Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

It was 1939, and a close-knit South African family found themselves in need of a new home. Peter van der Westhuizen, a husband and father of seven who spent most of his days on the road as a truck driver, did his best to provide for them. Then he found Opsaal. It’s an Afrikaans word that means "saddle up", but it was also a place: a farm, to be exact - a lonesome speck of nothing on the edge of a dirt track nowhere near a main road in the South African wilderness, somewhere in the Adelaide district.

Returning from an evening in Mars City spent visiting relatives he didn’t know he had, Timaset Skooch arrived at the local space port to find his new acquisition stolen. A few minutes later, the crew of his slightly run-down loderunner "Celeste", returned from a nearby pub, blind drunk, puzzled, and now unemployed as well. Ever since he’d decided to quit being a PI and to try his hand at running cargo instead, things had just blown up in Skooch’s face one day at a time (Florpavian Flamebirds tended to do that occasionally).

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692: Arabella Edwards, a mysterious beauty, is found hanging from the Salem gallows, yet the courts had nothing to do with her death. It is up to Hetty Henry, a wealthy widow past 25 years of age, to help with the inquiries. The first thing Hetty notices is an expensive lacy shift hidden beneath the plain clothes of the victim. The second thing she notices is what should be there but isn't: a hood to cover her hair, a travel cloak, a chain of household keys.... Hetty Harris and Increase Cotton, a local minister, are determined to solve her murder.

Canadian vigilante Laura Amour takes her crusade against child exportation to France to take on an international human trafficking organization. What she exposes goes far beyond anything she has ever expected to deal with. Against her is a powerful statesman with vast resources and one of the world's most active anti-terrorist police forces. She must partner up with a rogue anti-terrorist police officer and a teen prostitute or thousands might die.

In the ruins of the collapsed United States, private inspector, Cybil Lewis and her inspector-in-training, Jane, fill a need. When Jane insists they look into her cousin's disappearance, Cybil agrees and is catapulted into a world of lies and deceit. As they investigate, they move far into the reaches of the divided states and deep into the upper crest of political turmoil. Caught up in the malestrom of betrayal and corruption, Cybil and Jane unearth long buried secrets and survive attempts on their lives.

The abandoned house in the country. You've passed by it. In a state of decay, its walls have witnessed the triumphs and tragedies of generations. There's nothing left but memories forgotten. If you believe that, you haven't been inside. Kayla buys a house in the Flint Hills town of Sycamore Falls, Kansas. The property includes a dilapidated old house out back.

Do you want to live forever? Ever since Jacob Benjamin touched his dead grandmother's cheek while she lay in her coffin, he has had a fascination with death. The mystery of the grave and what lies beyond it became a lifetime quest for the young man. His Master's Degree thesis project explores the decades-abandoned Waxley Mortuary, sitting in ruins. His research partners join him on a journey through life and legacy, but Jacob discovers there is still activity inside the dilapidated walls of Waxley. Jacob realizes that there is one figure standing between him and his legacy, salvation, and redemption: The Mortician.

This collection of stories from some of the brightest fantasy writers in the world run the gamut from steampunk to horror, from steamy romance to weird western, from Victorian thriller to contemporary bondage. But they all feature one thing in common - the corset. From vampire comedy to steampunk action to BDSM, Cinched is certain to free your mind. What else will follow?

Tales of a Minstrel follows the adventures of a minstrel named Finbar as he travels from village to village telling his stories. His own experiences, however, tend to outshine even the most exciting story he tells.

Life in Clearwater was quiet, even a little dull for Grim, but it was better than the time he'd spent on the streets of Seattle. Then the strange girl arrived, abandoned at a roadside diner. Drugged, sick, with no memory of her past. Grim had a bad feeling about her from the beginning but he didn't say anything when his foster mother, Clara, took her in. If anyone needed a home, it was this strange, sad girl - Clara's new Angel...

One of America's first civil rights activists was a former slave named Sojourner Truth. Truth was born into slavery around the year 1797, and would wait thirty years to win her freedom. Her 1850 autobiography brought attention to the evils of slavery, and her work during the Civil War, her speeches highlighting injustice, and her efforts to ensure greater equality for all Americans inspired those who would follow.

Faith, an anomaly to the human race, must defend herself, her world, and her universe from certain doom after accidentally injuring a monster she runs into at her high school graduation. Her adventures lead her and a Watcher known as The Man, to the planet Quii, a city-planet outside her own universe that potentially holds a key to stopping the end of planet Earth. On Quii, secrets come out, and they learn truths about the mysterious Rymuth Elves, the planet's only inhabitants.

After that disappointing and sudden end to what had been a promising career, Mei rewarded herself with a long, relaxing vacation in the outback to celebrate her gender reassignment and her new start in life. The first stop on her journey turned out to be a little backwater planet called Deanna....

After a virus wipes out all life on the planet, Ryan Steward believes he's all that's left. Now, a race of scavengers descends on Earth, ready to consume the remaining resources. Ryan, tasked with preserving humanity's written word, must travel the country in hopes of saving books from their destruction.

"If your death ever comes before mine, I hope the gods take my life soon after." Duli and her husband had stated those words to each other several times. Then the day came when his dwarf kin brought his body back from the field of an ambush...Duli only wishes her own death, but in the process sparks a liberation movement that shakes the subterranean city to its core values. Even if the women win over their clan, they must still prove they have the mettle to face their husbands' killers, and the magic that humans command.

Rachel doesn't know what's weirder - that there's a dragon in the woods by her school, or that Scott Morrison actually thinks she's beautiful. Or maybe it's the elves. Yeah, it's totally the elves. It was an ordinary weekday for Rachel Hampton. You know, like every day - you wreck your bike on the way to school because the gorgeous queen snot of the universe slams on the brakes of her spanky little convertible right in front of you, so you swerve to miss her and get run over by Scott "Oh My God" Morrison who is so nice and so cute and so out of your league.

Forty-seven-year-old housewife Marge Christensen finds her husband, Gene, dead in their garage, slumped over the steering wheel of his still running BMW. The police rule the death a suicide. Marge does not believe Gene killed himself and determines to discover what really happened to him. In the process, she discovers all their money is missing. So, what was Gene doing before he died? Why did he die? And what was she going to do now?

Deanna, a small backwater Terran colony generally known as an idyllic tourist-magnet (if watching birds blow up if they flew too high were your kind of thing) had just hit a speed-bump on the highway of Life called the Deannan Un-civil War.

Stuart Flane, Captain of the starship Mercury, and lately the butt-end of innumerable jokes doing the rounds at Space Fleet H.Q., is called upon once more—kicking and screaming—to investigate all manner of preternatural fuckery.

Charting the frontier of unknown space was a guaranteed humdrum, routine mission—which in the case of the starship Mercury, may or may not have been a subtle way to punish Captain Stuart Flane for recently losing 90 percent of his crew without a satisfactory explanation. It was hard to tell sometimes, when it came to discerning Admiral Tawney's motives. The Old Man was like that—but at least he seemed to have a sense of humor.