Showing results by narrator "J.A. Scott" in All Categories

When the dead get up, the guns last for weeks. The water lasts three days. The System arrived the night after the dead did. It did not make anyone a hero. It read what people already were, off the licenses in their wallets, and reported the truth in flat capitals. Vernon Dettmer, twenty-two years running a small city's water plant, drew PUBLIC WORKS, OPERATOR, GRADE III. People with combat classes laughed. Most of them were dead inside a month, and not one of the people drinking his water was. Because his readout tells him what nothing else in the collapse will: the actual state of things.

Hell runs on rules. Survive them. A deadend life ends even deader… and he wakes up in Hell’s lobby, where the clerks have horns and the staplers bite. The only way out is down: nine Circles, each a lethal, bureaucratic nightmare with bosses who measure your sins in triplicate. Good news—there’s a system. Bad news—it’s fair. He’s not alone. A bythebook imp (assigned as his auditor) and a battlebroken 13thcentury knight (who’s seen this game before) form a reluctant party. Together they’ll parse infernal contracts, kite monsters through killzones, and raid departments with more forms than fangs.

On a Halloween night, eight boys are led on an incredible journey into the past by the mysterious “spirit” Moundshroud. Riding a dark autumn wind from ancient Egypt to the land of the Celtic druids, from Mexico to a cathedral in Paris, they will witness the haunting beginnings of the holiday...

December 1944. As German forces launch a massive surprise attack through the frozen Ardennes Forest, two snipers find themselves aiming for a rematch. Caje Cole is a backwoods hunter from the Appalachian Mountains of the American South, while Kurt Von Stenger is the deadly German "Ghost Sniper". Having been in each other's crosshairs before, they fight a final duel during Germany's desperate attempt to turn the tide of war in what will come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Can the hunter defeat the marksman?

Gloria Burtzlaff feared for her life one day back in April of 1991 when her abusive husband, Larry, drunk and violent, slapped her, hit her, and began pelting her with glasses. After he tried to drown her in a tub, she got the family shotgun and confronted him in his underwear. “Larry, I’m going to kill you,” she declared. Defense lawyers would later claim he lifted a glass as if to say, “Have at it, sister.” Have at It, Sister is a true-crime tale about Gloria, a South Dakota woman who shot her abusive husband and was put on trial in a precedent-setting case.

Camavor is a brutal land with a bloody legacy. Where the empire's knights go, slaughter follows. Kalista seeks to change that. When her young and narcissistic uncle, Viego, becomes king, she vows to temper his destructive instincts, as his loyal confidant, advisor, and military general. But her plans are thwarted when an assassin's poisoned blade strikes Viego's wife, Isolde, afflicting her with a malady for which there is no cure.

In December 1941, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunges the United States into war. Fresh from the hardscrabble mountains of Appalachia, Deacon Cole joins the fight against Imperial Japan. In his first test against the enemy, he will use all his skill with a rifle against a deadly Japanese marksman. Across the beaches and jungles, they take part in the savage battle for control of a Pacific island. Can he protect his squad, or will they fall, one by one, under the enemy’s crosshairs?

In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction) - then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.

Corrupt sheriffs and a judge in their pocket, the Scorpion gang ravaged the panhandle with robbery, murder and extortion. But who was the brain behind the gang and where was he hiding? Outlaw Black Jack Timmons has the evidence against them, and United States Marshals Ezra Flint, Jake Timber and Jubal Stone are on the trail of Black Jack. But can any three men – even these three legendary lawmen – survive the long trail to justice?

WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY PATTON OSWALT Dubbed “the most significant and controversial SF book” of its generation, Harlan Ellison’s groundbreaking collection launched an entire subgenre: New Wave science fiction. With contributions from legendary authors and multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards...

The fight for victory in the Pacific continues; this time at Leyte in the Philippines. Deacon Cole and the rest of Patrol Easy are sent as an advance unit to help crack the formidable Japanese defenses before the American invasion. To make the mission even more difficult, the Japanese have deadly snipers of their own. If Deke and the others can’t help bring down the enemy defenses in time, there will be a terrible price to pay when US troops hit the beach.

The untold story of DOGE: What really happened when outsiders took on Washington. Told by Tyler Hassen, the Houston business executive who became Acting Assistant Secretary at the Department of the Interior, this book reveals the first insider account of the Department of Government Efficiency.

It’s not easy being the youngest of seven sons in a family of notorious sorcerers, especially for Ayden Dracre. In a world where sorcerers practice only dark magic and wizards practice only light magic, Ayden has a problem: He is very bad at being bad. Try as he might, all of his spells to cause mayhem go awry. When he finds out that his family has had enough of his mistakes, he decides to take destiny into his own hands.

The young street urchin Hissune gets his due for helping Lord Valentine regain his throne. As a reward, he is sent into the depths of the Labyrinth, a massive library of memory cubes in which the entire history of Majipoor is preserved. As Hissune prepares for a summons to return to Castle Mount, he relives the lives of Majipoor's most famous and notorious inhabitants.

While the politicians on both sides negotiate, the armies in the field are fighting a brutal war of attrition across the rugged Korean Peninsula. Sniper Caje Cole and his squad have one clear objective, which is to capture the next hill and keep it from falling back into enemy hands. That’s not easy when the enemy still attacks in overwhelming numbers. At the Battle of Triangle Hill, the soldiers find themselves in a stalemate with Chinese forces, fighting to capture and then regain a strategic foothold.

Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug—and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears.

Sniper Caje Cole thought he was done with war after the victory in Europe, but a violent act of justice back home in the mountains forces him into the Army once more to fight in the Korean War. Cole just wants to lay low and get through this war so that he can return to his solitary life in a cabin that he built deep in the woods. However, with his unit surrounded at the frigid Chosin Reservoir and confronted by a deadly enemy sniper, Cole must use all his skill with a rifle to fight back.

Lord Kadorax Darkarrow was born on Earth, but in Agglor, he's the highest-level assassin anyone can find. The leader of the famed Blackened Blades, he's made a name for himself, built a kingdom of sorts, and only had to respawn once along the way. Then a rogue band of jackals sends him all the way back to a dreary tavern in a tiny village to start over at level one. Hellbent on revenge, Kadorax sets out on a path littered with bodies - level up, find the jackals, slay their god!

Patrol Easy finds itself divided as the battle rages for the Philippines. One group of snipers sets sail for yet another beach landing on the far side of the Leyte peninsula. Crack shot Deacon Cole joins a unit fighting its way across the jungle interior, where he encounters not just the enemy but also a nasty tropical fever.

Three Shepherd Security cases intersect with one woman. There is no such thing as a coincidence in the world that Shepherd Security operates in. So, when this woman falls into the middle of the cases, needing protection, but refusing to offer explanations, the team goes on high alert. Dr. Evelin Rademaker, DVM, is an innocent person targeted by a dangerous group. She doesn’t know that she holds the key to resolve the Shepherd Security cases. What she is sure of is that she doesn’t know who she can trust, so she trusts no one…