Showing results by narrator "Nicole Poole" in All Categories

The starship Dragon, accompanied by its fleet of outriders, is faring ever deeper into that region known as the Hallowed Vasties. Here, at the shattered heart of ancient human civilization, once-living worlds were ripped apart by the dimensional intrusions of a Blade. Yet despite the apocalyptic-scale destruction, the fleet's telescopes have picked out signs of life among the ruins and the ship's company is eager to go on—but should they?

Callie Penrose returns home to find a year has passed, and that everyone believes her long dead. Roland Haviar, once her mentor and now a Master Vampire, has become a bloodthirsty tyrant, fulfilling his vow to bathe the City of Fountains in blood until he avenges her death. And the Vatican Shepherds, once his brothers, stand in his way. In his quest for closure, Roland surrounds the city in a magical barrier that blocks all methods of escape - or help - giving him time to seek out an ancient artifact powerful enough to put an end to everyone and everything once and for all.

The sisters’ leader, Miriamal, and three mining chairpersons investigate an unexplored wormhole for possible economic expansion. Aboard the Dominance, they exit the wormhole and are stunned to find the nearby system inhabited. More troubling, technologically advanced warships hold station above the system’s exoplanet. SADEs witness the hasty return of the Dominance and the cessation of messages between Miriamal and Lisa Dyehouse. The Truth Matters partners race against time to save Samuel, and they’re not above leveraging an unreliable criminal hacker.

Callie Penrose - a wizard with a splash of Angel’s blood flowing through her veins - kind of broke the Vatican and their band of holy-warrior wizard-priests, the Shepherds. She returns home to Kansas City to find new gangs of supernaturals roving the streets, preying on the innocent while the local factions do nothing. Although not unified, everyone seems to agree on one point.... Callie Penrose must die. And she’s still hearing those strange Whispers in her mind - much more frequently than before, and not nearly as...forgiving.

Meet Miriam Elizabeth Swanson, in a full-blown snit, buoyed by a fabulous cast who run the gamut from insufferable to wonderful. First is the arrival of Liz Harper, Miriam's tenant from Birmingham, who sets a new cycle in motion. Then her other tenant, Kevin, a stalwart companion with more style than Cary Grant, shakes Miriam out of her fog to see which battles are worth the fight. Next, her estranged son announces he's marrying a Jamaican woman. And what about her ex-husband, Charles, and that sordid lingerie model of his?

If you want to get to heaven, you’ve got to raise a little hell.... Callie Penrose is struggling to find her special purpose in life. Rather than allying with any of the powerful supernatural groups begging to sign her up - the Vatican, the vampires, the shifters, or the Armies of both Heaven and Hell - Callie has been picking fights with all of them. But when she’s abducted by a host of angels, and a greater demon begins hunting her through the daytime streets of Kansas City, Callie learns that her past has come back to haunt her.

At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571, only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?

On a summer night in 1984, 19-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested. Fast forward 2014, 30 years after her assault. Why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget?

Human descendants of the Earth colony ship Destiny face an incursion into their area of space by a powerful race. The Imperium Empire, which is ruled by the Krackus, is one wormhole away from the humans, and a rim mining planet, Kilmer, would be the alien race’s first contact. Fear rules the company leader. The Krackus represent danger. They sail powerful battleships. Moreover, the Naiad Council reels from the news that an alien race abuts their space. For centuries, humans in the Axis Crossing region thought they were alone.

Pyre's humans suffer multiple cultural shocks. They discovered the Messinants dome, an ancient construction that houses a quantum-coupled gate. More shocking, they find that sentient alien races utilize a network of these domes to journey between their far distant worlds in pursuit of alliance matters. If humans wish to join this elite collection of sentients, they must contribute significantly in trade, tech, or something of equal value.

Fourteen-year-old Ileth grew up in an orphanage, and thanks to her stutter was never thought to be destined for much beyond kitchen work and cleaning. But she's dreamed of serving with the dragons ever since a childhood meeting with a glittering silver dragon and its female dragoneer. For years she waits, and as soon as she is old enough to join, Ileth runs away to become a novice dragoneer at the ancient human-dragon fortress of the Serpentine.

Jericho isn't the famous rock star he once was, though he still plays in a local band and loves to party. Beautiful women come and go, but music is his only passion - until a sassy redhead named Isabelle Monroe shows up unexpectedly. Izzy has always loved the freedom and adventure of life on the road, but she has recently decided to settle down-as much as a rogue wolf can. When her boyfriend gets her a job working at a hot Shifter bar, she runs into the last person on earth she expected to see again.

My name is Leah, and I am a Cazador. Trained to hunt and kill vampires over 300 years ago, my training became essential once I became one of those monsters. The underbelly of the supernatural world has begun to bleed into the human world, and journalist Rachel Sambrook is asking too many dangerous questions. Unwittingly, she's revealed a conspiracy I had hoped would never become a reality: using vampire blood for human experiments. As I attempt to contain her, she's by my side, and the truth of just how deep the darkness goes is exposed.

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. "I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian," she writes, "or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut." But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.

Cremsylon and his companions visited the center of the Imperium Empire. That provided an opportunity for Kreus, the first Krackus SADE, to contact the Imperium governor, an AI who controls the planet’s communications. It’s also the repository for the empire’s critical data. The visit to Imperium happens, not once, but twice. Each time, Kreus spends time perusing the governor’s records, invasions that the AI is incapable of stopping. These intrusions initiate an odd sequence of events.

After 700 years, Prince has acquired everything a Packmaster could desire. But when he meets the enchanting Nadia Kozlov, he realizes that there's one thing he doesn't have: answers. Prince owes his life to a man he hasn't seen in centuries, and Nadia holds the key to his whereabouts, because that man is her father. Destinies collide when Nadia's sister shows up unexpectedly. Katarina is a skilled bounty hunter, hot on the trail of a nefarious outlaw who turns out to be Prince's old nemesis.

When it's come to my friends and family, I've been willing to sacrifice just about anything to save them, but these last few months I've been sidelined from the fight—not anymore. The time has come, and Abaddon is finally coming to collect what he was promised—and he is not alone. Those who I once thought were my allies, and others who I worried would stab me in the back have now partnered up with the demon to take what I hold most dear to my heart.

Who is Callie Penrose? They say she’s been kissed by Heaven - whatever the Hell that means. Because Callie was orphaned on the steps of a church in Kansas City, and doesn’t know her parents. She starts out as a rookie wizard who hunts monsters for the Vatican. Except…ironically, she’s never been a churchy kind of girl, and she quickly learns that monsters can reside anywhere. Even among the most devout.

In a world where wizards are relegated to ghettos, it is no surprise to see one murdered in the street. But for Stonne Caris, a young warrior monk who sees the killing and gives chase to the culprit, there is nothing ordinary about seeing a murderer disappear into a black, inky portal. The Archmage sends him in search of Antryg Windrose - a half-mad mage who understands the nature of these passages between dimensions.

Niko is caught in a powerful spell that was cast from the very book he sought to protect. Trapped between life and death, his chances of returning look grim. Gem is determined to set things right. Armed only with her innate knowledge of language, she begins her daunting quest to break the diabolical spell...no matter the cost. When an irreversible action unleashes a new threat, Keystone scrambles into action.