better. But with age does not automatically come wisdom. He has saved mankind many times. He even resurrected Earth and all its inhabitants from never-having-existed. But he's still haunted, and haunted people do crazy things.

A few years earlier, the evil clan destroyed Earth. Jon and his team labored mightily to resurrect our lost civilization. But once they achieved that impossibility, Jon grew more and more obsessed with restoring Earth's original time line. He wants to give rebirth to his original life story, his history. In spite of pleas to the contrary by his friends, he was hellbent on achieving his unproven goal.

I guess saving the world once wasn't enough… First it was the auroras, lighting up Europe every night. Then came the weird clouds over Africa. The tidal shifts... the failing crops... the crazy changes to animal migration... And I think all of this is just the start. I don't buy the official line that these are natural occurrences. Not anymore. Not since a whistleblower hid a coded message in my invitation for an upcoming commemoration ceremony on The Vita. Now I know the truth—that Earth is in serious danger from the side-effects of their reckless research.

En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind. Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they've crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home?

As the colony grapples with the realization that New Earth is not as uninhabited as they’d once thought, tensions between the colonial settlements rise to new heights, and the Colonial Defense Force finds itself caught in the middle. When Connor uncovers evidence of a militant colonial faction secretly exploiting the NEIIS, he has to investigate. Connor learns that some of the colonial settlements have been holding back discoveries of their own.