Showing results for "Alex Scott" in Fantasy

On the worst birthday of my life, I come home to find my boyfriend in bed with another woman. Within hours, I’m drunk, homeless, and pledging to stay single forever. And that is when the dangerously sexy Seelie King rolls through town, looking for fae like me. Every generation, the king holds a competition for Seelie queen. But for reasons he won’t explain, Torin is looking for a charade, not a real marriage. So when I drunkenly sling insults his way, I have his attention.

Villains take center stage in this collection of 19 dark and magical stories. Listeners will be cheering for all the wrong heroes as some of the most fearsome, devious, and brutal antagonists perform savage deeds towards wicked ends. And why not? These characters are the champions of their own stories - evil is a matter of perspective. Contributors also include Mark Adler, Bradley P. Beaulieu, E.V. Morrigan, Peter Orullian, Matthew Ward, Kaaron Warren, Deborah A. Wolf, and Janny Wurts.

After the Seelie king Torin nearly froze me to death, I plunged through a portal into my true home. Turns out, my hometown is a wild Unseelie kingdom known as the Court of Sorrows. When Torin follows me and sees my new horns, he quickly realizes that his intended bride is an enemy of his realm. In fact, his name for my kind is ""demon."" But even if I have the horns of an Unseelie, I'm not welcome here, either. Queen Mab and her monstrous soldiers are delighted to torment us, accusing me of being a traitor.

Dina Demille doesn’t run your typical bed and breakfast. Her inn defies laws of physics, her fluffy dog is secretly a monster, and the only paying guest is a former Galactic tyrant with a price on her head. But the inn needs guests to thrive, and guests have been scarce, so when an Arbitrator shows up at Dina's door and asks her to host a peace summit between three warring species, she jumps on the chance.

In this chilling adventure, Vampire Hunter D has been dispatched to vanquish the ancient vampiric Noble Count Braujou, guardian of an ancient buried treasure. But when a mysterious object crashes into the earth, destroying half of the northern Frontier, D faces an even more terrifying opponent—the renegade vampire Valcua, the Ultimate Noble! Having been exiled to outer space, Valcua took his entire kingdom of strange and deadly creatures with him, and swore that when the time was right they would return to have their revenge.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year 12,090 A.D. vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world.

In the title story, "Dark Nocturne", D is hired to unlock the secret of a siren's song that is drawing men in their twenties to their deaths in the hills outside Anise Village. In "Notes on Imagined Autumn", D finds himself caught between two lovers during a ritualistic sacrifice in the village of Shirley's Door, but if D can't stop the sacrifice will all in the village be doomed? And in "Legend of the War Demons", two living weapons, genetically engineered creatures who are the last remnants of a war waged hundreds of years in the past, find that battle is not so easily forgotten.

In the time of the Crusades, the Knights Templars were holy warriors who seemed to be blessed by God himself. But over the years, the order dissolved into mysteries both sacred and profane — creating an object whose power bends to the true nature of its owner.... But until she held it in her hands, archaeologist Annja Creed hadn't heard of the Skull of Sidon nor the twisted tale of its origins. Even now, she's still not convinced. Yet someone wants it badly enough to hire a man who wields power beyond her imagining.

When archaeologist Annja Creed reluctantly agrees to help an old colleague on a dig in Antarctica, she wonders what he's gotten her into. It turns out that her former associate has found a necklace made of an unknown metal depicting three snakes. He claims it's over 40,000 years old — and that it may not have earthly origins. As the pair conduct their research, Annja soon realizes she has more to worry about than being caught in snow slides.

Hil always felt out of place in her powerful wolf shifter pack. Not only was she curvy amongst beautiful wolves, but at 20-years-old, she couldn’t shift. That meant that her alpha father had to protect her, or overly protect her. And in the dangerous underworld of New York City wolf packs, that meant that she was a prisoner in her Manhattan penthouse.

The theft of a whetstone from a Welsh museum and the murder of a curate during a grave robbery seem, at first, like random crimes. But the troubling deeds are linked by a precarious thread. An unusual collection of rare and scattered British antiquities has become a target — and the relics' value lies in something much more dangerous than money....

Annja Creed jumps at the chance to join a fellow archaeologist on a quest to find a relic. But she's not so thrilled about northern Siberia, where they are hoping to discover something buried in the long-undisturbed soil of Russia's frozen terrain. When they reach the town of Jakutsk, Annja is put off by its gray landscape and highly superstitious inhabitants. They claim they are being hunted. Then one of the Villagers goes missing.

Enlisted by the Japan Buddhist Federation to catalog a number of ancient shrines dotted across Nepal, archaeologist Annja Creed is honored to help. Political violence has prompted the Federation to protect holy sites from desecration and vandalism, and Annja is their last hope to properly conserve these sites. Where there's vandalism, there's plundering, and local police soon become suspicious of Annja's presence. But she is more concerned about the antiques smugglers and Maoist guerrillas trying to kill her.

Eddie Nelson is a professional poker player, testing his skills in Las Vegas at the World Series of Poker for the first time. Unfortunately, he's on the worst run of his life and can't afford his buy-in to the Main Event. Then he meets a shadowy figure called Raphael who offers to back him for a fifty-fifty split of any winnings. But if he loses, he has to play in a private tournament of Raphael's choosing...

The War of Spanish Succession is over, many sailors are out of work, and the thriving American colonies are quickly becoming the place of opportunity. For Sam Bellamy it is the opportunity to become the captain of his own ship.

All it took was one phone call and TV show host and archaeologist Annja Creed is in mortal danger. Her producer Doug Morrell has been abducted by a greedy treasure hunter who's seeking the lost raubgold, or looted gold of Nazi Germany. The terms are simple: retrieve the bounty and Doug lives. Fail, and he dies....Now Annja and her friends must find a missing German fighter plane that was shot down over the Alps in 1945.

The video showed a nearly naked man bloodied and beaten. Even as archaeologist and TV presenter Annja Creed watched, the clock on his suicide vest ticked down, and precious seconds were lost. But this was no stranger. Garin was her friend. Their fates had been bound by the secrets of Joan of Arc's sword. And Annja had less than 24 hours to save his life....

He was one of Russia's most infamous rulers, and he alone held the key to a legendary Byzantine collection of books, given to him in the dowry of Princess Sophia of Constantinople. Ivan Vasilyevich - otherwise known as Ivan the Terrible - owned a library filled with rare and priceless tomes that men would kill for. Would die for. But the czar carried the knowledge of its whereabouts to his grave. And it falls to archaeologist Annja Creed, almost 500 years later, to discover the secrets of the Library of Gold.

In a land of subzero temperatures and snow-covered vistas, survival is a challenge. But for the Araktak — an isolated and mysterious Inuit people — this harsh tundra is their heritage. Until now. A large mining company has purchased the land, and the sacred Araktak burial site with it. But more than diamond deposits await them under the dark, icy Earth....