Showing results by narrator "Neil Hellegers" in All Categories

Eric McCaffrey is very good at VRMMORPGs; he's played most of them, but the lack of funds is starting to affect his ability to play popular games. It's time to move on to something more...obscure. Battlegrounds Online is the only game of its kind. A VRMMOFPS. A military warfare game so realistic that it scares away most players daring enough to try it.

In his attempt to delay his appearance in Emperor's court, Crown Prince Georg triggers an alien invasion of his own star system. The whole of the Empire watches the live broadcast with bated breath as his fleet battles the awesome invaders. The Iseyeks - gigantic sentient praying mantises - are suitably impressed too, so they promptly remind the Crown Prince of his allied duties. The Sector Eight Fleet hurries to the Swarm's aid...but sadly disregards the insects' hive mentality.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award–winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

Captain John Duggan and his crew are stranded deep in hostile territory. Their spaceship, the ESS Crimson is damaged beyond repair. Enemy warships hunt them, eager to locate the vessel which has caused so much damage to their military. All seems lost. Duggan is not a man to go down without a fight. Determined to take matters into his own hands, he leads his squad across the surface of an inhospitable planet in order to make a raid upon an enemy base.

Jason has finally gotten confirmation that Rob is alive. Now, all he has to do is ensure that Rob still has a home to return to when all is said and done. After defeating a Blighted copy of himself and growing stronger, Jason puts all his efforts into defending Earth from the eldritch monsters that seek to devour it. Unfortunately, sometimes, humans make for the worst kinds of monsters. Jason's investigation into a series of bizarre incidents reveals horrifying experimentation that would put an ordinary mad scientist to shame.

Team Grendel is out of options. With a mysterious enemy destroying their refuges, the crew of the Beowulf III is forced to seek sanctuary on an island that wants nothing more than to kill them all, an island that is pure death and evil. While Ballantine struggles to find them a less deadly option, Team Grendel must risk their lives to help a teammate. Something is wrong with Darby and an answer must be found before it is too late. But finding that answer may mean not all of them will make it out. Fear! Death! Terror! Blood!

Adventure calls! Reality and fantasy finally collide when a new member joins Azure's party. A dangerous encounter with a mimic makes him think twice about touching large chests. And learning magic proves to be a bigger pain than he could have ever imagined.

With Eden now behind Jack, he and the group set out to find the mysterious Doc Klein, who may know how to put a stop to the zombie plague and bring peace back to our world. But the task won't be an easy one. While traveling through the wasted East Coast, Jack and the gang get caught in a war between two groups - human cannibals and the Wranglers, the latter led by an ancient, clairvoyant woman named Mother. It is Mother who warns Jack of the Doc's insanity.

In this remarkable collection the author has selected over two dozen of her best Lovecraftian tales ranging from 2000s “Valentia” to her more recent classic “A Mountain Walked” as well as including the complete Dandridge Cycle, as well as a new story, “M Is for Mars.” In short, this is a cornerstone volume for Kiernan fans and Mythos devotees alike.

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.

It's a warm and muggy Saturday night in August of 1942. The Nazis are liquidating the ghetto of Shedlitz, an industrial town east of Warsaw, Poland. Zippa, a 27-year-old Jewish woman, finds temporary shelter in a small attic, together with her baby daughter and 100 frightened Jews. When the Nazi noose is tightened around her neck, Zippa asks her husband Jacob, a Jewish policeman in the ghetto, to save their little girl from certain death. The young father manages to smuggle his wife and daughter to the gentile part of town.

After their recent victory over an incredibly powerful alien foe, Captain John Duggan and his crew are expecting some downtime while the ESS Crimson is refitted. It is not to be. In a war for survival, the Space Corps' best officer can't be permitted to languish on base with his feet up. Soon after landing on planet Atlantis, Duggan gets the call once more. This time there's to be no holding back - his superiors want him to take the fight to the enemy, rather than wait it out in Confederation Space.

The Empire is splitting at the seams. The Great Houses refuse to obey the Throne World and have begun to conduct increasingly independent politics. Sensing the weakness of the central government, even the most loyal star systems of the Imperial Core are refusing to take orders from above. Is this just a string of coincidences, or a coordinated campaign? Can a disjointed humanity rally around a strong leader to deflect an alien invasion? Who of the many figures in intergalactic politics can rise to this challenge?

Will Galvan is no longer a noob to The Realm. In fact, he's no longer Will Galvan. Emerged as Azure and still undecided about his class, the new hero is ready to face the cause of the curse on Crescent Island head-on. Little does he know that in-game decisions may have real-world consequences, up to and including death.

Being a necromancer is kinda cool until you wake up half dead in a dumpster. Cisco Suarez is into something bad. Wanted by police, drenched in the stink of dark magic, and nether creatures coming out of the woodwork. Is resurrection overrated or what? This box set contains the first three Black Magic Outlaw novels ( Dead Man, Shadow Play, and Heart Strings) all at one special omnibus price.

Since that free-for-all that saw every Champion hurry to claim as much land as they could, many of the weaker rulers have been eliminated. As a result, the whole land of Liora is now under the control of eight single coalitions. Can they be trusted to keep to themselves and play nice, or should they be treated like threats and dealt with accordingly? That is one of the main questions Charles and his allies intend to answer when they meet up to finalize their own union.

The chances of a fairytale ending in a post-apocalyptic wasteland are slim to none. But so are the chances of surviving hordes of zombies while traveling across the country. So, for Jack Jupiter, the chances mean nothing. He hasn't stopped before and he doesn't plan on stopping now, either. With Project Reset canceled, Jack and the group head to San Francisco, where Darlene hopes to find her mother and sister...dead or alive; because all she wants is closure. While on their journey, they hear of a settlement located in Golden Gate Park called Haven.

New York Times best-selling and Hugo Award-winning author John Scalzi gift-wraps 15 short takes on the holiday season - interviews with holiday notables, "informational" articles about TV specials and Christmas carols, short stories and poems, and even a couple of nods to Thanksgiving and New Year’s - and puts them all into a stocking stuffer-sized package that makes the perfect gift for friends, family, or yourself.

Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others.

Fifteen years ago, a deranged young man abducted a teenage girl in a parking lot. He chose her for her innocence. Punished her for her beauty. Dowsed her with gasoline and tried to purify her with fire. Detective Jacob Rein managed to stop the lunatic and lock him up for life. Now the girl who survived that horrible ordeal has been found dead, an apparent suicide. Near her body is a letter from "The Master" - a bloodchilling promise to finish what he started.