Showing results by narrator "J.S. Arquin" in All Categories

After a player-led event turns his once peaceful town into a band of ravenous monsters, Hirrus obtains a sentience usually unobtainable by non-player characters. It might be a gift of the gods, or a mistake, but Hirrus doesn’t care. It means he can track down and find the players responsible and stop them from doing it again.

Madison only joined the Koyesta Online's early access because her brother begged her. Of course, the fact that they're awarding brand-new cryptocurrency to the early players for in-game actions might have something to do with it too. Thrust inside the world's most immersive fantasy VRMMORPG, Madison, her brother, and two cousins find themselves in some backwater little town. Determined to make the most of it, they set out on a series of adventures and stumble upon hidden ruins and a secret quest capable of reshaping the face of the game before it's even been officially released.

The wild storms are getting worse, pounding San Francisco and changing everyone in their path. For Val Keri, the friend she has today may be tomorrow's enemy. Or worse....

Madison isn't a hardcore gamer, but along with her brother and two cousins, she's become embroiled in a mythic quest spanning the entire world of Koyesta Online. The ramifications of this quest may just change the entire game before it’s even out of early access.

Valora Keri’s problems are multiplying like moles. Every time she whacks one, three more pop up. First, a good friend turns up dead under mysterious circumstances. While Val is busy trying to figure out why, witch hunters show up at her door, demanding she stand trial for crimes committed years ago. She needs time to sort it out, but instead she’s coerced into a new job she doesn’t want, forcing her to rub shoulders with powerful people. Add in a dash of necromancer and a pinch of pissed off vampire queen, and Val is in a stew bubbling with all the ingredients for disaster.

Lasadi doesn't like strangers on her ship, but she'll need a bigger crew if she's going to steal a mysterious artifact from a dead pirate's long-lost space station. She takes a chance on a charming grifter named Raj, along with a skilled hacker and her genius little brother. And it's...nice? If Lasadi isn't careful, she's going to start enjoying having a crew aboard. Raj's last bit of luck capsized right before he ran into Lasadi, and this job could finally get his life back on track—as long as Lasadi never learns the truth about his past.

Fired from his dream job and exiled among the misfits and mutants of the Undercity, Tak has gone from wunderkind to washed-out failure in record time. His last hope of reclaiming his life in the shining city above is to somehow prove his wild theories correct. In order to continue his research, Tak accepts a job at a shady underground laboratory, where he struggles to reconcile what he believes to be right with the things he must do to survive. But when a strange plague rips through the people of the Undercity, Tak’s knowledge becomes their only hope of survival.

Portents is a city like no other - and one that Detective Greg Loren can’t wait to escape. Since his wife’s death years earlier, Loren has looked forward to the moment he can leave the city of Portents for good - and never look back. But fate has another plan for Loren. Called back to duty, Loren finds himself embroiled in a series of murders that has shaken the city. Together with Soriya Greystone, a young woman with unearthly powers, Loren must work quickly to find the otherworldly being that is killing citizens of Portents one at a time.

Charles is a low level drug runner with a small crew. While taking a lunch break at a strip mall, they end up in a bizarre fight with their German Shepard morphing into a manbeast and the old lady at the pizza parlor opening a vortex to escape with one of his crewmembers. As he searches for answers he learns the organization he works for is run by aliens. When an extraction team shows up to save him from near death, he finds himself on a different planet; and the leader of an almost extinct race.

The second wave of the Siberian Flu catches the country completely unprepared. Instead of killing the old and frail, the young and healthy are dropping . . . in hours, not days. Kate, a new doctor, will sacrifice everything to break her and her sister free from a controlling stepfather and a dead-end small town existence. Moments from landing the critical job she needs, St. Louis falls apart around her.

In the fractured galaxy of 2427, disgraced pilot Geddy Starheart thought his biggest problem was retrieving his stolen starship. Little did he know he was about to become entangled in a cosmic conspiracy that threatens all of existence. When Geddy teams up with a motley salvage crew to reclaim his custom-built vessel, he discovers an unexpected passenger: an alien entity called Eli, who reveals the shocking truth about the mysterious Zelnads. These cryptic beings created humankind as a test, and now they're ready to hit the reset button.

For centuries, the wizards of the north have pretended to be gods. They call themselves Odin, Thor, and more but Gage knows they are only men—men with magic who oppress those without it. But that time is coming to an end.

Hirrus Callabryn has gotten his revenge against the players who unleashed the Merciless Plague and killed his wife. He's happy to wait for the weekly reset to rejoin his wife in their quiet small-town life. But he isn't the only freed NPC. Far to the west, an unscrupulous evil builds an army of disillusioned NPCs, and Hirrus is tasked to stop it...or else face deletion. Aided by the boisterous adventurer, Alric, Hirrus must find and stop the manipulator before it's too late.

Helping a holy order find a missing sister should be a simple enough job—and Ruby owes the Aymaya Apostles everything after they took her and her brother in as children. Simple enough, until the missing holy sister's trail takes an unexpected turn, landing Ruby and the rest of the crew in the middle of a high-society soirée—and into the crosshairs of Ruby's ex, Kitty. Something sinister is lurking beneath the surface of whatever Kitty and the holy sister are caught up in, and the skills of the entire crew are put to the test when they go head-to-head with the ultimate con artist.

When a ghost from Lasadi’s past hires the crew of the Nanshe to find a crashed plane with mysterious origins, they take the job despite the troubling client. The good news? The cover story is Lasadi's childhood dream: flying in the Liluri Star Run, a wildly popular off-the-grid race through the Liluri Mountains. Soaring through emerald jungle canyons in search of their prize—and the fabled Blood River—this job has the potential to do more than net these five misfits a payday. It could turn them into a real crew.

How do leading companies win by changing the game? Established businesses like Amazon, Starbucks, and Tesla and emerging players like Peloton, Halo Top, and Seedlip have a secret system for winning. These and other “transcender” companies do not play the traditional brand game that every other company plays; they create their own game and force competitors to play by their rules. Brands Don’t Win reveals the proven, practical three-step transcender system that leading companies use to transcend their rivals and own their markets....

In this, the final chapter of the Bulari Saga: Willem Jaantzen has never wanted fame and never wanted notoriety. All he’s ever wanted is to keep the people he loves safe, but now the fate of Bulari - and the rest of humanity - rests on his shoulders. And he has one final play to end this game once and for all.

With a warrant out for his arrest and a price on his head, Willem Jaantzen has gone to ground, but he and his crew aren't out of the game. If they’re going to take down an opponent as powerful as a Chief Justice, they need a bulletproof plan — and that's going to take time. But as their rival’s net tightens around them, time is the one thing Jaantzen and his crew don’t have. And his goddaughter Starla is about to head out on her own on an adventure that could shake the foundations of human understanding — if it doesn’t get her killed first.

Jaantzen may have brought stability to the city of Bulari, but not everyone’s grateful. Allegiances are shifting sand, and he’s made a miscalculation that earned him a deadly new enemy - one who plays a viciously different game than the one Jaantzen is used to winning. Jaantzen and his crew fight to gain the upper hand, but secrets buried in shallow graves are coming back to haunt them. And as Starla and Toshiyo edge closer to understanding the growing mystery that’s been dropped in their laps, their search is awakening darker things than any of them can imagine.

Trouble is dead. Long live trouble. Killing the leader of a violent cult was supposed to make the city a safer place, but instead it created a power imbalance that’s left a deadly war raging in the streets of Bulari. When Willem Jaantzen is approached for help by local casino magnate Phaera D, he has the sinking feeling the only way to end this war is to betray the people he loves the most. And he’s starting to suspect that Phaera wants more from him than just his help. Whatever decision he makes feels like the wrong one.