Showing results by narrator "Christian Rummel" in All Categories

A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery.

They say love and hate are the same feelings experienced under different circumstances, and it's true. The man who comes to me in my dreams also haunts me in my nightmares. He is a brilliant lawyer. A skilled criminal. A beautiful liar. A bully and a savior, a monster and a lover. Ten years ago, he made me run away from the small town where we lived. Now, he came for me in New York, and he isn't leaving until he takes me with him.

Vaughn Spencer. They call him an angry god. To me, he is nothing but a heartless prince. His parents rule this town, its police, every citizen and boutique on Main Street. All I own is a nice, juicy grudge against him for that time he almost killed me. Between hooking up with a different girl every weekend, breaking hearts, noses, and rules, Vaughn also finds the time to bully little ol' me. I fight back, tooth and nail, never expecting him to chase me across the ocean after we graduate high school.

Luna Rexroth is everyone’s favorite wallflower. Underneath the meek, tomboy exterior everyone loves (yet pities) is a girl who knows exactly what, and who, she wants - namely, the boy from the tree house who taught her how to curse in sign language. Who taught her how to laugh. To live. To love. Knight Cole is everyone’s favorite football hero. This daredevil hell-raiser could knock you up with his gaze alone, but he only has eyes for the girl across the street: Luna. But Luna is not who she used to be. She doesn’t need his protection anymore.

Joe De Sena has one ultimate goal: to help improve everyone’s physical and emotional health by teaching them the tenets of Spartan living from ancient Greece: simple eating, smart training, mastering resilience, and an all-out commitment to achieving a goal.   

They say that life is a beautiful lie and death a painful truth. They're right. No one has ever made me feel more alive than the guy who serves as a constant reminder that my clock is ticking. He is my forbidden, shiny apple. The striking fallacy to my blunt, raw, truth. He is also my sister's ex-boyfriend. One thing you should know before you judge me: I saw him first. I craved him first. I loved him first. Eleven years later, he waltzed into my life, demanding a second chance. Dean Cole wants to be my bronze horseman. Hopefully, he isn't too late.

They call him The Mute for a reason. Hard, cold, and calculated, he rarely speaks. When he does, it's with disdain. When he does, his words aren't meant for me. When he does, my stomach flips and my world tilts on its axis. He is 33. I am 18. He's a single dad and my father's business partner. I'm just a kid to him and his enemy's daughter. He's emotionally unavailable. And I am...feeling. Feeling things I shouldn't feel for him. Trent Rexroth is going to break my heart. The writing isn't just on the wall, it's inked on my soul.

In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One - the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about - without even looking for it. A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world.

The United Eastern States is crumbling. The fragile house of cards that Lee Harden and Angela Houston have built has begun to fall. Lee is up against a ticking clock, as he is recalled from Texas and given the last thing in the world that he wants: a promotion. Forced into a command role, Major Harden is thrust into a sharp learning curve that goes against every instinct he's developed over years of fighting. 

In 1984, at the age of 20, Duff McKagan left his native Seattle - partly to pursue music, but mainly to get away from a host of heroin overdoses then-decimating his closest group of friends in the local punk scene. In LA only a few weeks and still living in his car, he answered a want ad for a bass player placed by someone who identified himself only as "Slash." Soon after, the most dangerous band in the world was born. Guns N' Roses went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide.

Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.

Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend.

Bane: Naked surfer. Habitual pothead. A con, a liar, a thief, and a fraud. Last I heard, he was extorting the rich and screwing their wives for a living. Which is why I’m more than a little surprised to find him at my threshold, looking for my friendship, my services, and most puzzling of all - looking humbled. Thing is, I’m on a boycott. Literally - cut boys from my life. Permanently. Problem is, Bane is not a boy, he is all man, and I’m falling, crashing, drowning in his sweet, perfect lies.

When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, 10 years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, that stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant.

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.

Lee Harden is out for blood. After a month, the cartel is looking over their shoulders and jumping at shadows, worried about the madmen in their backyard, who seem obsessed with little else but killing cartel members. Lee continues to claw his way towards revenge, searching for a target to strike at, or a person to destroy, that will force his enemies to reveal themselves. And nothing is going to stop him. Not even Abe.

Change the tides of history. A tall order for a runt named Perry McGown and his ragtag band of friends. But Perry is bound and determined to complete this mission, no matter the odds. He must prove himself in the face of a gathering storm of powers beyond his imagination. 

After being sequestered to a bunker to recover from his wounds, Lee Harden is finally going topside with his fellow Project Hometown Coordinator, Terrence "Tex" Lehy. Lee wants to ally the UES with Texas, in order to combat the threat of a powerful oil cartel to the south. But Tex's methods raise serious questions, and Lee soon discovers that Texas has its own set of problems. In the Fort Bragg Safe Zone, the conflict with the Lincolnists is rapidly escalating. Master Sergeant Carl Gilliard has just returned, and he’s intent on destroying the Lincolnists, using any means necessary.

It’s been three years since Lee Harden emerged from his bunker into a world gone mad. Governments have fallen. And new ones have taken their place. In the United Eastern States, Lee and his team of battle-hardened operatives walk a tightrope of survival, keeping their fledgling society safe from the creatures beyond their gates - and from the enemies within. Then, an ambush in hostile territory reveals a traitor in their midst - and leaves Lee barely clinging to life. Wounded and on the run, Lee and his team race to uncover the leak before it’s too late.

Outnumbered by the superior forces and firepower of the Syndicate Worlds, the Alliance fleet continues its dangerous retreat across the enemy star system. Led by the legendary Captain John "Black Jack" Geary, who returned to the fleet after a hundred-year suspended animation, the Alliance is desperately trying to return home with its captured prize: the key to the Syndic hypernet, and the key to victory.