Showing results by narrator "Dan Calley" in All Categories

It should've been a dream. A new life on the coast, running a beautiful country hotel with my husband. It should have been everything I'd ever wanted. Worth every scrap of investment. A hotel business we'd sunken every single penny we owned into, only to find out there was a big chain rival opening just a stone's throw away. Slowly, day by day, the dream became a nightmare. Bills. So many bills. Sleepless nights, tossing and turning. No way out in sight. Until there was him. The man at the bar. The man with a proposition we should never have considered in a thousand years.

When your eyes land on a complete stranger on the train, and the world around you stops. When the stranger says hello, and your heart stops, too. When the universe answers your prayers and he's there, next day, on the train. A man so powerful—brooding with darkness and secrets. I knew there was going to be more. I wanted more. When the stranger is reading one of your favorite novels, and you're reading one of his. When you think the universe can't be any kinder, but it truly delivers the jackpot of all jackpots and two opposite worlds collide, as though it was meant to be.

Ripped from a forgotten homeland as a child, Tisaanah learned how to survive with nothing but a sharp wit and a touch of magic. But the night she tries to buy her freedom, she barely escapes with her life. Desperate to save the best friend she left behind, Tisaanah journeys to the Orders, the most powerful organizations of magic Wielders in the world. But to join their ranks, she must complete an apprenticeship with Maxantarius Farlione, a handsome and reclusive fire wielder who despises the Orders.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

Making the cake for my ex-fake boyfriend turned best friend’s wedding the week before Christmas was easy. Carting it halfway across England in the snow was not. Especially not when a blown-out back tyre leads to me coming face to face with my long term crush for the first time in five years. I’ve known André since his days of boyband superstardom, but since I was supposed to be dating one of his bandmates, I was never able to act on my feelings. But now we’re both single and stuck in a hotel for the weekend with our interfering friends who seem determined to push us together.

Sam Earnshaw’s recovery from a year-long coma should be an occasion for celebration. Instead, he reveals that the hit and run incident that left him close to death was no accident. Someone deliberately pushed him into the path of a speeding vehicle. As DCI Tom Raven leads the investigation into the attempted murder, he soon uncovers a web of dark secrets and lies. The attempt on Sam’s life is not the first time a killer has struck.

Tisaanah bargained away her own freedom to save those she left behind in slavery. Now, bound by her blood pact, she must fight the Orders' war—and Max is determined to protect her at all costs. But when a betrayal tears apart Ara, Max and Tisaanah are pushed into an even bloodier conflict. Tisaanah must gamble with Reshaye's power to claim an impossible victory. And Max, forced into leadership, must confront everything he hoped to forget: his past, and his own mysterious magic. All the while, darker forces loom—far darker, even, than the Orders' secrets.

When flash floods unearth a human skeleton at a local beauty spot, DCI Tom Raven is called to investigate. Who is the dead man, and how did he end up there? Help is on hand from forensic anthropologist Dr Chandice Jones who enjoys the challenge of working with old bones. But is Raven one challenge too many for her?

A man’s body washes up on a beach on the North Yorkshire coast with a single gunshot wound to the chest. The only clue to the victim’s identity is a ring engraved with two names. DCI Tom Raven is back in his hometown of Scarborough for the first time in over 30 years. When offered the chance to lead the murder investigation, he takes it. Raven quickly discovers that the prime suspect is his once-teenage friend, now a wealthy but shady businessman. He finds an ally in Detective Sergeant Becca Shawcross, but not everyone in the team is on his side.

DCI Tom Raven’s hopes for a few quiet days with his daughter, Hannah, are shattered when a shocking murder plunges him into a macabre mystery in the nearby coastal town of Whitby. In the hallowed grounds of the ruined abbey, a man lies lifeless: drained of blood and marked by the symbol of a dragon.

Lady Iolanthe of Rockmourn Keep expects to be a spinster all her days. She is very tall. She is very poor. And she is thirty. What lord could possibly want her? But then her father returns with news that he has found a bridegroom for her—one that is impressively tall. One that is strong, and bold, and wealthy. And best of all? He wants Iolanthe. It seems too good to be true. And when Iolanthe gets her first look at her husband-to-be, she realizes why. No one mentioned the 'orc' part of things . . .

A French musket ball to the leg takes Captain Hugh Fanshawe from the battlefield and leaves him enduring long, quiet days compiling paperwork at Horse Guards headquarters. He knows his lameness makes him the object of pity and distaste at the stifling social engagements he dutifully escorts his mother and sister to, but everything in his orderly life changes when Colonel Theo Lindsay arrives.

Across an empty laneway in Paris, through my hotel window, he saw me first. I stopped undressing . . . but only for a moment. The next night, he was waiting for me. He sat there in his expensive suit and watched. No participation. My only acknowledgement was the look of lust in his eyes. It continued until the night before I left, when I found a card under my door. No words. Just a number. So, I texted him. I'd never done anything like it before. It felt so dirty and wrong, but at the same time, I felt alive.

John Taylor works in the Nightside - the gaudy, neon noir, secret heart of London, where it's always three in the morning, where gods and monsters make deals and seek pleasures they won't find anywhere else. He has a gift for finding things. And sometimes what he's hired to locate can be very, very dangerous indeed.

As Manchester Athletic's record signing, I should be basking in the adoration of fans and enjoying the perks that come with the job. Only that's never been my style. I keep a low profile and stay focused on doing my job. A chance one-night stand on my way back from the States is about as anonymous as I can make it. She had no idea who I was, and I was pretty sure she gave me a fake name too. No numbers were exchanged, and we headed back to our so-called ordinary lives. The chance of a repeat should've been zero. Until we meet again in Manchester.

I've never been good at doing the right thing. A series of bad choices have left my life in tatters. Everyone is telling me to move on, but how can I? What I did was unforgivable, even if some believe otherwise. My whole world imploded the night I left a human dying on a classroom floor. I don't deserve anything good in my life, I know that. But I'm desperate for peace. Just a few moments where I can escape from everything I've done. When Toby offers me a solution that promises just that, I jump at it. I never imagined having a Dom but with Toby in that role?

Karly Winters has waited 10 long years to have the man of her dreams, the handsome but duplicitous Jacob Cruthers. From her home in Glasgow, she pines for the Londoner who casually keeps her dangling, never with a thought of giving her what she wants and never with any intention of leaving his wife. For her part, Karly has no intentions of being second best any longer and she hatches an artful plan of devious intent that she is certain will work in her favor.

If a no-strings hookup is required, then I'm the perfect guy. When I meet Danny, I can't believe my luck. A sexy wolf shifter who's also a fireman? Who runs from relationships just as fast as I do? Sign me up. The night that follows is one for the history books and the best part? Neither of us is looking for a repeat. That doesn't mean we won't see each other again. Without even realizing it, we become friends. Friends who do everything together. Everything with Danny is perfect, but when I start to yearn for more from my hookups, I know something needs to change.

In the wake of a crushing defeat, Tisaanah and Maxatarius have been ripped apart. Tisaanah is desperate to rescue Max from his imprisonment, even as her people's fight for freedom grows more treacherous. But within the walls of Ilyzath, Max's mind is a shadow of what it once was . . . leaving his past a mystery and his future at the mercy of Ara's new, ruthless queen. Meanwhile, in the Fey lands, Aefe has been dragged back into this world by a king who vows to destroy civilizations in her name. But even as her past returns to claim her, her former self is a stranger.

Before Owen Deathstalker, there was the Twilight of the Empire . . . Mistworld. The day would come when it would be a key world in Owen Deathstalker's Rebellion. Now, it's as it's always been, a world on the edge of the Empire, a lawless one, shielded from the outside by powerful ESPers. A world where Leon Vertue can run his body bank, where a burglar like Cat has more to fear from other thieves than the Empress' justice, a world where Investigator Topaz is determined to make her mark.