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

Days of rain force sane armies to hunker down to wait for dry weather. Yet, no one in the Jeweled Hills would accuse Prefect Marcus Venandus of being sane. Not only has he united the bickering Qing, Gente and Gota in his Black Hat Legion, he rarely embraces conventional military tactics. With three days of drenching weather turning roads to mud, flooding creeks, and bogging down his enemies’ carts and wagons, Marcus seizes the initiative and leads one thousand of his Black Hats on their most daring campaign yet.

Rediscover the magic of Christmas in this heartwarming mystery. A little boy wanders into town and directly into Agnes Hancock’s heart, resurrecting feelings she’d thought long dead when she lost her son during the Great War. No one knows who the child is or where he comes from, but Agnes can’t turn her back on him. As the police begin their investigation, she brings the boy into her home and learns to love again. But will her new found happiness be destroyed when the police finally answer the question What Child Is This?

Jewel’s days as a fugitive are over. She wakes from cold sleep, captive on an Armenite warship with her past rapidly catching up to her. Her parents are arriving soon to force her to marry Kole Delling, the Armenite man she fled into the Fringe to escape. And if that fate isn’t bad enough, some of the Armenites want to execute her and her surviving crew members for their legitimate salvage operations in the Valkyrie system. The walls are closing in, but Jewel isn’t ready to give up. It’s time for the galaxy to learn just how difficult it is to keep a Cartelite Princess prisoner.

Undersheriff Joanna Donovan has defended Hadrian’s Well from waves of uninvited guests before—including a zombie apocalypse—but now she just may have met her match. Brownies are small, quiet, cute, and want nothing more than to help people tidy up their homes—as long as you respect them. Her other visitors are loud, untidy, high-handed, and don’t respect anyone—hardly the perfect houseguests. Together, they may prove too much for the undersheriff and her overworked department to handle.

To honor his dead brother’s obligations, Marcus has agreed to help the city of Amatista defend itself in the coming war with mighty Diamonte and its allies, but the arrogant Gota who rule the Jeweled Cities refuse to believe an infantry composed of the despised Qing and Gente peoples can prove to be any kind of threat in the coming war.

From the pages of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine: When bare knuckle boxer Corey Callaghan’s trainer is locked in prison on a charge of murder, the sheriff doesn’t much care if he’s innocent or guilty. That’s because he doesn’t expect the case to go before a judge and jury. You see, the dead man’s son is leading a posse to town looking for vengeance and Corey’s fists aren’t likely to be enough to save the old man. It looks like Patrick’s only chance to avoid a lynching is lady luck, a named gambler, Pandora Parson, and the strength of her defense.

From the pages of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine: As an attractive lady gambler in the wild west, Miss Pandora Parson is used to getting a fair share of attention from gentleman admirers. But what is she to do when the man is no gentleman and refuses to take “no” for an answer?

By the author of Legionnaire, a supernatural thriller in honor of Occult-tober. All attorney Liz Dunn had to do was escort Ryan Hart to meet his long lost uncle in the tiny country of Carpathia on the Transylvanian border. Ryan stood to gain a ten million dollar estate. Liz wanted the hefty check that would keep her law firm in the black. But Ryan’s dying uncle, the enigmatic Stefan Carpathios, planned to get something far more sinister in return. In an ancient land where legends come to life, Liz is about to discover that the world is much more complex than she believed and a blood tie ...

Tribune Marcus Venandus and his two trusted officers have gone through hell in their journey north from the Fire Islands and across the Sea of Grass. Arriving at Amatista in the Jeweled Hills, Marcus is looking forward to a much deserved rest in the home of his half-brother, but fate has other plans for the legionnaire. Soon, he will be wishing he’d never heard of his brother’s city.

Forbidden from returning to Aquila, Marcus Venandus responds to a plea from a half-brother he has never met to aid him in the far away land called the Jeweled Hills. When pirates shut down the sea routes the legion officer and his two trusted companions are forced to join a caravan to make the slower journey north across the treacherous Sea of Grass. Yet this may not prove to be the safer choice. A mysterious shaman has sworn to drench the plains in the blood of foreigners and his mastery over storms gives him the teeth to fulfill his oath.

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.

The Festival of the Midnight Bloom was supposed to ignite feelings of love and lust in the southerners of Al-Andalus. Instead, the Pretender Earl of Fortaleza and his allies have used it to turn their co-religionists into berserk cannibals seeking to feast on northern flesh. Now Marshal Sturm, the legitimate earl, must figure out how to save thousands of northern survivors from hordes of mindless people who do not feel pain and seem to keep fighting even after they're dead. All he has to combat them with is his bayonet, a few stout friends, and a handful of rickety barriers to bolster the ...

By the author of Legionnaire, the epic new military fantasy continues: Sane men spend the winter season bundled up in their homes near the fire praying for spring to come, so insanity must be on the rise in Winterhaven. With the tenuous unity of the Great Lords fractured by the failures of the Duke’s army in the west and the accusations of heresy against his son, new armies are secretly mobilizing even in this bitterest of seasons. Yet, can even knights as great as William Lord Tavistock and Sir Conn of Edgefield lead armies to victory after the first snows have fallen?

By the author of Legionnaire, the epic new military fantasy continues: Duke Maldon may have suffered the shame of seeing his family's heresy exposed, but that doesn’t mean that the duke and his kin are out of the fight. Launching their most insidious scheme yet, they succeed in transforming a victory celebration uniting the duchy’s leading families into a bloody battlefield that ignites a civil war. And with the great families of Winterhaven doing their best to kill each other, no one seems to notice the far greater dangers arising on the border, threatening to overrun them all. No one,...

As word of the Legion’s lightning conquest of Malaquita echoes across Diamonte, the Black Hat commander plans an even more audacious move. Rather than consolidate his gains in the west, Marcus launches a surprise strike downriver on Hessonita—the forward rallying point for Diamonte’s attempted counterattack. The key to his plan is speed and surprise—how close can they get before the city realizes its danger? If Hessonita has time to prepare a river defense, Marcus could lose the entire legion. Yet this time, the fog of war conceals dangers beyond human comprehension. Will the Camino...

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 ...

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?

With Prefect Marcus and the Black Hat Legion still trapped in Morganita fighting against the treacherous Thegn Hathus of Granate, it falls to Calidus Vulpes, Red Vigil of the Aquilan legions, to take a thousand quiet Qing infantry men and fifteen hundred unruly Gente archers to hold off the full might of Diamonte at Angosto Pass. The odds are thirty-to-one against them. Can the Aquilan junior officer hold back the enemy until Marcus and the veterans return, or will this prove to be Calidus’ final stand?

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...

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?