Showing results by author "N and D" in All Categories

Discover the secret world between the trees where fairies, unicorns and even monsters dwell. Take a stroll through enchanted woods and dance with pixies and dryads by the light of the stars. Escape Baba Yaga and fall in love with a prince in disguise. Taste the fruit at the goblin market and be whisked away on a magical adventure.

The End is Coming. An extinction-level asteroid is cannonballing toward Earth. In humanity’s final hours, a lucky few earn a one-way ticket to the brand-new, ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online. Making that leap of faith might mean survival, but it comes with a steep price tag: “Travelers” will forever be stranded as digital avatars inside a fantastical world filled with vicious monsters, all-powerful AIs, and cutthroat players. Let the games begin....

When the Imminy fleets arrived at Primitea, there was only one name to rally under: the Bloodmancer. With Arthur and Fars at his side, Richard Stavos had become so much more than a Technomancer. His powers had grown beyond what the Guild could have ever taught him. The war had reached every corner of the Galaxy. The Stavos family had to swing its iron fist against enemies in the far reaches of the void as much as against those on Primitea. While Freya took on the mantle of ruler at home, Richard Stavos took the war to the Federation.

Civilization has fallen in all but a few places as the Madness ravages Europe and Asia. America is the last holdout against the corruption causing nanocytes to malfunction. Bethany Anne is far away, fighting for the survival of the entire universe, unaware that her technology has turned on humanity. Earth needs a protector from Bethany Anne’s line, and the Kurtherian Lilith has found her champion.

Salem has emerged as the center of civilization on the East Coast. The barriers between the factions dropped when the UnknownWorld stepped up to protect the unenhanced from the Madness. The Defense Force is ready to tackle Europe, the Madness, and the malfunctioning climate control system Bethany Anne left behind. Sarah Jennifer leads the way as the pack forges new connections around the world. Not everyone takes the news of the impending break-up well.

Alpha Class is back - and this time they’ve brought their four-legged friends! It’s the final term for Tina, Maxim, Yana, and Ron, along with many of the inaugural Etheric Academy class, and in true Alpha Class style, it doesn’t take long for a mission for justice to turn into a real-life episode of Star Journey.

Now, as I chase after her, I have to continue to lie to the people that matter the most to me. When I do find her, I'm not the only one, and the fairy with a voice that makes imaginary spiders crawl up my skin makes me do something even worse than selling my soul. Stuck with my sworn enemy in one head, finding my father is no longer an issue. What comes after might just make me regret having let Jane live. But by then, as is the case with most bad decisions, it will be too late...

The demons are after us. The ECU is after us. What are the odds that we'll ever stop them from hunting us down? Very low. Good thing I'm all up for impossible challenges. When the demons came into the ECU's "research" facility where we were being held prisoner, the strange dragon around my hand came to life, giving me a way to end those suckers for good. We might have made it out alive, but a lot of witches like us didn't. Instead, they were kidnapped by the demons.

According to Steve Jobs, "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." The rise of digital technology in business has made this statement truer now more than ever. Today, businesses can be created, marketed, and ready to interact with customers in the blink of an eye, with nothing more than an internet connection! This accelerated pace of business is wreaking havoc on companies that are "too big to fail", sometimes in a matter of months.

The effort to reconnect the world has been successful, and a new home for the Defense Force chosen. All that remains is to tackle the Madness. Sarah Jennifer is still hurting from Ezekiel’s departure. Meanwhile, Ezekiel has his own losses to contend with. A chance encounter in the woods gives him the push he needs to make things right.

At 16, Sam Macmillan is supposed to be thinking about girls, homework and his upcoming application to music college, not picking up the pieces after the school shooting that his brother Charlie committed. Yet as Sam desperately tries to hang on to the memories he has of his brother, the media storm surrounding their family threatens to destroy everything. And Sam has to question all he thought he knew about life, death, right and wrong.

When we summoned the Ether, we thought we were saving the world. We thought we were ending the reign of dragons, freeing the people of power-hungry Azarius kings and queens once and for all. Turns out, none of us had any idea what the reign of dragons truly meant.

Who would have thought that I, Scarlet Jones, the first ever Storm witch of the world, would one day work for the ECU? I sure as hell didn't, but here we are. When Jane Dunham came to the monastery to look for her sister Elisa, she had a parting gift for us: a horde of demons who came into our home and killed without mercy. It put an end to our illusion of safety pretty quickly.

A year ago, I was dragged into what I thought was hell against my will—the Daedalus Palace in the Elysean city of Idaea. Turns out that was just a place, but there's an actual hell here, so now I'm going in there, too. This time, though? Death is pretty much guaranteed, and I'm going in willingly. But if I'm lucky and I somehow survive, I'll get to say that I spent my nineteenth birthday in the Underworld.

What is this world? What kind of place is it? The round kind. The spinning kind. The moist kind. The inhabited kind. The kind with flamingos (real and artificial). The kind where water in the sky turns into beautifully symmetrical crystal flakes sculpted by artists unable to stop themselves (in both design and quantity). The kind of place with tiny, powerfully jawed mites assigned to the carpets to eat my dead skin as it flakes off....

The Carnival of Light didn't exactly go the way the ECU had imagined. We ended up putting the best show in the world for them. Hiding away in an abandoned monastery while all our enemies knew where we were sounded much better as an idea. Now that we were actually living there, all Storm witches who'd come to meet us at the carnival, it was a whole other story. We'd gotten every person on the ECU hit-list under one roof, and we had no means to protect them. Yet. Finding the Spellmaker kid is our top priority. Without spells, we don't have much hope to make our place in the world.

My family has played god with shifters for over eight centuries. They've conquered in silence, have gathered and saved power for themselves, failing their people. No more. The draca live. All four of us are alive, on the same timeline, and we have what it takes to summon the Ether and bring back the balance of elements in our world. Give the people back their magic. Put a stop to the Azarius reign.

Violence is rampant in today's society. From state-sanctioned violence and the brutality of war and genocide to interpersonal fighting and the ways in which social lives are structured and symbolized by and through violence, people enact terrible things on other human beings almost every day. In Archaeologies of Violence and Privilege, archaeologists Christopher N. Matthews and Bradley D. Phillippi bring together a collection of authors who document the ways in which past social formations rested on violent acts and reproduced violent social and cultural structures.

Ever since I found out I was adopted by my werewolf family, I longed to know where I came from, where I belonged. Now that my wolf showed me her memories, and Haworth confirmed who my father was, I want nothing more than to forget. But suffering from an identity crisis is the least of my worries now that my sister has shown me her true face. Taking over in Haworth's stead after she killed him, she's determined to figure out how to perform a very powerful possession spell, and I just happen to be the perfect candidate.

The Elyseans have always thought themselves better than us mortals. At least, that's what they want the whole world to think. I believe it—until I complete the Elysean Trials they force me in and attend the Academy of Divine Light and Beauty. Until I meet a real Olympian goddess, and she finally sheds light on the gods' biggest secret, and it's worse than I could have ever imagined. Turns out, there's a purpose to the Elysean Trails. There's a reason why they exist and why they choose mortals to bring to their Academy. A very good reason, just not the one the world knows.