Showing results by narrator "Nick Podehl" in All Categories

10:00 a.m. The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve. 10:02 a.m. The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class. 10:03. The auditorium doors won't open. 10:05. Someone starts shooting. Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

When Lydia gets a lead on the whereabouts of Jonathan Sterling, she concludes her training with a legendary immortal sorcerer and puts a plan in motion for his capture. Near Selyr, Taelien reunites with an old friend - Wrynn Jaden, the legendary Witch of a Thousand Shadows - and meets with Jonan to make a deal. Jonan, of course, has other concerns. His master, the legendary Lady of Thieves herself, has given him a new assignment - one that hints at world-shaping events, if he can survive the mission. He’ll partner with Velas, but she has her own problems to deal with.

There has always been one last question, one driving motivation for John Lee. Having survived the System Apocalypse on Earth and travelled to the far reaches of the galaxy, the question has always been left unanswered.

Eleven years have passed since Alexa Hamilton left the South behind, fleeing the pain of her ex-husband's betrayal and the cruelty of his prominent Charleston family. Now an assistant D.A. in Manhattan, Alexa has made a name for herself as a top prosecutor while juggling her role as devoted single mom to a teenage daughter.

Keras Selyrian is already well on the way to cutting his name into the annals of legend. He’s fought false divinities, thieving sorcerers, and corrupt demigods - and left them defeated in his wake. But he’s a long way from home, and Kaldwyn offers a different brand of danger than he’s used to. He’s already got a sword of unfathomable power, but it’s damaged and leaking world-annihilating mana, so he’s in the market for a new one. Possibly six. The more the better, really.

Freshman Lianne Challice is known to millions of fans as Princess Vindi. But sometimes a silver-screen sorceress just wants to hang up her wand, tell her manager to shove it, and become a normal college student. Too bad that's harder than it looks. She's never lived a normal life. She hasn't been to school since kindergarten. And getting close to anyone is just too risky - the last boy she kissed sold the story to a British tabloid.

Powerful beings from the fringes of Chaos have come to the realm of Alorin. Fate bends to their will, and their will is set upon Alorin's destruction. Alone in understanding the threat they pose, Alorin's Fifth Vestal, Björn val Gelderan, has launched a desperate plan to stop them: a "great game" played upon the tapestry of mortal life. Now, in Paths of Alir, Björn's Players have taken the field.

With five of the Orbs of Peace still at large and threatening the world’s survival, Cinder and Anya set forth to acquire them by any means. But their efforts—be it through simple ruses, espionage, or even war—are doomed if they cannot first shatter the falsehoods that warp their very memories. Are they the Blessed Ones of prophecy or simply broken avatars? It is a question without an easy answer, hindered as it is by deceptions that aren’t so easily overcome.

The First Lord's game has reached a critical apex. For the first time in millennia, the teams are equally matched. The field itself holds a kind of equilibrium. It is the task of Björn's Players to unbalance the field in their own favor in their great game to restore Balance to the Realms of Light. But with Malorin'athgul and now Warlocks returned to the realms, the game - and the stakes involved - has elevated to an entirely new order of magnitude, requiring Björn's Players to do the same.

The immortal sorcerers - three legendary figures that toppled the empire of Xixis. Each has lived for over a hundred years, leaving a powerful legacy in their wake. But their children do not share their renowned immortality, and when the firstborn son of Edrick Theas is killed, sorceress Lydia Hastings is called to investigate the murder. When she discovers a sorcerous trail left by a creature of unfathomable power, she quickly realizes she needs outside help.

The Kolder linger on, a constant threat to Simon and the witches he's sworn to protect. To save their world from this threat from another dimension, Simon and Jaelithe must venture to the heart of the poisonous Kolder realm and vanquish them for good, or witness the enslavement of their world.

He has the ability to modify any item he owns; to upgrade anything. Sounds great on paper. Almost like a video game. Except that the amount of power it takes to actually change, modify, or upgrade anything worthwhile is beyond his abilities. At least, that was until Felix leveraged a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give himself a great deal of points. Investing in Super Heroes and Super Villains and owning them. Using them, Felix built up an empire: an organization by the name of Legion.

Sterling has his hands full balancing the attentions of an ancient Norse deity, a knife-wielding Knight of the Flowers, and a sleazy vampire sycophant. And those are just his buddies.

Mickey Bolitar’s year can’t get much worse. After witnessing his father’s death and sending his mom to rehab, he’s forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools. A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey’s train wreck of a life is finally improving—until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley’s trail into a seedy underworld.

For the past six weeks, LAPD detective Matt Jones has been recovering from the wrong end of a hit man's bullet. Before he can look for payback, Jones finds himself enlisted in the manhunt for an old foe. Dr. George Baylor, the serial killer who escaped after murdering three coeds in LA, resurfaces on the East Coast. This time, an entire family has been slaughtered in their home outside Philadelphia, and the doctor's fingerprints are all over the crime scene.

In this chronicle of the early history of Valdemar, Mercedes Lackey's best-selling world, a 13 year-old orphan named Magpie escapes a life of slavery in the gem mines when he is chosen by one of the magical Companion horses of Valdemar to be trained as a Herald. Thrust into the center of a legend in the making, Magpie discovers talents he never knew he had - and witnesses the founding of the great Heralds' Collegium.

In this second volume of the sprawling dark fantasy epic The Breaking World, gods and armies are on the move as all of Dezrel prepares for war…and nothing short of total subjugation will suffice. In the east, Karak invades Paradise with an army 20,000 strong. Meanwhile, Ashhur travels west along the Gods’ Road, gathering as many of his people as he can against the coming onslaught. In Mordeina, the Wardens raise a massive wall around their settlement with the assistance of spellcasters from the north. And in Dezerea, the Quellan elves move secretly to join the fray.

Wielding the might of magic obtained under the noses of his enemies, Sungchul travels in search of opportunities to hone his powers of cosmomancy and alchemy to put an end to the first of the prophesized calamities. Unlike before, time is not on his side. Conspiracies brew in the dark, eating away at the foundations of the frontlines holding back the all-consuming army of the demons that threaten to unleash unimaginable horrors upon the world. The world titters ever closer to the edge of ruin, and the hour grows dark.

After the events the first three books in Melissa McPhail's award-winning epic fantasy series, A Pattern of Shadow and Light, the realm of Alorin remains unbalanced. The Fifth Vestal, Bjorn van Gelderan, has cast his Players on the field. Now they must hold their positions against Malorin'athgul as well as their immortal allies. In Kandori...Prince Ean val Lorian is bound to Bjorn van Gelderan's game and to his sister Isabel, but Ean would rather be free of both of them. Yet he fears the game won't let him.

It's been three months since the Winterians were freed and Spring's king, Angra, disappeared - thanks largely to the help of Cordell. Meira just wants her people to be safe. When Cordellan debt forces the Winterians to dig their mines for payment, they unearth something powerful and possibly dangerous: Primoria's lost chasm of magic. Theron sees this find as an opportunity - with this much magic, the world can finally stand against threats like Angra.