Showing results by narrator "Samuel E. Hoke" in All Categories

At the soaring height of the Golden Age of Piracy in the year 1717, a young boy takes to the high seas with a ragtag gang of marauders to seek his fortune. His mentor is none other than the infamous pirate lord Blackbeard, a cruel and cunning leader with ties to a priceless treasure that has been lost to time. But the boy saw the fortune with his own eyes – if only he can live long enough to tell the tale. The Lost Colony of Roanoke disappeared without a trace. Search parties arrived to find over a hundred colonists missing with nothing but a single enigmatic word left etched behind.

Since Jeff Talbot left the FBI, he's been investigating yard sales as a professional antiques picker. From furniture to books, from old clothes to broken toys, nothing escapes his keen eye for appraisal. But there is one item that he always keeps his knowing eyes particularly peeled to find: a one-of-a-kind French cabaret set commissioned by Napoleon for his love, Josephine. It is an item any collector would kill for....

From the author of the Amazon best-seller The Soul Collector comes a real life story of terror and intrigue. When Edwin Gonzalez and Lillian Otero purchased the historic S.K. Pierce Victorian Mansion in Gardner, Massachusetts, in 2009, they scoffed at the ghostly legends surrounding the house. They didn't believe in ghosts. The house soon proved them wrong. By the fall of 2011, they were forced from their house, narrowly escaping with their lives.

The year is 1521, and Tenochtitlán burns. Wracked by plague and war, the majestic Aztec empire begins to crumble. As their beloved capital city falls to the ruthless Spaniards and hordes of vengeful tribes, the Aztecs make a last-ditch attempt to secretly save their heritage before it’s lost to the sands of time forever. Meanwhile, in the modern day, a string of high-profile robberies lays waste to archaeological sites and museums across Mesoamerica, overshadowed by a brewing nationalistic fervor which threatens to topple already fragile countries.

Welcome to a society governed through computer games! On New Earth, society is governed and conflicts are resolved in the arena of a fantasy computer game, Epic. If you win, you have the chance to fulfill your dreams; if you lose, your life both in and out of the game is worth nothing. When teenage Erik dares to subvert the rules of Epic, he and his friends must face the Committee. If Erik and his friends win, they may have the key to destroying the Committee's tyranny. But if they lose....

When a multinational games company recruit Tom, a smart, streetwise Dublin teenager, to get a team together and come to San Francisco to immerse themselves in a massive fantasy world, he thinks it is the job of his dreams. His challenge is to level up fast so as to eliminate an AI dragon that has gone rogue and is preventing the release of the game. As Tom comes closer to that goal, he starts to realize that the game is not what it seems, not least because a powerful crypto-currency company seem to have funded the creation of the game for their own purposes.

When Daniel Cicero’s wife Lindsay is killed by a hit-and-run-driver, a large part of his soul dies along with her. His happiness is shattered, his life destroyed. Unable to cope, he soon loses his job and eventually his sense of purpose, and as he descends into the throes of depression and sorrow, he spends his nights aimlessly wandering the streets of Boston and his days in a fog, living by rote, unable to move forward or to let go of the past.

It’s 1646 BC, and Atlantis, the jewel of the ancient world, faces oblivion. A cataclysm is brewing—one which will wash over an empire at the very height of its power and shroud it in mystery forever. A resolute general is tasked with unravelling the gods’ ominous warnings, but nature is about to unleash devastation that will ripple across millennia. Perhaps even crushing the nascent concept of democracy before it can ever be born.

Steve’s days are numbered. The illness has consumed him. Would this stranger’s offer give him a second chance? It looks like a game. Looks can be deceiving. Paul Nelson, the CEO of Tempest Inc, has developed another world and he’s ready to send in another consciousness. This time, though, things are different. Those that came before have caused some troubles and his world is in peril. For Steve, it’s a last chance. He’s got nothing to lose. And who knows, it might be fun? As a warrior named Abalonious, his body gone, Steve must adapt, learn, and grow to survive.

In Twenty Mile Bottom, Mississippi, a grandmother mysteriously disappears. Her 18-year-old grandson, Roy Gene, smells a rat and launches his own investigation. Unbeknownst to him is a domestic terrorist plot masked by a renegade religious cult run by a gypsy fortuneteller and his alcoholic evangelist grandfather. The grandfather's infamous Halloween service, The Devil Walks at Midnight is the emotional lynch pin to a corrupt theology of fear that keeps everyone in line... except Roy Gene's grandmother... and Roy Gene.

Ex-FBI agent and antiques picker Jeff Talbot asks Lanny, a fellow picker, to scout out some antique majolica as a present for his wife—with no idea just how costly it will be. Lanny is a bit of a loner, but Jeff has always liked him. So it comes as a total shock when the young man is arrested for murdering an antiques dealer. Jeff learns that Lanny quarreled with the dealer after she sold two pieces of majolica she was supposed to hold for him—uncharacteristic of the kind, caring, and trustworthy man that Jeff knows.

It’s the late 1980s, and Michael Fenton, editor of Ramboona (a magazine dedicated to forgotten films), is attempting to track down the lost test footage from the 1931 Frankenstein produced by Universal Studios. In his attempt to locate this 50-year-old film canister, Mike is led down a labyrinth of blind alleys amidst the topsy-turvy wonderland of Los Angeles and environs.

So, you think you like to be scared.... Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, and the coveted Nebula, the unforgettable tales in this magnificent collection are the work of one of today's most respected masters of horror. Here are stories designed to carry the listener across fear's threshold, to terror...and beyond.

Charles L. Grant sets forth to take us across time and into a fantasy world to his remarkable little Connecticut town of Oxrun Station. There are new horrors on the loose to excite each listener.

Since Jeff Talbot left the FBI, he's been investigating yard sales as a professional antiques picker. From furniture to books, from old clothes to broken toys, nothing escapes his keen eye for appraisal. But there is one item that he always keeps his knowing eyes particularly peeled to find: a one-of-a-kind French cabaret set commissioned by Napoleon for his love, Josephine. It is an item any collector would kill for. So when it's about to be auctioned off - and rival collectors start turning up dead - there are plenty of suspects to choose from.

1898: Martian tripods lay waste to Earth's cities. The world's armies are unable to stem the tide of destruction. When all hope appears lost, common bacteria kills the alien invaders. From the ashes, the human race uses the technology left behind by the Martians to build new, advanced weapons.

Months after antiques picker and ex-FBI agent Jeff Talbot's beloved 1948 Chevy woodie was wrecked—the result of a killer trying to run Jeff off the road—it's finally restored. But when he and his butler go to pick it up at the shop, they discover the asphyxiated bodies of four men—including owner Louie Stella, a former informant from Jeff's FBI days. But what at first appears to be a terrible accident is soon ruled a homicide. Louie's son, Tony, is missing—and he's left behind an envelope, found inside the woodie.

Dignon Malloy lives with his cat, Mr. Tibbs, in a rundown apartment in the heart of a dreary, nameless, industrial coastal city. Haunted by dark visions, memories of horrific childhood abuse and the recent murder of a coworker, his is a lonely, sad and painful existence - until he ventures into a used bookstore and comes across an old paperback titled Mythical Beings in a Mortal World. Inside, someone has written a name, Bree Harper, and a phone number. Is it an innocent note left by the previous owner, or something far more sinister?

The Soft Whisper of the Dead is the first of the Oxrun tales to be placed in other than a contemporary setting. The first in a trilogy of historical horror novels, it is the account of the evil Count Braslov's attempt to subjugate the Oxrun population to his vampiric will.

Charles L. Grant's town of Oxrun Station became real to horror fans (much like Lovecraft's Arkham and King's Castle Rock). While most of Grant's stories were contemporary, he did write a trilogy of "historical" novels placed in an earlier Oxrun. The Dark Cry of the Moon is a classic werewolf tale for fans of the old Universal and Hammer horror films. The emphasis is on character and atmosphere, not on gore. It is the second volume in Grant's acclaimed "historical horror" trilogy.