Showing results by narrator "Neil Hellegers" in All Categories

It was supposed to be just another Sunday night fantasy role-playing session between friends.... But after years of playing, the game had become so real to David, Tyrone, Scott, and Melanie that all their creations now had existences of their own. And when the four outside players decide to end their game, the characters inside the game world - warriors, scholars, and the few remaining wielders of magic - band together to keep their land from vanishing.

Lunch Lady has villains to fight at school and camp in this action-packed book. First, Dee, Terrence, and Hector come face-to-face with a very special guest on Author Visit Day - but there's something a little off about the world-famous writer. What evil designs does he have on his agenda? Then, the kids take a sigh of relief and are relaxing at summer camp. What evils could befall them there? Of course, there is the legendary swamp monster. Stories say he haunts the camp at night. But that's just a legend. Or is it?

A mind-bending exploration of gravity, the universe's greatest mystery. What is gravity? Nobody knows - and just about nobody knows that nobody knows. How something so pervasive can also be so mysterious, and how that mystery can be so wholly unrecognized outside the field of physics, is one of the greatest conundrums in modern science. But as award-winning author Richard Panek shows in this groundbreaking book, gravity is a cold case that we are closer to cracking than ever - and whose very investigation has yielded untold truths about the cosmos and humanity itself.

My name is Cisco Suarez, but I've been called a lot of things. Wizard, hit man, black magic outlaw. I guess one day I finally went too far because someone left me for dead in a dumpster. That should've been it for me. End of story. But I'm not like most people. Compelled by equal doses of voodoo and sheer grit, I came back...and I want answers. Which might explain the zombie pit bull sniffing after me. And the automatic weapons. But I'm too stubbon to back down. I'll go through a voodoo gang, a shape-shifting trickster, and a bloodthirsty vampire if it gets me out of this.

Charles Ward, even as a child, had always wandered the streets of ancient Providence, drawn inexorably to its domes and spires, its hills and homes, its history and its haunts. His antiquarian habits were always just so: an innocent preoccupation with the city and its wonders. Yet, when the discovery of a shadowy ancestor exposes an eldritch malevolence long thought to be contained, Charles must resist the dark grip of his fascination, before it consumes him, and his world, completely.

From revolutionary to Cold War adversary, Fidel Castro was one of the world's most controversial leaders and perhaps its most enduring. As Cuba's president for nearly 50 years, Castro's influential leadership captivated allies and enemies alike. By virtue of passionate oration and committed sense of purpose - good or bad - Castro kept the Cuban people devoted and the world enthralled.

What happens when a bunch of 30-year-old degenerates survive an apocalyptic zombie outbreak? They get into even more trouble in the aftermath. Duh. That's right, Charlie Campbell and several of his loser friends have escaped a nightmare Chicago fraught with zombies and an occupying army, only to find the wild-lands beyond aren't any safer.

All Azure wants to do is leave The Realm, but the Bower Boys throw a wrench in his plans. Mistakes that Azure made when he first joined The Adventurers Guild come back to haunt him. Uden flexes between good and evil once more as he's put in a precarious situation. Is vengeance worth endangering all of your friends and possibly dying for? Azure answers that question with steel, taking a path he never thought he'd travel. Once he set foot down it, there was no going back. Decisions were made and someone will pay the ultimate price.

Jarl Beckström, Clan Lord of Norvaask, has done the impossible. With the help of his friends, he forged an alliance with Jotungard—their bitterest rival—and installed a new ruler upon the throne. Now he turns his focus inward to strengthen his people for the impending war. But as they prepare, the world crumbles down around them.

The only thing worse than an assassin is a zombie assassin. And this killer is no ordinary zombie, and Cisco Suarez, the Miami Police Department's resident supernatural consultant and a practicing necromancer, has to untangle his story and solve the case.

Years have passed since the demon Tarrik and his master, the sorcerer Ren, destroyed the servants of Samal and suppressed the very essence of the vile lord. The cost was greater than even a demon could have imagined. But in the realms of demons and humans, no evil can be fully controlled, and no one’s true fate can be foretold. Including Tarrik’s. He’s been summoned once more, now by the vengeful Linriel, who’s fallen in with one of Samal’s ravaged survivors.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with Classes, magic and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with classes, magic, and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.

Ignatius Lohman longs to make his mark, to be someone. But in a world populated entirely by superpowered beings, he’s nothing but a powerless white-collar civilian. Iggy’s plight is not helped by the fact that his father, General Lancelot Lohman of the defense agency PEERLESS, is one of the most powerful men on the planet. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, Iggy finds himself in the crosshairs of Erle P. Van Owen, a megalomaniacal corporate overlord with the astonishing ability to neutralize any superpower.

The supposed collapse of Roman civilization is still lamented more than 1,500 years later - and intertwined with this idea is the notion that a fledgling religion, Christianity, went from a persecuted fringe movement to an irresistible force that toppled the empire. The intolerant zeal of Christians, wrote Edward Gibbon, swept Rome's old gods away, and with them the structures that sustained Roman society. Not so, argues Douglas Boin.

The Ouroboros Project was my last chance at salvation, but the new virtual reality was just as bad as the world I’d left. Backroom deals with corrupt nobles, slavery, and murder were all swept under the rug in the pursuit of gold. Despite everything, I found mercenary life fulfilling, until my guild was attacked. Now, I've got unknown, extremely rich enemies on all sides, a mysterious woman with strange magic and compound eyes, and a guild to save.

In this world, science took the place of magic. Meanwhile, the transition from the era of steam to the epoch of Sublime Electricity is already underway. But magic hasn't simply disappeared without a trace. It still exists, concealed in the blood of the illustrious. Detective constable Leopold Orso of the metropolitan police counts himself among their number. He was bestowed a talent that allows him to bring others' fears to life. Leopold didn't go looking for trouble.

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 14th collection of short fiction, comprising 28 uncollected and impossible-to-find stories. Here are 28 tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.

The American standard system of measurement is a unique and odd thing to behold with its esoteric, inconsistent standards: 12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, 16 ounces in a pound, 100 pennies to the dollar. For something as elemental as counting and estimating the world around us, it seems like a confusing tool to use. So how did we end up with it? Most of the rest of the world is on the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s America appeared ready to make the switch.