Showing results by narrator "Edmund Bloxam" in All Categories

The morphocyst population has grown by orders of magnitude, the denizens of which are building their homes in the forgotten sectors of Rigil Kent’s many slums. Jace and Nyx have stable employment as Silurian operatives paid to investigate morphocyst developments with particular attention to the phenomenon of the criminal serial morph.

The moor is darkening. Lorne feels it in his bones. His instincts, honed by years on the battlefields of the desert, scream in warning. Or is it the monster in his head? When Detective Inspector Tony Shaw tells him the obvious occult symbols on the dead man are nothing more than faked staging, Lorne knows his instincts are right, and the police are wrong. There is darkness, and it’s spreading.

Lorne is beginning to understand that the dead might not stay in the graveyards where they are left. He also knows it’s time to start facing this disconcerting reality in the same way he faced his enemies in battle. So, when Eddie Rice buys a rundown cottage on Exmoor, and an old graveyard, which should be empty, things become increasingly weird. It isn’t empty for a start. Not of bodies, or the whispering dead.

Lorne’s home is turning into a dream. He’s happy and at peace for the first time in his life. The nightmares are releasing their grip on his mind and he’s learning to cope with the whispering dead. Sadly, that’s not the case for everyone.

The tumultuous recent history of Taiwan surprisingly gave the islands unusually diverse cultures. In these four stories, the authors have successfully woven layers of messages through intriguing plots, characters and metaphors. With extraordinary artistry, they (re)present elaborate human natures. These are the stories of ordinary people who refuse to succumb to hardship or inequality. They are unsinkable Taiwanese.

Lorne Turner needs a break, so when he's offered the job of security guard and handyman at an old rectory in the Lyn Valley he takes it. He thought he'd gain a little space and perspective. A little quiet from the noise in his head, from his demons, from his beast. Sadly, The Rectory doesn't provide the haven he needs. As the rain falls, waters rise, and old graves move. When the whispering of Exmoor’s dead turns into a scream, Lorne has to act.

Michael Fomenko is familiar with adversity. But when he gets shut out of the Commonwealth Games for financial and political reasons at the ripe age of 20, he questions everything. Setting a new course for himself, he dreams of a feat that will require unimaginable determination. With no companions or guides, he will paddle a dugout canoe over 1,000 nautical kilometers from Cairns, Australia, to Dutch, New Guinea.

After nearly two days of fierce fighting, the Battle of Turtle Island left the skies of the Corsair world darkened with their dead. For a while, the terror seemed to be over, but not just yet. Not all the great Corsair figures of legend had been killed or captured - a few had slipped through the net. Dead Beckoning is the tale of Adam, a former Corsair captain working to expunge his bloody past by doing good - starting with helping the imperial starship Antares to track down and capture one of the most powerful and feared Corsairs in legend: Sona Kilroy.

In 1976, four friends - Dan, Fred, Tim, and Thierry - are on a bus along the hippie trail from London to Kathmandu. But everything is not going according to plan. After a drug deal goes wrong, the boys barely escape with their lives. Thousands of kilometers, numerous acid trips, accidents, nightclubs, and a pair of beautiful Siamese twins later, they finally reach the counter-culture capital of the world, Kathmandu, and Fred disappears with the drug money. A quarter-century later, mysterious emails invite the other three to pick up their share of the money.

In Fated to Fall, Amina Kadir finds herself in a world she never wanted. After being sold by her father to the ruthless gangster Arben Zefi, she is taken far from everything she once knew. As Amina tries to adjust to her new life, she struggles with fear and confusion. Living in Arben's dangerous world, she must learn to navigate the challenges that come with being his possession. But as she spends more time with him, Amina discovers unexpected sides of Arben that make her question everything.

The Reality Beneath is a collection of short stories written by SULI Daniel Johnson. They are written in his distinct brand of science fiction that can be defined as stories that make you think. The Reality Beneath encompasses a good example of SULI Daniel Johnson’s unique style. He takes current topics and situations and looks at them from a new perspective. The genre is technically science fiction, yet quite often, it comes very close to reality broadening the perspective to look at things in a new way. It includes:

This sci-fi fantasy adventure introduces the worlds of Rigil Kent, where the back-engineering of alien artifacts booms economies and enigmatic cultures clash on the verge of war. Jace, a trader and sometimes smuggler, finds himself shanghaied into running a mission for a ruling dynasty of the “spider folk”, members of New Earth’s rival faction. The mission takes him to the alien world of Matdu—the original home of the mysterious First Race—where a red dwarf sun presides over a half-lit world chock-full of arcane treasure.

Decayed Land is the third book of the Islands triptych by Chung Wenyin. If the trilogy is an overview of Taiwanese culture and history through the eyes of the land's women, then Decayed Land is the broadest of the three. It has a large cast of characters and takes on the role of family history for the Chungs, starting properly around the mass migration of Han Chinese to Taiwan, although the family itself having lived there for longer.

For decades in the timeline, the realm has thrived in joyful peace, embracing luxuries and euphoric ways of living which seem will be everlasting to its people. This seemingly endless happiness among the folk may soon come to an end, now that the king has passed; to be burned and buried to rest.

Twenty years in the future, the aliens will encounter a planet decimated by the effects of global warming and the devastating waves of weaponized plagues released by the Everlasting Caliphate, the largest network of Islamic terrorists ever assembled. After decades of all this destruction, how will Alpha-Earth react to the news we are not alone and that other earths worship other gods unknown on our planet? How can we repress the news, even after hundreds of Jamaicans share videos of the historic landing all over the world?

When the miners on Mars form a trade union and call a planet wide strike, the president of the Council of Economic Unions orders the federal forces on Mars to take a firm hand.

Fiore is a young Italian woman engaged to be married but her plans are interrupted by a charismatic Sebastián, a handsome middle aged Spanish businessman. Her beauty strikes him like a thunderbolt sent by the goddess Venus herself. When she is given an peculiar gift: a Spanish doll, she is thrown into a whirlwind of entangled passion, money, secrets and love.

He was just another man with a drinking problem, only alcohol transformed him into a violent pork-beast named Piggly Swiggly, and since he's always drunk, his human side hasn't seen the light of day in years. After yet another rampaging bender, Piggly wakes up in a jungle metropolis full of floating crocodiles, greasy bacon addicts, and worse: prohibition. Trapped in this strange teetotaled town, he must keep his buzz going or else revert to his weak and vulnerable human form. But even then, Piggly Swiggly's depravity may prove to be his own undoing.

Have you ever glanced at a stranger? Then thought about undressing them, taking them home and making them yours? Now imagine that stranger has a husband. Imagine they are happily married. Do you still want them? Do you leave it? The taboo of breaking the ultimate vow can be too much for some and a challenge for others.

"The Island Triptych" by Chung Wenyin describes women's and a woman's experiences of 20th century Taiwanese life. It is thus both about culture and history. Decayed Lust, Book 1 is a first-person account of a woman growing up in 1980s and 1990s (and to about 2002) Taipei. It is a poetic mind trying to navigate a densely populated metropolis, and the encounters and experiences of alienation and dissatisfaction this engenders. It is also heartfelt and amusing, as a wry sarcasm settles in.