Showing results by narrator "Scott Michaels" in All Categories

A fantasy anthology featuring the deadly, the worldly, and the sneaky. Blackguards consists mainly of stories in established series, and the authors range from wildly successful indie authors to New York Times best sellers. If you enjoy roguish tales of scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells, this one's for you.

Death stalks Corvis by night, and only an unlikely group of heroes known as the Black River Irregulars can put an end to the terror. The labyrinth of tunnels beneath Corvis is home to some of the city’s worst criminals, but now even these hardened thugs have reason to watch their step in the dark, shadowy undercity.

After being attacked by a demon in the one place he thought he was safe, Eric Carter has been killed, his soul sent to take its place as a stand-in for the Aztec god of death Mictlantecuhtli. But somebody on Earth isn't done with him, yet. Somebody with the power to bring him back from the dead. He doesn't know who, and worse he doesn't know why. Between an angry death goddess, family secrets steeped in blood, a Djinn who's biding his time, and a killer mage who can create copy after copy of himself, Eric's new life looks to be just as violent as his last one.

U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner earned his badge the old-fashioned way. He shot the bad guys, saved the good guys, and won the fear and respect of everyone in between. That’s how legends are born. But when he visits a friend at his ranch and ends up confronting a trigger-happy horse thief, Will earns the wrath of the deadliest, lowlife killers west of the Mississippi. This is how legends die....Turns out Will Tanner is nothing but a moving target on a blood-soaked trail of revenge.

Detective Alex Cross is being stalked by a psychotic genius, forced to play the deadliest game of his career. Cross' family - his loving wife Bree, the wise and lively Nana Mama, and his precious children - have been ripped away. Terrified and desperate, Cross must give this mad man what he wants if he has any chance of saving the most important people in his life. The stakes have never been higher: What will Cross sacrifice to save the ones he loves?

The glaciers of the Sierra Nevada are melting, destroying the habitat of the mastodons, creating the rich land that will become California. The coastal people struggle to understand the changing world around them: Their seer Sunchaser has lost his way to the Spirit World and mammoths continue to disappear. When a beautiful woman arrives, fleeing from her abusive husband, the people know what they must do - for if the Spirits are already taking the animals away, what will happen if they shelter a stranger?

The mountains are brimming with the lure of fortunes — from gold to a booming fur trade. A man at home in this once pristine wilderness, Preacher knows there’s no turning back civilization now. What he doesn’t know is that beyond the plans of some men is a deadly enemy with far more dangerous designs....

FBI Agent Lily Yu is living at Nokolai Clanhome with her fiancé, lupi Rule Turner, when an intruder penetrates their territory, stealing the prototype of a magical device the clan hopes will be worth a fortune - if a few bugs can be worked out.... But the protoytpe can be dangerously erratic, discharging a bizarre form of mind magic - and it looks like the thief wants it for that very side effect. Worse, whoever stole the device didn’t learn about it by accident. There’s a Nokolai traitor in their midst.

The Seven Satrapies have collapsed into four - and those are falling before the White King's armies. Gavin Guile, ex-emperor, ex-Prism, ex-galley slave, formerly the one man who might have averted war, is now lost, broken, and trapped in a prison crafted by his own hands to hold a great magical genius. But Gavin has no magic at all. Worse, in this prison Gavin may not be alone.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.

Trapped in a dead-end town, Justin Warren has had his life defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents. The unsolved crime happened long before Justin was born, but the ripple effects are still felt after thirty-eight years. Justin always knew he wouldn’t have much of a future. He just never imagined that his life might take him backward.

One of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece, Sophocles wrote over 120 plays during his 60-year career, though only seven survive today. The most famous of these are the Theban Plays, all three of which are included in this collection alongside adaptations of Electra and Philoctetes, brought to life by celebrated writers, poets, and playwrights.

Nevada, 1872. Out of the merciless 40-Mile Desert, a stranger appears in the town of Golgotha, home to the blessed and the damned. He carries with him an innocent victim of a horrible massacre and a dire warning for Sheriff Jon Highfather. The conflict between the Indian nations and Mormon settlers has been brewing for years, and now the spirits of the fallen Indian dead have begun to rise to join in the fight. Deputy Mutt's old nemesis, Snake-Man, returns to begin a final bloody war against the Whites, purging them from the land forever.

As if falling for the ghosts of four murdered gangsters wasn't crazy enough, it turns out we've got a real live supervillain on our hands. One with mysterious powers that reach way farther than we could have imagined. And that villain has torn my sister away from me. I'll stop at nothing to bring her back and see my men get the vengeance they deserve. It's just a little hard to win a war when you're not really sure what kind of monster you're up against. Or how many you're up against, for that matter.

Baron Byron Balazs nears the end of his arduous journey; his bodyguard—the enigmatic and deadly Vampire Hunter D—has delivered him to his faraway home in Krauhausen. Having survived the near-epic journey, and many attempts on his life—ordered by his father, the dread Vampire Noble Lord Vlad—the baron thinks he is ready for his final battle, whatever the cost. But Lord Vlad is not so easily vanquished, as he unleashes yet another host of nefarious killers on his son, not least of whom is a mad doctor who was enlisted to perform sinister experiments on the young baron's mother years before!

In the frozen ground of the Hürtgen Forest, Lieutenant Eric Granville digs a grave. A grave for yet another of his men lost to the brutality of World War II. He prays he will have to dig no more, for everyone knows the war is drawing to a close. But as German lines bend, then break, the Allies gain access to vast tracts of territory, including areas believed to contain advanced military research projects where the Nazis desperately work on war-ending super weapons.

One of my guys has been kidnapped. I don’t know if the Anti Magick Alliance took him or if it was the Human Extinction League. But I do know I’ll do whatever it takes to get him back. My magick is growing stronger by the day. I can feel it surging beneath my skin. I just hope I can put thoughts of my past out of my head for long enough to focus on what needs to be done.

Humanity has been brought to the brink of extinction. Each night, the world is overrun by demons - bloodthirsty creatures of nightmare that have been hunting the surface for over 300 years. A scant few hamlets and half-starved city-states are all that remain of a once proud civilization, and it is only by hiding behind wards, ancient symbols with the power to repel the demons, that they survive. A handful of Messengers brave the night to keep the lines of communication open between the increasingly isolated populace.

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.