Showing results by author "Gilbert M. Stack" in All Categories

Marshal Sturm defeated Pretender Earl Joachim Adler, but not before an army invaded from Ahl-Alnaar. With tens of thousands of enemy troops marching on his earldom, Sturm has to figure a way to both govern his decimated city and repel the invaders. With Kriegsturm facing the threat of Anjou in the west, he cannot expect any support from the high kingdom. Instead, the new earl must depend upon his wits and his new musket doctrine to defeat a foe who may well outnumber him one hundred to one. But what Ahl-Alnaar does not realize is that Sturm is not a self-indulgent hedonist like his ...

After winning a costly clash with Diamonte’s Thegn Clovis and High Mago Deverel, Marcus must find a way to press the attack even though more than half of his Black Hat legionnaires are unable to take the field. Thegn Clovis cannot afford another costly battle so he must turn to High Mago Deverel to conjure victory from defeat. But a lot of magos have been playing with the weather in the past year and succeed or fail, the consequences of Deverel’s efforts could prove devastating for the Jeweled Hills.

Legionnaire is a gritty high fantasy series set on the borders of the far-flung Republic of Aquila. While political in-fighting and scheming are the order of the day in the heart of the Republic, the borderlands are awash with dangers, only kept in check by the might of the legions. Fell magics, savage peoples, and scheming empires all threaten the country Patrician Marcus Venandus has sworn to defend using his wits, military strategy, and his small command of highly disciplined legionnaires.

With Sheriff Tucker down after the nosferatu attack, it’s up to newly appointed Undersheriff Joanna Donovan to rally her fellow officers. She must discover what new monster is terrorizing Hadrian’s Well and put an end to it before it kills any more of her citizens. Yet how can she do that with her own officers questioning her abilities, the town mayor strong arming her, and a new drug making its presence felt in Hadrian’s Well? Against her better judgment, she’s going to have to reach out to local science teacher, Evan Drake, to help her track down the creature or Hadrian’s Well ...

Despite their impressive victories in the north, Prefect Marcus and the Black hat Legion stand alone against the full might of Diamonte and Aquamarina. With their home city under siege and the cowardly Lord Totila refusing to lead his host out from behind the walls of Centinela, it falls once again to Marcus to protect his adopted homeland by himself. His only hope is to thread the needle, maneuvering his legion across enemy-occupied Amatista to the one location that might enable him to recapture the initiative in this war. It’s a risky gamble. With multiple armies afield and none of them...

Marshal Sturm, Earl of Fortaleza, and his retainers have helped thousands of Northerners survive three hellish nights as their crazed southern neighbors mindlessly threw themselves against the barricades in a desperate attempt to kill and eat them. Now his problems are really beginning. The insanity has ended but the danger is just revving up. Ten thousand people are dead or injured, thousands more children are orphaned, there is no food in the city, and Joachim Adler, pretender to Sturm's earldom, is determined to finish the task that his berserkers failed to accomplish—kill Sturm and ...

Joanna Donovan has had a rough time since becoming the undersheriff of Hadrian’s Well, Colorado. In the past three months, she and her deputies have defended their town from multiple preternatural threats including rock trolls, zombies, and red caps. So, she is outraged when A-list Hollywood actress, Ani Breeze, tries to strong arm her into traveling all the way to Desolation, Montana to aid in the search for her missing son. The young man disappeared with his girlfriend while climbing the infamous Widow’s Peak and Breeze is convinced that a preternatural monster is responsible. Joanna ...

While Marcus Venandus and his legion pluck a second jewel from the crown of Thegn Clovis in Diamonte, Lord Unwen’s army moves in for the kill in Amatista. He has assembled the greatest military force ever seen in the Southern Jeweled Hills and he is determined to crack Amatista wide open with it. Faced with siege engines, scaling ladders, magic, and treachery, while its own legion is far away in Diamonte, how can Amatista hope to survive? Were all of the legion’s valiant efforts for naught? Can anything stop the Fall of Amatista?

Navarre thought he had seen the worst this world could throw against him when the orcs arrived at Hidden Harbor in their battle barge. But now the halfling sheriff must face a different kind of foe. The Royal Navy of Forestria is the most powerful military force in the Western Sea and it is determined to solidify its control of the region by eradicating all of the pirates and privateers operating there—and they view Navarre’s town as the key to their mission. Marines backed by powerful wizards and priests are planning to raze the Hidden Harbor, thinking nothing can stand against them. ...

ABBA, Air Supply, Charlie’s Angels, Ronald Reagan—it’s 1981 and real estate attorney, Lynne Winters’, is struggling to manage a constantly complaining mother and a law practice tanking in the worst real estate market in a decade. Then her life really goes insane when a long brown envelope lands on her desk. The heir to the Mackland furniture empire has been kidnapped and the kidnapper has forced Lynne smack in the middle of the ransom negotiations. It’s the most important case of her career, but in a time when professional women too often aren’t taken seriously, it will take all...

Halloween is approaching and the situation in Hadrian’s Well is getting downright spooky. Someone is raiding the town’s three cemeteries and digging up the recently deceased. Are the preternatural involved? Or is this a more mundane form of criminal activity? Whatever the cause, Undersheriff Joanna Donovan better figure it out fast. The dead have already walked once in Hadrian’s Well. Could someone be priming something even worse to happen on All Hallow’s Eve?

The Duchy of Winterhaven lies at the edge of human civilization. There, Great Lords scheme to expand their borders and take control of the dukedom. Meanwhile the young knight Dhrugal of Edgefield investigates a most unusual murder, little suspecting how this gruesome crime links to a much greater threat. A decade of relative peace is about to collapse, and only Dhrugal and his brothers and sister stand between Winterhaven and dark-spun chaos.

Lesser Tribune Marcus Venandus, Legion officer exemplar, was exiled to the disease-ridden hell hole known as the Fire Islands as punishment for the failed political machinations of his father. While the days of the powerful witchdoctor kings throwing skeletal armies against the shields of the legion have faded into history, all is not right at the edge of the world. Unrest is boiling once again as long dead darkness seeps back into the islands.

If folks had any business living in the small Colorado town of Hadrian’s Well, there wouldn’t be a meadow called Dead Man’s Field outside of it. That’s where Deputy Joanna Donovan finds bloody body parts strewn across the ground. She thought that rural Colorado would be safer than Chicago. She’s about to find out she’s wrong.

For the first time in seven decades, orcs sail the Western Sea. Orcs—the bogey men of every frightening children’s story. Once upon a time, it took the combined might of the Fellowship of the Accord to stop them—elves, dwarves, humans, sylvans, shimmers, aerie, and water folk joined together to throw back the stormtroopers of the Great Defile. But the champions of those races are long dead leaving none to stand up and lead a new defense. This time, there is only one halfling with his axes and his highly fashionable hat to hold the line against evil and determine the ultimate fate of ...

Blair Douglas grew up on family stories about the Revolutionary War Battle of Saw Mill Bridge and jumped at the chance to join an archaeological expedition to unearth its remains. But she is uncovering more than she expected in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. One of the other volunteers cannot stop talking about the Reaper, a ghostly serial murderer said to be trapped in the ruins of nearby St. Andrew’s Church. The professor running the dig seems more interested in treasure than archeology. And Blair is starting to hear and see things that no one else does—the sounds of muskets, soldiers ...

Only one tiny halfling stands in the way of an power seeking to wipe out a grand alliance that has lasted for millennia. None of the inhabitants of the scum ridden town of Hidden Harbor seem to be able to take him seriously, but they are about to learn how wrong they are. For the gods were tricked into putting aside their differences to create one final champion. Armed only with a hatchet and a highly fashionable hat, the halfling champion is doing his best to save the world by chopping down one evil villain at a time.

Marshal Sturm is in trouble. With just one company of musket men and a battalion of dismounted cavalry, he has to stop the whole Angevin army from securing the eastern entrance to Steil Pass. Effectively, he’s the cork stoppering a bottle full of Angies with their thousands upon thousands of muskets, pikes, and cannon. Unfortunately for Sturm, that bottle is well shaken and its contents are about to erupt straight through the pass. Failure to hold back Anjou means a brand new front in the decades old war—a development that will almost certainly cost Kriegsturm Oosten Graanland. Nobody ...

The war seems to be going well for Marcus, but he has forgotten the most important rule of the Jeweled Cities—alliances are made to be broken. In a world where even the ethnic peoples of the north—Gota, Gente and Qing—cannot remain united against the other peoples, how can Marcus convince them to remain true to their commitments to an outsider like him? And yet his honor is not so malleable as that of many of his new neighbors. He will stay the course and defend his dead brother’s home—even if the only things he can depend on are the swords and spears of his legionnaires.

Deep in the Fringe on a tramp freighter, Jewel Aurora is about to discover that there are much worse things than being forced into a marriage to secure her parents’ fortune. On the edges of human space, where no one can be trusted with your back, the young woman is about to stumble upon a fortune that star nations will go to war to possess. It’s a treasure that has already killed two sets of colonists who tried to claim it. And if anyone learns she and her crewmates have found it, it is absolutely certain to attract the attention of the two influential families she turned fugitive to ...