Showing results by narrator "Thomas Williams" in All Categories

A former enforcer for the new lords, Kane found shelter in Cerberus Redoubt, along with the archivist Brigid and fellow magistrate Grant. They know that unseen forces guard an ancient secret, which has thrown a dark shroud over the future. Behind them stands the impenetrable past. But all that changes when they are suddenly catapulted into another reality - and here, as they attempt to remake the future, the enemy races to turn time into a weapon of destruction.

His new world born out of the fire and ashes of a nuclear exchange, a rogue warrior searches for ways to undo the past. With brother-in-arms Grant and the archivist Brigid Baptist, he dares to seek out the secrets of time.... Kane and his fellow exiles are thrown into a reality where the nukecaust didn't happen — instead, the inhabitants had driven the enemy from the planet. But now the dark forces are back for a final confrontation in a war that may bring the ultimate freedom or final destruction.

A dark and unfathomable power governs post-nuclear America. Its tentacles reach from the heart of the garrison - ruled cities to the lawless Outlands where a last bid for freedom remains. A former warrior of the secretive regime, Kane has become a fugitive of the order he once served, racing to expose the blueprint of a power that's immeasurable evil. Kane's quest allies him with fellow outcasts Brigid Baptiste and Grant, all willing to risk the peril of seeking the truth.

A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multigenerational transformation from what is called Black to what is assumed to be White. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a "Black" father from the segregated South and a "White" mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of "Black blood" makes a person Black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations....

Invisible swarms of insects are on the rampage, heading toward America's heartland. Immune to pesticides, the creatures are consuming farms, leveling wheat and cornfields. On the frontlines, Remo and the Master of Sinanju face not only the insurgent insects, but the Iowa Disorganized Militia - convinced this pestilence is actually a government conspiracy.

Time hasn't stopped after the apocalypse. After the long nuclear winters, a few continue the struggle for survival in the irradiated wastelands. Then, a new order emerges, with a directive to destroy whatever freedom remains in its fortified enclaves and the surrounding Outlands. Kane, once its trusted and feared warrior, is now a fugitive driven to fathom the past and unravel the future.

The conspiracy of secrecy manipulating post-nuclear Earth takes a terrifying new turn as the mysterious oligarchy becomes something far more sinister. No longer shrouded in the cloaks of hybrid-human divinity, the nine barons have evolved into their true incarnation of ancient overlords, their avaricious scope expanded to reclaim the world they were forced to abandon and with it, the final subjugation of the human race.

As a warrior, Kane served the lords of the villes, but on a punitive expedition he'd caught a forbidden glimpse of the future that made him an outcast. In exile with him are Brigid Baptiste, golden keeper of the archives, and Grant, an only friend in a hostile land. Together, they've sworn to uncover the secrets of the world's fate...as written in its dark past.

Once a fearsome warrior of the new order, Kane discovers a secret that has damned humanity since the dawn of history. Now banished as an enemy of the state, he joins forces with Brigid Baptiste, keeper of the archives, and Grant, brother-in-arms and innovative weapons specialist. In the place that was once called New Mexico, Kane finds the first hidden clues to humanity's future.

Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert remains a death pit of scorching heat, cannies, and grim odds. Ryan Cawdor and his group survive the trek there, only to be drugged, robbed, and left for the slave trade. Escaping their captors leaves them alive but stripped of their prized gear: their weps, J. B. Dix's glasses, Dr. Mildred Wyeth's medical kit and, worse, her secret codex. The companions must rely on each other to challenge their enemy and settle the score.

A young Lithuanian immigrant, full of hope, arrives in Chicago in 1904 to work in the stockyards. He and his family soon find themselves processed like the very cattle they slaughter, by the system they dreamed would save them.

Desperately short of supplies, Ryan and his companions are forced to seek help at the prosperous-looking ville of Amity Springs. Hired on to retrieve a stolen relic, they quickly become caught up in an escalating power struggle between two strong-willed lady barons. Each woman covets the cache of predark goods buried in the ville's backyard. But they are not alone in their desire. And all that stands between a motherlode of buried bounty and the destructive power of unchecked greed is Ryan's grim determination to survive another day.

The brutality of post-nuclear America has spawned a dark frontier where the harsh and unforgiving new rules of existence cannot obliterate the decency and determination that drive the true human spirit. It's tested and tormented but never destroyed. A lust for power and a strong sec-force are the basic requirements of any Deathlands baron. But brilliant, charismatic Baron Eugene Arcadian has bigger visions than simply a monopoly on jack and trade. He wants the future.

A new and horrific face of the Annunaki legacy appears in the Arizona desert. A shambling humanoid monster preys on human victims, consuming their energy, burning their souls — leaving empty, mindless shells in its wake. Trapped inside this creature, the souls of rogue Igigi, once the treasured slave caste of the Annunaki, seek hosts for their physical rebirth. And no human — perhaps not even the Cerberus rebels — can stop them from reclaiming the planet of their masters for themselves....

The fall of the baronies has led Earth deeper into the darkest days of a bitter struggle as old as the planet itself — a war for righteous destiny. As a force of elite rebels dares to break humanity free from the iron chains of alien rule, they face an ever-changing matrix of cunning and retribution. Area 51 remains a mysterious enclave of eerie synergy and unleashed power — a nightmare poised to take the world to hell. A madman has marshaled an army of incorporeal, alien evil, a virus with intelligence now scything through human hosts like locusts.

In her chrysalis state, Baroness Beausoleil was a betrayer, a murderer, an arch foe of mankind. Now, her metamorphosis into Overlord Lilitu poses a far greater menace. But she needs human help in a plot to overthrow her brethren and seize control of the last remaining Anunnaki stronghold on Earth. Buried deep in the sands of the Sinai, a secret port can unleash the dangerous mysteries of an alien race — unless the Cerberus rebels can outwit a she-god with an army at her disposal...and the cunning and cruelty to wrest Earth for herself.

The baronial civilization that ruled post-apocalyptic America stands on the threshold of a much more sinister plot: the complete domination of Earth. These oppressors are determined to relegate humanity to the status of slavery and crush the nascent force of freedom fighters who've dared to rebel against a powerful alien race.

Fish are mysteriously disappearing from the coastal waters of the United States and it's anybody's guess what the problem is. Red tide, pollution? But soon angry fingers point north, to Canada and the two countries trade threats and insults, all signs of neighborliness gone. Forced to consider losing this vast resource, America is in shock. Fish devotees may see it become a coveted delicacy of the past, but the situation is much graver for Remo and Chiun. Possibly they'll have to eat nothing but rice and duck for the rest of their lives.

The passage of time hasn't healed the ravages of the nukecaust, but where once there was only the Deathlands, new centres of power loom above the domain of the unwanted, the hell zones of the Outlands. Though the outlanders distrust and hate the rulers of the fortified villes, even they wouldn't dare imagine the megalithic power guiding their destiny.

Winner of the International Book Awards for Best Short Story Collection, The Gothic Shift is a beguiling collection of the macabre and supernatural from best-seller Brian David Bruns.