Showing results by author "Gilbert M. Stack" in All Categories

ABBA, Air Supply, Charlie’s Angels, Ronald Reagan—it’s 1981 and real estate attorney, Lynne Winters’, is struggling to manage a constantly complaining mother and a law practice tanking in the worst real estate market in a decade. Then her life really goes insane when a long brown envelope lands on her desk. The heir to the Mackland furniture empire has been kidnapped and the kidnapper has forced Lynne smack in the middle of the ransom negotiations. It’s the most important case of her career, but in a time when professional women too often aren’t taken seriously, it will take all...

Deep in the Fringe on a tramp freighter, Jewel Aurora is about to discover that there are much worse things than being forced into a marriage to secure her parents’ fortune. On the edges of human space, where no one can be trusted with your back, the young woman is about to stumble upon a fortune that star nations will go to war to possess. It’s a treasure that has already killed two sets of colonists who tried to claim it. And if anyone learns she and her crewmates have found it, it is absolutely certain to attract the attention of the two influential families she turned fugitive to ...

Hadrian’s Well has survived the zombie apocalypse but that doesn’t mean life is getting easier there. Record rainfalls have resulted in widespread flooding and something in the water is killing people. Or is it in the water? Part of the problem in Hadrian’s Well is that the preternatural isn’t always what it seems. Many wear masks that let them move about in human society like they’re normal people. Human threats also abound as politics within and without the town handicap Undersheriff Donovan as she struggles to track the monsters down. As the body count rises, will Donovan and ...

Marshal Sturm is in trouble. With just one company of musket men and a battalion of dismounted cavalry, he has to stop the whole Angevin army from securing the eastern entrance to Steil Pass. Effectively, he’s the cork stoppering a bottle full of Angies with their thousands upon thousands of muskets, pikes, and cannon. Unfortunately for Sturm, that bottle is well shaken and its contents are about to erupt straight through the pass. Failure to hold back Anjou means a brand new front in the decades old war—a development that will almost certainly cost Kriegsturm Oosten Graanland. Nobody ...

Now that the Great War is done, ace pilot Mitch Pembroke just wants to spend a few peaceful years enjoying the Roaring Twenties before he settles down and takes the corner office in his father’s company, Pembroke Steel. Unfortunately, peace is the last thing Mitch can find. Trouble follows wherever he goes and not even his best friend, boxer-turned-bodyguard, Kit Moran can keep him out of all of it. Hearts of Ice and Other Stories is the second volume in a series that blurs the line between historical fiction and dark fantasy. This second volume of the Pembroke Steel series collects four ...

A paranormal ghost story by the author of Legionnaire. Marcus Hunter won’t stay dead…As a pregnant fifteen year old, Autumn Fields learned firsthand that the town ghost was more than a creepy legend. Rejected by her boyfriend and beaten bloody by her father, Autumn climbed out onto the old railroad bridge to kill herself, but a mysterious figure talked her into running away instead. Sixteen years later, she’s come back to Prospect with her daughter to learn if there really is such a thing as a ghost on Hunter’s Bridge…

Tribune Marcus Venandus and his two trusted officers have gone through hell in their journey north from the Fire Islands and across the Sea of Grass. Arriving at Amatista in the Jeweled Hills, Marcus is looking forward to a much deserved rest in the home of his half-brother, but fate has other plans for the legionnaire. Soon, he will be wishing he’d never heard of his brother’s city.

Forbidden from returning to Aquila, Marcus Venandus responds to a plea from a half-brother he has never met to aid him in the far away land called the Jeweled Hills. When pirates shut down the sea routes the legion officer and his two trusted companions are forced to join a caravan to make the slower journey north across the treacherous Sea of Grass. Yet this may not prove to be the safer choice. A mysterious shaman has sworn to drench the plains in the blood of foreigners and his mastery over storms gives him the teeth to fulfill his oath.

From the pages of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine: Miss Pandora Parson is a lady gambler making her living in the rough and tumble West of 1874. William Steed is a manager willing to run over anyone to establish the reputation of his new prize fighter. Corey Callaghan is the young bare-knuckle boxer who stands in his way. When the three meet up in Denver, there’ll be crime to pay.

If not for the quick action of a passing stranger, Mina Raintree’s bad-news sister would have bled out in the road. Now the hit-and-run driver who put her in the hospital has fixated on Mina with pathological fury. He wants something Ally stole from him, and the stranger who saved Ally’s life is the only thing standing between Mina and the madman. But who is this good Samaritan who’s always at the wrong place at the right time to help Mina? And is he, like Ally’s crazy-eyed assailant much more than he appears to be? There’s a supernatural community hiding within Philadelphia ...

Many feel that the Laws of Wotan clearly prohibit the use of muskets in combat, but that didn’t prevent the Empire of Anjou from introducing them and transforming the face of warfare forever. Now, a full generation after the heretical weapons drove the High Kingdom of Kriegsturm firmly onto the defensive, neither side is yet using the gun to its full potential. That’s about to change. Lieutenant Marshal Sturm, one of a handful of survivors of a battalion decimated by the musket-hating doctrine of his superiors, has developed a new tactic that could flip the battlefield upside down. The ...

Jewel’s days as a fugitive are over. She wakes from cold sleep, captive on an Armenite warship with her past rapidly catching up to her. Her parents are arriving soon to force her to marry Kole Delling, the Armenite man she fled into the Fringe to escape. And if that fate isn’t bad enough, some of the Armenites want to execute her and her surviving crew members for their legitimate salvage operations in the Valkyrie system. The walls are closing in, but Jewel isn’t ready to give up. It’s time for the galaxy to learn just how difficult it is to keep a Cartelite Princess prisoner.

The war seems to be going well for Marcus, but he has forgotten the most important rule of the Jeweled Cities—alliances are made to be broken. In a world where even the ethnic peoples of the north—Gota, Gente and Qing—cannot remain united against the other peoples, how can Marcus convince them to remain true to their commitments to an outsider like him? And yet his honor is not so malleable as that of many of his new neighbors. He will stay the course and defend his dead brother’s home—even if the only things he can depend on are the swords and spears of his legionnaires.

With the passes to Ópalo forced open again, Prefect Marcus Venandus hoped to gain a respite to build his army for the war he knows is coming in the spring. Unfortunately, his enemies understand all too well the threat he poses to them, and they are taking steps to kill him before he reaches next year’s battlefields. Assassins, both mundane and magical, step out of the shadows to strike at him, while other conspirators take advantage of the intense divisions within the city to spark riots to bring the government down.

Days of rain force sane armies to hunker down to wait for dry weather. Yet, no one in the Jeweled Hills would accuse Prefect Marcus Venandus of being sane. Not only has he united the bickering Qing, Gente and Gota in his Black Hat Legion, he rarely embraces conventional military tactics. With three days of drenching weather turning roads to mud, flooding creeks, and bogging down his enemies’ carts and wagons, Marcus seizes the initiative and leads one thousand of his Black Hats on their most daring campaign yet.

By the author of Legionnaire, a supernatural thriller in honor of Occult-tober. All attorney Liz Dunn had to do was escort Ryan Hart to meet his long lost uncle in the tiny country of Carpathia on the Transylvanian border. Ryan stood to gain a ten million dollar estate. Liz wanted the hefty check that would keep her law firm in the black. But Ryan’s dying uncle, the enigmatic Stefan Carpathios, planned to get something far more sinister in return. In an ancient land where legends come to life, Liz is about to discover that the world is much more complex than she believed and a blood tie ...

With Prefect Marcus and the Black Hat Legion still trapped in Morganita fighting against the treacherous Thegn Hathus of Granate, it falls to Calidus Vulpes, Red Vigil of the Aquilan legions, to take a thousand quiet Qing infantry men and fifteen hundred unruly Gente archers to hold off the full might of Diamonte at Angosto Pass. The odds are thirty-to-one against them. Can the Aquilan junior officer hold back the enemy until Marcus and the veterans return, or will this prove to be Calidus’ final stand?

Despite their impressive victories in the north, Prefect Marcus and the Black hat Legion stand alone against the full might of Diamonte and Aquamarina. With their home city under siege and the cowardly Lord Totila refusing to lead his host out from behind the walls of Centinela, it falls once again to Marcus to protect his adopted homeland by himself. His only hope is to thread the needle, maneuvering his legion across enemy-occupied Amatista to the one location that might enable him to recapture the initiative in this war. It’s a risky gamble. With multiple armies afield and none of them...

Surrounded by enemies, Prefect Marcus Venandus launches a bold stroke to eliminate one opponent in the coming war. The key to his plan is the fortified border town of Centinela - the Sentinel of Southern Morganita. Its fortified walls are strong enough to delay conventional forces for weeks, giving the other enemy city-states plenty of time to invade Amatista from the east. Can he take advantage and neutralize Centinela? Or will his risky gambit cost Marcus and his allies the war?

After capturing the cities of Malaquita and Hessonita in a surprise invasion of Diamonte, Marcus and his legionnaires now have to face a Diamonte host that dwarfs the legion and its cavalry. To defeat it, he develops an audacious plan to wear down the enemy soldiers while preparing to deliver Diamonte its most humiliating loss yet. His only problem is that his allies are less trustworthy than his enemies. Can Marcus and his legionnaires outwit friend and foe alike to win their most important victory yet?