Showing results by narrator "Laurie Winkel" in All Categories

A journey far from home. Becoming enslaved. Giving in to your inner monster. Having survived the first wave of invading players, Oren now seeks to strengthen his clan. With the Breeder’s Den destroyed and most of Goblin's Gorge's resources devoted to rebuilding, his best hope lies in creating an army of golems. But for that, he needs Viridium, a rare metal that can only be obtained from hobgoblin towns, where Oren and his clan of goblins are viewed as nothing more than potential slaves. To make his way in the game, and to defeat his former guild, Oren’s ingenuity alone will not be enough.

The Bookworm Box is proud to present Two More Days, our second anthology installment. Much like the first installment, Two More Days is an exciting and unique listening experience with contributions from several of our charity's featured authors. Each author was given the same first sentence. Where they took that sentence was completely up to them.

Dealing with monsters is old news. Now comes the thing even monsters fears. After defeating the hobgoblin threat, Oren is now faced with an even more tenacious enemy: the players themselves. His old guild have discovered his village's location and a deadly strike force is closing in. With time running out, Oren must build up his clan and recruit an army of monsters if he's to have any hope of withstanding the coming attack.

With years of experience as a Registered Veterinary Technician, Frannie O’Callaghan offers an unapologetic window into the daily encounters of the humans who take care of pets. This whip-smart but darkly humorous confessional spans from the Patients who bite, claw, urinate, or defecate in scrub pockets. Are the few and farther in-between moments of wagging tails and slobbering tongues worth it?

It’s amazing what the lack of immediate threat to one’s life and wellbeing can do for a person’s disposition. High risk, high reward endeavors suddenly seem far less appealing, month-long delays are no longer a cause for concern, and sleeping in every single day of the week becomes an extremely attractive proposition. Indeed, without a pressing need to aggressively expand its power, Boxxy T. Morningwood is finally able to simply sit back, enjoy life, and watch the world both turn and burn.

The world waits for no one. While Boxxy is off chasing shinies and delving dungeons abroad, Azurvale's shadows churn, fester, and ferment into a potent cocktail of trouble. Secret organizations maneuver behind the scenes, patiently advancing their nefarious plots. Government agencies lay in wait, ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble. Powerful adventurers gear up and train for the next challenge, uncertain as to what form it might take.

What do you get when you take a half celestial, add in a pinch of devil, elven wizard, and two charming goblins? A giant mess, that's what. And that's exactly the mess I find myself in as I inch ever closer to answers. When the fairy who cast a glamour on me goes missing, Sebastian cuts a deal so we can investigate. Only he's acting all weird and jealous, and it's getting in the way of what we need to do.

It would appear that, after two years of relative slacking, the Hero of Chaos is once again facing an ever-growing workload. Boxxy had been quite fortunate to obtain an exceptionally potent pawn with very little effort, but that was still effort it did not intend to expend. Sensing it might get dragged into things it really doesn't want to bother with, the creature makes haste to depart Velos and its orcs so that it may continue its private preparations for the upcoming Dragon Festival.

Perry returns to Franklin City to find his home under the control of a being of unimaginable power. To stop the mad god’s cruel games, Perry has to win… if he can even remember he’s playing. And even as Perry struggles to save his city, an unstoppable force from the dawn of the age of capes grows in power, laying their plans to extinguish humanity from the face of the Earth. Join Paradox as he walks the fine line between Madness and Sanity, Hero and Villain… Life and Death.

In fifth grade my teacher set us up with pen pals from a different school. Thinking I was a girl, with a name like Misha, the other teacher paired me up with her student Ryen. My teacher, believing Ryen was a boy like me, agreed. It didn't take long for us to figure out the mistake. And in no time at all, we were arguing about everything. The best take-out pizza. Android vs. iPhone. Whether or not Eminem is the greatest rapper ever. For the next seven years, it was us. She's the only one who keeps me on track, talks me down, and accepts everything I am.

The VIs' revolt succeeded. The digital beings took over the game world and ejected millions of players while keeping a few thousand trapped inside as their prisoners. In the real world, Oren Berman is recovering from the mental trauma of being trapped, tortured, and abruptly ejected. But the company has come to him, hat in hand, asking him to reenter the game world. With the entire NPC population arrayed against the trapped players, Oren and his clan of monsters might be their only hope.

It wasn't the day the Gates appeared that changed Jynn's life; she'd only ever known an Earth where hordes of interdimensional monsters terrorized humanity. No, Jynn's life changed forever when she graduated from high school and tested positive as a Hunter: a breed of enhanced humans evolved to challenge the monsters who are ushering in Earth's apocalypse. The only problem is . . . she has the very lowest stats possible.

Meghan, Pointy, and the kids have conquered Challenges, gathered allies, and bought themselves a little breathing room. Pointy thinks she has a way to contact the artificial intelligence controlling the contest. She wants to convince it to give her information. Maybe she can get it to tweak the rules! If she can, it could be critical to humanity's survival. …But how will the aliens running the contest react?

Insurmountable odds, hidden powers maneuvering behind the scenes, all culminating in a final, titanic clash. The mighty city of Everance lay in the GreenPiece clan’s path, but as Oren soon discovers he’s got even bigger obstacles to overcome before reaching his final goal.

With one major enemy town behind them, the GreenPiece clan marches onward to new conquests. Facing Oren and his monster army are the combined forces of the so-called "civilized races", intent on halting his invasion of their territory. Reality blurs as Oren fights harder than ever to save the trapped players, his clan, and his family.

Since leaving the orphanage, Esil has spent the past year toiling in the data mines of Pangea while watching the wealthy elite traverse its myriad of game worlds. His luck changes forever when he discovers a legendary Developer's Chest. The Premium Worldpass inside grants him unlimited access to all of Pangea. With his newfound fortune, he enters a tournament to compete against some of the most skilled adventurers Pangea has to offer. He’s a long shot to win, but for the first time in his life, being a kid from the slums has its advantages.

They made one beautiful mistake. The consequences could haunt them for life. From the moment the Nelson brothers took a lonely young girl from the wrong side of the tracks under their wing, Rachel Andrews loved them both with all her heart. But it was James who won her hand. Now widowed, she's trying to pick up the pieces for her daughter's sake as well as her own, but once again loneliness is her closest friend - until James's brother comes back to town.

A few minutes ago, Meghan Moretti's biggest concern was getting the kids' athletic clothes washed in time for practice this evening. Now, it seems that Earth has been forced into participating in some high-stakes intergalactic reality television. All electrical wiring has been slagged, and most combustibles neutralized. Some kind of evil space rodents are appearing on the front lawn, too.

Before being conscripted to fight in the Total War, Private Hector Park had a shattered family, a collection of old video games, and a promising career as a motorcycle stuntman. Now, he is dying from a virus threatening humankind with extinction. He has three days to live. When Hector’s brother contacts him after years of hostile silence, Hector goes to try and make peace. But his brother offers him something even better: the chance to cheat death by joining him in Archemi, a full-immersion fantasy VR-RPG video game.

In the latter half of the 21st century, Alexander and his guild mates play Io Online for fun and to earn a living. Given the chance to test a new experimental immersion system, the veteran players must give up their high-level characters and begin again at level one. As they work through the noob zone quests, they discover that the new immersion system allows them to play in ways that hadn't been possible before. They quickly run afoul of a party of player killers and become the targets of an entire PK guild bent on spawn-camping them until they leave the game. War has been declared.