Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

Who poisoned Laurens De Noyes with a deadly dose of brandy so that the drunken Dutchman dropped dead on Boston Common? Widowed businesswoman Hetty Henry teams up with young Boston minister Increase "Creasy" Cotton to investigate colonial Albany for suspects. Could it be the wife who keeps her own name and her cool at news of her husband's death? Could it be his father-in-law who detested his philandering son-in-law?

In the sentient land of Veridia, Fila dreams of a simple future: using her women's magic of creation to help the Toiler people of the countryside. But when Veridia loses its Servant, the human conduit linking Veridia and its peoples, it chooses her daughter, Fila, as its new Servant. Mourning her mother and her lost dreams and doubting her worthiness, Fila sets out for the capital to be invested. On her journey, assassins attack, sent by a usurper with corrupted magic.

Magic and madness don't always run hand in hand, but there's a reason they call it the Touch. Delaney Green is one of them that don't burn, not that no one ain't never tried. After her mama tried and failed to murder her for pulling on the future like it was a piece of string, Del has spent her whole life in a mental institution for her own safety. And everyone else's. No one wants to see what might happen if she goes cracked. When a dozen young women turn up burned to a crisp, local folks are quick to point the FBI straight at Del.

After a virus wipes out all life on the planet, Ryan Steward believes he's all that's left. Now, a race of scavengers descends on Earth, ready to consume the remaining resources. Ryan, tasked with preserving humanity's written word, must travel the country in hopes of saving books from their destruction.

Rachel doesn't know what's weirder - that there's a dragon in the woods by her school, or that Scott Morrison actually thinks she's beautiful. Or maybe it's the elves. Yeah, it's totally the elves. It was an ordinary weekday for Rachel Hampton. You know, like every day - you wreck your bike on the way to school because the gorgeous queen snot of the universe slams on the brakes of her spanky little convertible right in front of you, so you swerve to miss her and get run over by Scott "Oh My God" Morrison who is so nice and so cute and so out of your league.

Abused as a child, Janice Williams became a cop to make a difference. When a vigilante starts killing child abusers, she is tasked with capturing the killer. But the vigilante knows her every move. When Janice uncovers the identity of the vigilante, she is faced with the dilemma to do her job to uphold the law or help this person escape a nation-wide manhunt.

Speculative fiction stories that are set in or about Archaeological Ruins. The protagonist in each story is an archaeologist who is a woman of color. Ruins range from those in the American Southwest to Central America, to the Andes Mountains to Egypt to the Middle East, Egypt to Aboriginal Australia, and across other areas. Some incorporate mythology of the ancient cultures who built and inhabited the ruins. Some of the protagonists are descendants of the ancient peoples of the ruins.

Deanna, a small backwater Terran colony generally known as an idyllic tourist-magnet (if watching birds blow up if they flew too high were your kind of thing) had just hit a speed-bump on the highway of Life called the Deannan Un-civil War.

The last thing Captain Stuart Flane expected while working to solve the enigma of the Kilgary was a day-long running battle with the undead! Their troubles didn’t end there though, because the Mercury, their only ride home, was also in trouble!

Deanna - the spotted cow of the galaxy, was in trouble. This was all beyond having a funny moon that fell down occasionally, or having jet-propelled birds that exploded if they flew too high; this was serious. An army of fascists had seized power and started rebuilding Deanna as a eugenic utopia—without all the messy inconvenience caused by diversity and dissent.

It was 1939, and a close-knit South African family found themselves in need of a new home. Peter van der Westhuizen, a husband and father of seven who spent most of his days on the road as a truck driver, did his best to provide for them. Then he found Opsaal. It’s an Afrikaans word that means "saddle up", but it was also a place: a farm, to be exact - a lonesome speck of nothing on the edge of a dirt track nowhere near a main road in the South African wilderness, somewhere in the Adelaide district.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692: Arabella Edwards, a mysterious beauty, is found hanging from the Salem gallows, yet the courts had nothing to do with her death. It is up to Hetty Henry, a wealthy widow past 25 years of age, to help with the inquiries. The first thing Hetty notices is an expensive lacy shift hidden beneath the plain clothes of the victim. The second thing she notices is what should be there but isn't: a hood to cover her hair, a travel cloak, a chain of household keys.... Hetty Harris and Increase Cotton, a local minister, are determined to solve her murder.

Canadian vigilante Laura Amour takes her crusade against child exportation to France to take on an international human trafficking organization. What she exposes goes far beyond anything she has ever expected to deal with. Against her is a powerful statesman with vast resources and one of the world's most active anti-terrorist police forces. She must partner up with a rogue anti-terrorist police officer and a teen prostitute or thousands might die.

In the ruins of the collapsed United States, private inspector, Cybil Lewis and her inspector-in-training, Jane, fill a need. When Jane insists they look into her cousin's disappearance, Cybil agrees and is catapulted into a world of lies and deceit. As they investigate, they move far into the reaches of the divided states and deep into the upper crest of political turmoil. Caught up in the malestrom of betrayal and corruption, Cybil and Jane unearth long buried secrets and survive attempts on their lives.

The abandoned house in the country. You've passed by it. In a state of decay, its walls have witnessed the triumphs and tragedies of generations. There's nothing left but memories forgotten. If you believe that, you haven't been inside. Kayla buys a house in the Flint Hills town of Sycamore Falls, Kansas. The property includes a dilapidated old house out back.

Do you want to live forever? Ever since Jacob Benjamin touched his dead grandmother's cheek while she lay in her coffin, he has had a fascination with death. The mystery of the grave and what lies beyond it became a lifetime quest for the young man. His Master's Degree thesis project explores the decades-abandoned Waxley Mortuary, sitting in ruins. His research partners join him on a journey through life and legacy, but Jacob discovers there is still activity inside the dilapidated walls of Waxley. Jacob realizes that there is one figure standing between him and his legacy, salvation, and redemption: The Mortician.

Tales of a Minstrel follows the adventures of a minstrel named Finbar as he travels from village to village telling his stories. His own experiences, however, tend to outshine even the most exciting story he tells.

One of America's first civil rights activists was a former slave named Sojourner Truth. Truth was born into slavery around the year 1797, and would wait thirty years to win her freedom. Her 1850 autobiography brought attention to the evils of slavery, and her work during the Civil War, her speeches highlighting injustice, and her efforts to ensure greater equality for all Americans inspired those who would follow.

Faith, an anomaly to the human race, must defend herself, her world, and her universe from certain doom after accidentally injuring a monster she runs into at her high school graduation. Her adventures lead her and a Watcher known as The Man, to the planet Quii, a city-planet outside her own universe that potentially holds a key to stopping the end of planet Earth. On Quii, secrets come out, and they learn truths about the mysterious Rymuth Elves, the planet's only inhabitants.

It’s November in Chicago. Still healing from an encounter with the Corn Flakes Killer, Lieutenant Michelle “Mickey” Rooney and her partner, Sam Tanner, head out into the snowy night to investigate four seemingly unrelated drug killings. They appear to be run-of-the-mill drug deals gone bad...until witnesses at one of the crime scenes report that they saw the shooting. And they have overheard the name of the killer: Esteban Fernandez.