Showing results by narrator "Zura Johnson" in All Categories

Blame the booze, her shaky marriage, her troubled son, or a thousand other things, but Jewelann Jordan has one thing on her mind when she attends her class reunion: making sure her old crush Christian Campbell sees exactly what he lost all those years ago. A late night, a hotel room, a rekindled flame that burns even hotter than it did back then—what could go wrong? Everything. The night with Christian isn't the first secret Jewelann has kept from her husband Ken, so one more shouldn't be much harder—except that Christian shows up without warning.

All that stands between rowdy long-haul trucker Jill MacLeod (aka Junkmouth) and her family back in Boston is two thousand miles of asphalt. Well, that and the monstrous game the System has had her playing ever since it descended on Earth. The reward: mana. Jill's goal: kill, score, drive—and stay alive. Behind the wheel of a turreted forty-ton semi named Bertha, Jill hammers east from Montana through a gauntlet of every kind of chomping, hissing, rabid creature imaginable. Barreling forward in her magical soulbound big rig and chalking up a bumper crop of roadkill, Jill isn't alone for long.

When Cassidy Jameson’s best friend Tyler took her to Texas with him when he left for college, she was expecting his ranch-owning cousin Gage, their new roommate, to be a Stetson-wearing cowboy; not an incredibly gorgeous guy with a husky Southern drawl that seemed to make the world stop whenever she looked at him. Because of her past, she’s only ever trusted two men in her life: Tyler, and her dad who passed away when she was six. But there’s something about Gage that draws her to him in a way she can’t explain.

Gemma lives with her mother in an isolated antique shop in Michigan, near a small patch of woods that conceals an enchanted gateway to fairyland. She knows she's not supposed to go into the woods - her mother Virginia has warned her multiple times about the monsters that lurk there - and yet defiantly, curiously, she goes anyway. Virginia understands her daughter's defiance. She knows the lure of the woods all too well. Her mother warned her about the monsters that resided there, and she also did not listen. Until a witch cursed her true love, Ash - Gemma's father - into the form of a beast.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first issues of Weird Tales Magazine, 100 Years of Weird is a masterful compendium of new and classic stories, flash fiction, essays, and poems from the giants of speculative fiction, including R. L. Stine, Laurell K. Hamilton, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, and Isaac Asimov.

This is a tale that used to be about dungeons... Now it's mostly about walking in the woods with a friend, looking for mushrooms to put in your soup. Maybe haggling with the squash seller, or taking care of a neglected garden, or even just putting some jam on a good shortbread biscuit. And yes, sometimes you still go down into the dungeons with your friends, and kill monsters there, disarm traps, avoid spiked pits etcetera, etcetera. But when you come out now, it's not really about the gold and loot.

When Lykke finds herself sentenced to death for murdering a fae noble, she’s shocked to see it’s the older brother—Connor—who steps in to save her...and not in the way she expected. In a world jaded by war, where love is weakness, a fae prince finds himself torn between his desire to save his country and his growing love for a human. He can’t save both, but how can he choose between his duty and his heart?

Stay-at-home mom Eloise Williams is PTO president and a respected local philanthropist who sits on the boards of many distinguished charities. In addition to being a doting wife and mother, she is also a serial killer.

Thirty years ago, Harold Biddle died in a tragic accident—but there's more to the story. Now, the teenage kids of Harold's classmates are determined to find out what happened to him all those years ago... as long as Harold's spirit doesn't exact his revenge first! But Harold Biddle isn't the only monster roaming the streets of Port Lawrence. From doppelgangers to haunted books and one creepy dummy, Isaiah, Margot, James, and the rest of their friends have to fight to stay alive or risk becoming monsters themselves!

Owen Larrabee is not my soulmate. He wasn't when I confessed my love to him on his wedding day, and he isn't now. I should probably say that I wasn't the bride when that happened. I don't have the best timing. He's got a temper, he's moody, and he has a history of being misunderstood and making big mistakes. I, on the other hand, make pumpkin cupcakes, spend my Friday nights curled up with a beloved romance novel, and long to be kissed in the rain. Owen is my best friend's older, off-limits brother and the only boy I ever thought I loved.

Humor and heart collide when two fake dates accidentally ruin a wedding and must play matchmaker to fix it, perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Tessa Bailey.

After living her life behind the walls of the illustrious kingdom of Delinval, Princess Mara, niece of the great King Grathiel, understands what is expected of her. As her uncle's only heir, she was raised to be a noble woman with a full understanding of the history of the lands of Zenafrost and the fallen kingdoms that lay beyond Delinval's protected borders. But the political intrigue and endless theatrics that come with her birth-right have never suited her. Mara loathes the future her uncle has planned for her, and the approach of her twenty-first birthday brings with it a new horror.

Nicole Victoria didn't grow up with wealth. But she learned the secrets to financial freedom and now specializes in helping twenty and thirty-something women effortlessly manage their money and build bank accounts that never stop growing. Money isn't everything, but everything takes money. Maybe you have debt. You feel like you'll always be playing catch up. Maybe you've tried to get help before, tried to budget, followed traditional advice . . . but it just doesn't work for you. You're stressed and overwhelmed, feeling stuck because you don't know where things went wrong.

Since her parents were killed, Vivienne has always felt ungrounded, shuffled through the foster care system. Just when liberation finally seems possible - days before her 18th birthday - Vivienne is hospitalized with symptoms no one can explain. The doctors may be puzzled, but Deacon, her mysterious new friend, claims she has an active Nevergene. His far-fetched diagnosis comes with a warning: She is about to become an involuntary test subject for Humanitarian Organization for Order and Knowledge - or H.O.O.K.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award–winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

Grace has always wanted to be a ballerina, ever since she first peered through the windows of the Near North Ballet company. The elegance of the dance seemed transcendent to an immigrant child of the working poor, and so, when she is orphaned, it is to the ballet that she flees. Years later, Grace is on the verge of becoming the company's new prima ballerina - though she is beginning to realise that achieving her long-held dream may not be the triumph she once envisioned.

A malignant blight ravages Tearmann, wreaking havoc on the lives of the Danú. If Tadhg and Keelynn cannot find a way to stop it before it reaches the castle, there won’t be anything left for them to save. While the blight rages on, Aveen and Rían face troubles of their own. Between confronting ghosts from the past and fending off the Phantom Queen’s thirst for vengeance, peace and happiness seem too far out of reach. It isn’t a matter of if the Princes of Tearmann will fall, but when.

Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others.

When it comes to firefighter Sam O'Shea, absence—and a regime of tactical avoidance—has been working for me juuust fine. But when the audition of a lifetime falls in my pathetically broke lap, and he's the only one who can help me land the job, I'm willing to make a deal with the devil if it means I can kickstart my career as a narrator for audio books. The problem? We'd have to actually do the job. Together. And then we're told it's for an erotic romance.

In a world of sword and sorcery, Breck died and was reborn as a dungeon core, a specialized living gem in charge of creating and managing a dungeon. Unlike most dungeons, he was handicapped with the inability to create bones, the very building blocks that comprise most living creatures. Breck just wants his life back, his humanity, and will do whatever it takes to achieve his goal.